“Not a thing,” said Pat with a smile.
“Oh, oh, I wasn’t ixpicting it,” said Judy with no smile. She did not know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. She did not quite like Cleaver, who was an honour graduate of McGill and was spending his summer doing research work at the Silverbridge harbour. Pat had got acquainted with him at the Long House and he had dangled a bit round Silver Bush. He was enormously clever and his researches into various elusive bacilli had already put him in the limelight. But poor Cleaver looked rather like a magnified bacillus himself and Judy, try as she would, could not see him as a husband for Pat.
“It’ll be the widower yet, I’m fearing,” she told Tillytuck in the graveyard. “Spacially if this news we’re hearing about Jingle is true. I’ve always had me own ideas . . . but I do be only an ould fool and getting no younger, as Mrs. Binnie do be saying ivery once in so long.”
“Old Matilda Binnie has a new set of teeth and a new fur coat,” said Tillytuck. “Now, if she could get a new set of brains she might do very well for a while.” He took a few whiffs at his pipe and then added gravely, “Symbolically speaking.”
4
Aunt Edith died very suddenly in August. They all felt the shock of it. None of them had ever loved Aunt Edith very much . . . she was not a lovable person. But she was part of the established order of things and her passing meant another change. Oddly enough, Judy, who had had a life-long vendetta with her, seemed to mourn and miss her most. Judy thought life would be almost stodgy when there was no Aunt Edith to horrify and exchange polite, barbed jabs with.
“Whin I think I’ll niver see her in me kitchen agin, insulting me, I do be having a very quare faling, Patsy dear.”
It was of course May who told Pat, with much relish, that Hilary Gordon was engaged. Some Binnie had had a letter from another Binnie who lived in Vancouver and knew the girl. She and Hilary were to be married when he returned from his year abroad and he was to be taken into the noted firm of architects in which her father was the senior partner.
“He was a beau of yours long ago, wasn’t he, when you were a young girl?” asked May in a malicious drawl.
“I think it’s true,” Rae told Pat that night. “I heard it some time ago. Dot has friends in Vancouver and they wrote it to her. I . . . I didn’t know whether to tell you or not.”
“Why on earth shouldn’t you tell me?” said Pat very coldly.
“Well . . .” Rae hesitated . . . “you and Hilary were always such friends . . .”
“Exactly!” Pat bit the word off and her brook-brown eyes were full of a rather dangerous fire. “We have always been good friends and so I would naturally be interested in hearing any good news about him. All that . . . that hurts me is that he should have left me to hear it from others. Rae Gardiner, what are you looking at me like that for?”
“I’ve always thought,” said Rae, taking her life in her hands, “that you . . . that you cared much more for Hilary than you ever suspected yourself, Pat.”
Pat laughed a little unsteadily.
“Rae, don’t be a goose. You and Judy have always been a little delirious on the subject of Hilary. I’ve always loved Hilary and always will. He’s just like a dear brother to me. Do you realise how many years it is since I’ve seen him? Of course we’ve drifted apart even as friends. It was inevitable. Even our correspondence is dying a natural death. I haven’t had a letter from him since he went abroad.”
“I was only a child when he went away but I remember how I liked him,” said Rae. “I used to think he was the nicest boy in the world.”
“So he was,” said Pat. “And I hope he’s going to marry some one who is nice enough for him.”
“He really was in love with you, wasn’t he, Pat?”
“He thought he was. I knew he would get over that.”
“Well . . .” Rae had been irradiated all day with some secret happiness and now it came out . . . “Brook is coming over for a week before college opens. I do hope Miss Macauly will have my blue georgette done by that time. And I think I’ll have a little jacket of that lovely transparent blue velvet we saw in town to go with it. I feel sure Brook will love me in that dress.”
“I thought he loved you in any dress,” teased Pat.
“Oh, he does. But there are degrees, Pat.”
“And no one,” thought Pat a little drearily, “cares how I’m dressed.”
She looked out of the window and saw a rising moon . . . and remembered old moonrises she had watched with Hilary . . . “when she was a girl.” That phrase of May’s rankled. And Mrs. Binnie had been rather odious the other day, assuring her again there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it . . . apropos of the announcement of the engagement of a South Glen girl to Donald Holmes.
“You’re young enough yet,” said Mrs. Binnie soothingly. “And when people say you’re beginning to look a bit old-maidish I always tell them, ‘Is it any wonder? Think of the responsibility Pat has had for years, with her mother ill and so much on her shoulders. No wonder she’s getting old-looking afore her time.’”
Pat had got pretty well into the habit of ignoring Mrs. Binnie but that phrase “young yet” haunted her. She went to the mirror and looked dispassionately at herself. She really did not think she looked old. Her dark brown hair was as glossy as ever . . . her amber eyes as bright . . . her cheeks as smooth and rounded. Perhaps there were a few tiny lines in the corners of her eyes and . . . what was that? Pat leaned nearer, her eyes dilating a little. Was it . . . could it be . . . yes, it was! A grey hair!
5
Pat went up to the Long House that night. She walked blithely and springily. She was not going to worry over that grey hair. She would not even pull it out. The Selbys all turned grey young. What did it matter? She would not grow old in heart, no matter what she did in head. She would always keep her banner of youth flying gallantly. Wrinkles might come on her face but there should never be any on her soul. And yet there had been a moment that day when Pat had felt as if she didn’t want to be young any longer. Things hurt you too much when you were young. Surely they wouldn’t hurt so much when you got old. You wouldn’t care so much then . . . things would be settled . . . there wouldn’t be so many changes. People you knew wouldn’t always be running off to far lands . . . or getting married. Your hair would be all grey and it wouldn’t matter. You wouldn’t be eating your heart out longing for a lost paradise.
Altogether it had not been a pleasant day. May had had a fit of the sulks and had taken it out slamming doors . . . Rover had eaten a plateful of fudge Pat had set outside to cool . . . Judy had seemed down-hearted about something . . . perhaps the news about Hilary though she never referred to it but only muttered occasionally to herself about “strange going-ons.” Pat decided that she felt a trifle stodgy and needed something to pep her up a bit. She would find it at the Long House . . . she always did. Whenever life seemed a bit grey . . . whenever she felt a passing pang of loneliness over the changes that had been and . . . worse still . . . would be, she went up the hill to David and Suzanne. Whenever the door of the Long House clanged behind her it seemed to shut out the world, with its corroding discontents and vexations. Once, Pat thought with a stab of pain, she had felt that way when she went into Silver Bush. That she couldn’t feel so any longer was a very bitter thing . . . a thing she couldn’t get used to. But to-night as she and David and Suzanne sat around the fire — it was a cool September night and any excuse served when they wanted to light that fire . . . and cracked nuts and talked . . . or didn’t talk . . . the bitterness faded out of Pat’s heart as it always did in their company. Suzanne was rather quiet, sitting with Alphonso curled up in her lap: but Pat and David never found themselves lacking for something to say. Pat looked at the motto that ran in quaint, irregular letters around the fireplace.
“There be three gentle and goodlie things,
To be here,
To be together,
And to think well of one another.”
That was true: and while it remained true one could bear anything else, no matter what sort of a hole it left in your life. What a dear Suzanne was! And what nice eyes David had . . . very whimsical when they were not tender and very tender when they were not whimsical. And his voice . . . what did his voice always remind her of? She could never tell but she knew it was something that always tugged at her heart. And she knew he liked her very much. It was nice to be liked . . . nice to have such friends to come to whenever you wanted to.
David walked home with her as he always did. Pat had never until to-night stopped to think how very pleasant those walks home were. To-night the hills were dreamy under a harvest moon. They went through the close-set spruce grove that always seemed to be guarding so many secrets . . . down the field path under the Watching Pine that still watched . . . for what? . . . over the brook and along the Whispering Lane. At the gate where they always parted they stood in silence for a little while, lost in the beauty of the night. Faint music came to them. It was only Tillytuck playing in his lair but, muted by the distance, it sounded like some fairy melody under a haunted moon. Beyond the trees were great quietudes of sky where burned the stars that never changed . . . the only things that never changed.
David was thinking that silence with Pat was more eloquent than talk with any other woman. He was also wondering what Pat would do or say if he suddenly did what he had always wanted to do . . . put his arm about her and said, “darling.” What he did say was almost as shattering to Pat’s new-found mood of contentment.
“Has Suzanne told you her little secret yet?”
Suzanne? A secret? There was only one kind of a secret people spoke about in that tone. Pat involuntarily put up her hand as if warding off a blow.
“No . . . o . . . o,” she said faintly.
“She probably would have if you had been alone with her to-night. She’s very happy. She has made up a quarrel she had before we came here with an old lover . . . and they are engaged.”
It was too much . . . it really was. So Suzanne was to be lost to her, too! And she had to be polite and say something nice.
“I . . . I . . . hope she will always be very happy,” she gasped.
“I think she will,” said David quietly. “She has loved him for years . . . I never knew just what the trouble was. We’re a secretive lot, we Kirks. Of course they won’t be married till he has finished college. He has had to work his way through. And then . . . what am I to do, Pat?”
“You . . . you’ll miss her,” said Pat. She knew she was being incredibly stupid.
“You’ll have to tell me what to do, Pat,” David said, bending a little nearer, his voice taking on a very significant tone.
Was David by any chance proposing to her? And if he were what on earth could she say? She wasn’t going to say anything! She had had enough shocks for one day . . . Hilary engaged . . . grey hair . . . Suzanne engaged! Oh, why must life be such an uncertain thing? You never knew where you were . . . you never had security . . . you never knew when there might not be some dreadful bolt from the blue. She would just pretend she hadn’t heard David’s question and go in. Which she did.
But that night she sat in the moonlight in her room for a long while and looked at the two paths she might take in life. Rae was away and the house was silent . . . and, so it seemed to Pat, lonely. Silver Bush always seemed when night fell to be mourning for its ravished peace. The sky outside was cloudless but a brisk wind was blowing past. “What is the wind in such a hurry for, Aunt Pat?” Little Mary had asked wistfully not long ago. Everything seemed in a hurry . . . life was in a hurry . . . it couldn’t let you be . . . it swept you on with it as if you were a leaf in the wind.
Which path should she take? David was going to ask her to marry him . . . she had known for a long time in the back of her mind that he would ask her if she ever let him. She was terribly fond of David. Life with him would be a very pleasant pilgrimage. Even a grey day was full of colour when David was around. She was always contented in his company. And his eyes were sometimes so sad. She wanted to make them happy. Was that reason enough for marrying a man, even one as nice as David? If she didn’t marry him she would lose him out of her life. He would never stay at the Long House after Suzanne had gone. And she couldn’t lose any more friends . . . she just couldn’t.
Suppose she didn’t take that path? Suppose she just went on living here at Silver Bush . . . growing into being “Aunt Pat” . . . helping plan the clan weddings and funerals . . . her brown hair turning pepper-and-salt. That grey hair popped into her mind. It seemed as if age had just tapped her on the shoulder. But it would be all right if only Silver Bush might be hers to love and plan for and live for, free from all outsiders and intruders. She wouldn’t hesitate a second then. But would it be? Would it ever be hers again? She knew what May’s designs were. And she knew Sid didn’t want to leave Silver Bush for the other place. Would dad stand out against them . . . could he? No, it would end in May being mistress of Silver Bush some day. That was the secret dread that always haunted Pat. And if it ever came about . . .
A few weeks later David said quietly to her in the garden of the Long House . . . the garden where Bet’s ghost sometimes walked even yet for Pat . . .
“Do you think you could marry me, Pat?”
Pat looked afar for a moment of silence to the firry rim of an eastern hill. Then she said just as quietly, “I think I could.”
6
Mother was told first. Mother’s face was always serene but it changed a little when Pat told her.
“Darling, do you really love him?”
Pat looked out of the window. There had been a frost the night before and the garden had a blighted look. She had been hoping mother wouldn’t ask that question.
“I do really, mother, but perhaps not in just the way you mean.”
“There’s only the one way,” said mother softly.
“Then I’m one of the kind of people who can’t love that way. I’ve tried . . . and I can’t.”
“It doesn’t come by trying either,” said mother.
“Mother dear, I’m terribly fond of David. We suit each other . . . our minds click. He loves the same things I do. I’m always happy with him . . . we’ll always be good chums.”
Mother said no more. She picked up something she was making for Rae’s hope chest and went on putting tiny invisible stitches in it. After all perhaps it would work out. It was not what she had wanted for Pat but the child must make her own choices. David Kirk was a nice fellow . . . mother had always liked him. And Pat would not be far from her.
Judy came next and, for one who had always been anxious to see Pat “settled”, betrayed no great delight. But she wished Pat well and was careful to say that Mr. Kirk had rale brading. Since the engagement was an accomplished fact Judy was not going to say anything against a future member of the family.
“The poor darlint, she don’t be as happy as she thinks hersilf,” Judy told Bold-and-Bad, regarding him as the only safe confidant. Only she felt that Bold-and-Bad never understood her quite so well as Gentleman Tom had done. “And after all the min she might have had! But I’m hoping the Good Man Above knows what’s bist for us all.”
To Rae Pat talked more frankly than to any one.
“Pat dear, if you love him . . .”
“Not as you love Brook, Rae. I’m just not capable of that sort of loving . . . or it doesn’t last. David needs me . . . or will need me when Suzanne goes. We’re not going to be married until she is . . . for two years at the least. I wouldn’t marry him, Rae . . . I wouldn’t marry anybody . . . if I knew I could go on living at Silver Bush. But if May stays here . . . and she means to . . . I can’t, especially when you are gone to China. I’ve always loved the Long House next to Silver Bush. I’ll be near Silver Bush . . . I can always look down on it and watch over it.”
“I believe that’s the real reason you’re going to marry David Kirk,” thought Rae. She looked at the shadow of
the vine leaves on the bedroom floor. It looked like a dancing faun. Rae blinked to hide sudden foolish tears. Pat was going to miss something. But aloud she said only,
“I hope you’ll be happy, Pat. You deserve to be. You’ve always been a darling.”
Father took it philosophically. He would have liked some one a bit younger. But Kirk was a nice chap and seemed to have enough money to live on. There was something distinguished about him. His war book had been acclaimed by the critics and he was working on a “History of the Maritimes” of which, Long Alec had been told, great things were expected. Pat had always liked those brainy fellows. She had a right to please herself.
The rest of the clan were surprised and amused. Pat sensed that none of them quite approved. Winnie and the Bay Shore aunts said absolutely nothing, but silence can say a great deal sometimes. Only Aunt Barbara said deprecatingly,
“But, Pat, he’s grey.”
“So am I,” said Pat, flaunting her one grey hair.
“Let’s hope it lasts this time,” said Uncle Tom. Pat thought he might have been nicer after the way she had stood by him in the affair of Mrs. Merridew.
May was frankly delighted, though her delight faded a little when she learned that there was no prospect of an immediate marriage. Mrs. Binnie, rocking fiercely, had her say-so as well.
“So you’ve hooked the widower at last, Pat? What did I tell you . . . never give up. I’ve never understood how a gal could bring herself to marry a widower . . . but then any port in a storm. Of course, as I said to Olive, he’s a bit on the old side . . .”
“I don’t like boys,” said Pat coolly. “I get on better with men. And you must admit, Mrs. Binnie, that his ears don’t stick out.”
“I call that flippant, Pat. Marriage is a very serious thing. As I was saying, when I said that to Olive she sez, ‘I s’pose it’s better to be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave. Pat isn’t so young as she used to be herself, ma. She’ll make a very good wife for David Kirk.’ Olive always kind of liked you, Pat. She always said you meant well.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 362