“It has to do with those California letters…I’m sure it has,” Aunt Barbara told Pat unhappily. “We know he gets them…the post-office people have told it…but we’ve never seen one of them. We don’t know where on earth he keeps them…we’ve looked everywhere. Edith says if she can find them she’ll burn them to ashes but I don’t see what good that would do. We haven’t an idea who she is…Tom must mail his answers in town.”
“If Tom brings a…a wife in here…” Aunt Edith choked over the word…“you and I will have to go, Barbara.”
“Oh, don’t say that, Edith.” Aunt Barbara was on the verge of tears. She loved Swallowfield almost as much as Pat loved Silver Bush.
“I will say it and I do say it,” repeated Aunt Edith inflexibly. “Can you think for one minute of us staying here, under the thumb of a new mistress? We can get a little house at the Bridge, I suppose.”
“I can’t believe Uncle Tom will really be so foolish at his age,” said Pat.
“I have never been a man,” said Aunt Barbara somewhat superfluously, “but this I do know…a man can be a fool at any age. And you know the old proverb. Tom is fifty-nine.”
“I sometimes think,” said Aunt Barbara slowly, “that you…that we…didn’t do quite right when we broke off Tom’s affair with Merle Henderson, long ago, Edith.”
“Nonsense! What was there to break off?” demanded Aunt Edith crisply. “They weren’t engaged. He had a schoolboy’s fancy for her…but you know as well as I do, Barbara, that it would never have done for him to have married a Henderson.”
“She was a clever, pretty little thing,” protested Aunt Barbara.
“Her tongue was hung in the middle and her grandmother was insane,” said Aunt Edith.
“Well, Dr. Bentley says everybody is a little insane on some points. I do think we shouldn’t have meddled, Edith.”
Aunt Barbara’s “we” was a concession to peace. Both of them knew it had been Edith’s doings alone.
Pat sympathized with them and her heart hardened against Uncle Tom when she found him waiting for her at the old stile, half way along the Whispering Lane, where the trees screened them from the sight of both Swallowfield and Silver Bush. Pat was all for sailing on with a frosty nod but Uncle Tom put a shy hand on her shoulder.
“Pat,” he said slowly, “I’d…I’d like to have a little talk with you. It’s…it’s not often I have the chance to see you alone.”
Pat sat down on the stile ungraciously. She had a horrible presentiment of what Uncle Tom wanted to tell her. And she wasn’t going to help him out…not she! With his vanishing beard and his front doors and his apple barns he had kept everybody on the two farms jittery all summer.
“It’s…it’s a little hard to begin,” said Uncle Tom hesitatingly.
Pat wouldn’t make it any easier. She gazed uncompromisingly through the birches to a field where winds were weaving patterns in the ripening wheat and making sinuous shadows like flowing amber wine. But for once in her life Pat was blind to beauty.
Poor Uncle Tom took off his straw hat and mopped a brow that had not been so high some thirty-odd years back.
“I don’t know if you ever heard of a…a…a lady by the name of Merle Henderson,” he said desperately. Pat never had until Aunt Edith had mentioned her that day but…
“I have,” she said drily.
Uncle Tom looked relieved.
“Then…then perhaps you know that once…long ago…when I was young…ahem, younger…I…I…in short…Merle and I were…were…in short…” Uncle Tom burst out with the truth explosively…“I was desperately in love with her.”
Pat was furious to find her heart softening. She had always loved Uncle Tom…he had always been good to her…and he did look so pathetic.
“Why didn’t you marry her?” she asked gently.
“She…she wouldn’t have me,” said Uncle Tom, with a sheepish smile. Now that the plunge was over he found himself swimming. “Oh, I know Edith thinks she put the kibosh on it. But not by a jugful. If Merle would have married me a regiment of Ediths wouldn’t have mattered. I don’t wonder Merle turned me down. It would have been a miracle if she had cared for me…then. I was nothing but a raw boy and she…she was the most beautiful little creature, Pat. I’m not romantic…but she always seemed like a…like an ethereal being to me, Pat…a…a fairy, in short.”
Pat had a sudden glimpse of understanding. To Uncle Tom his vanished Merle was not only Merle…she was youth, beauty, mystery, romance…everything that was lacking in the life of a rather bald, more than middle-aged farmer, domineered over by two maiden sisters.
“She had soft, curly, red-brown hair…and soft, sweet red-brown eyes…and such a sweet little red mouth. If you could have heard her laugh, Pat…I’ve never forgotten that laugh of hers. We used to dance together at parties…she was as light as a feather. She was as slim and lovely as…as that young white birch in moonlight, Pat. She walked like…like spring. I’ve never cared for anybody else…I’ve loved her all my life.”
“What became of her?”
“She went out to California…she had an aunt there…and married there. But she is a widow now, Pat. Two years ago…you remember?…the Streeters came home from California for a visit. George Streeter was an old pal of mine. He told me all about Merle…she wasn’t left well off and she’s had to earn her own living. She’s a public speaker…a lecturer…oh, she’s very clever, Pat. Her letters are wonderful. I…I couldn’t get her out of my head after what George told me. And so…I…well, I wrote her. And we’ve been corresponding ever since. I’ve asked her to marry me, Pat.”
“And will she?” Pat asked the question kindly. She couldn’t hurt Uncle Tom’s feelings…poor old Uncle Tom who had loved and lost and went on faithfully loving still. It was romantic.
“Ah, that’s the question, Pat,” said Uncle Tom mysteriously. “She hasn’t decided…but I think she’s inclined to, Pat…I think she’s inclined to. I think she’s very tired of facing the world alone, poor little thing. And this is where I want you to help me out, Patsy.”
“Me!” said Pat in amazement.
“Yes. You see, she’s in New Brunswick now, visiting friends there. And she thinks it would be a good idea for her to run across to the Island and…and…sorter see how the land lays, I guess. Find out maybe if I’m the kind of man she could be happy with. She wanted me to go over to New Brunswick but it’s hard for me to get away just now with harvest coming on and only a half-grown boy to help. Read what she says, Patsy.”
Pat took the letter a bit reluctantly. It was written on thick, pale-blue paper and a rather heavy perfume exhaled from it. But the paragraph in reference to her visit was sensibly expressed.
“We have probably both changed a good deal, honey boy, and perhaps we’d better see each other before coming to a decision.”
Pat with difficulty repressed a grin over the “honey boy.”
“I still don’t quite see where I come in, Uncle Tom.”
“I…I want you to invite her to spend a few days at Silver Bush,” said Uncle Tom eagerly. “I can’t invite her to Swallowfield…Edith would—would have a conniption…and anyhow she wouldn’t come there. But if you’d write her a nice little note…Mrs. Merle Merridew…and ask her to Silver Bush…she went to school with Alec…do, now, Patsy.”
Pat knew she would be letting herself in for awful trouble. Certainly Aunt Edith would never forgive her. Judy would think she had gone clean crazy and Cuddles would think it a huge joke. But it was impossible to refuse poor Uncle Tom, pleading for what he believed his chance for happiness again. Pat did not yield at once but after a consultation with mother she told Uncle Tom she would do it. The letter of invitation was written and sent the very next day and during the following week Pat was in swithers of alternate regret, apprehension, and a determination to stand by Uncle Tom at all costs.
> There was a good deal of consternation at Silver Bush when the rest of the family heard what she had done. Dad was dubious…but after all it was Tom’s business, not his. Sid and Cuddles, as Pat had foreseen, considered it a joke. Tillytuck stubbornly refused to express any opinion. It was a man’s own concern, symbolically speaking, and wimmen critters had no right to interfere. Judy, after her first horrified, “God give ye some sinse, Patsy!” was just a bit intrigued with the romance of it…and a secret desire to see how me fine Edith wud be after taking it.
Edith did not take it very well. She descended on Pat, dragging in her wake poor Aunt Barbara who had been weeping all over the house but still thought they ought not to meddle in the matter. Pat had a bad quarter of an hour.
“How could you do such a thing, Pat?”
“I couldn’t refuse Uncle Tom,” said Pat. “And it doesn’t really make any difference, Aunt Edith. If I hadn’t asked her to come here he would have gone to New Brunswick to see her. And she may not marry him after all.”
“Oh, don’t try to be comforting,” groaned Aunt Edith. “Marry him! Of course she’ll marry him. And she is a grandmother. George Streeter said so…and thinks she is still a girl. It’s simply terrible to think of it. I don’t see how I’m going to stand it. Excitement always brings on a pain in my heart. Everybody knows that. You know it, Pat.”
Pat did know it. What if it all killed Aunt Edith? But it was too late now. Uncle Tom was quite out of hand. He felt that the situation was delicious. Life had suddenly become romantic again. Nothing that Edith could and did say bothered him in the least. He had even begun negotiating for the purchase of a trim little bungalow at Silverbridge for “the girls” to retire to.
“Him and his bungalow!” said Aunt Edith in a contempt too vast to be expressed in words. “Pat, you’re the only one who seems to have any influence…any influence…over that infatuated man now. Can’t you put him off this notion in some way? At least, you can try.”
Pat promised to try, by way of preventing Aunt Edith from having a heart attack, and went up to the spare room to put a great bowl of yellow mums on the brown bureau. If she were to have a new aunt she must be friends with her. Alienation from Swallowfield was unthinkable. Pat sighed. What a pity it all was! They had been so happy and contented there for years. She hated change more than ever.
CHAPTER 14
Mrs. Merridew was coming on the afternoon train and Uncle Tom was going to meet her with the span.
“I suppose I ought to have an automobile, Pat. She’ll think this turn-out very old-fashioned.”
“She won’t see prettier horses anywhere,” Pat encouraged. And Uncle Tom drove away with what he hoped was a careless and romantic air. Outwardly he really looked as solemn as his photograph in the family album but at heart he was a boy of twenty again, keeping tryst with an old dream that was to him as of yesterday.
Tillytuck persisted in hanging around although Judy hinted that there was work waiting on the other place. Tillytuck took no hints. “I’m always interested in courtings,” he averred shamelessly.
It seemed an endless time after they heard the train blow at Silverbridge before Uncle Tom returned. Sid unromantically proffered the opinion that Uncle Tom had died of fright. Then they heard the span pausing by the gate.
“Here comes the bride,” grunted Tillytuck, slipping out by the kitchen door.
Pat and Cuddles ran out to the lawn. Judy peered from the porch window. Tillytuck had secreted himself behind a lilac bush. Even mother, who had one of her bad days and was in bed, raised herself on her pillows to look down through the vines.
They saw Uncle Tom helping out of the phaeton a vast lady who seemed even vaster in a white dress and a large, white, floppy hat. A pair of very fat legs bore her up the walk to the door where the girls awaited her. Pat stared unbelievingly. Could this woman, with feet that bulged over her high-heeled shoes, be the light-footed fairy of Uncle Tom’s old dancing dreams?
“And this is Pat? How are you, sugar-pie?” Mrs. Merridew gave Pat a hearty hug. “And Cuddles…darling!” Cuddles was likewise engulfed. Pat found her voice and asked the guest to come upstairs. Uncle Tom had spoken no word. It was Cuddles’ private opinion that his vocal cords had been paralyzed by shock.
“Can that be all one woman?” Tillytuck asked the lilac bush. “I don’t like ’em skinny…but…”
“Think av that in Swallowfield,” Judy said to Gentleman Tom. “Oh, oh, its widening his front dure as well as painting it Tom Gardiner shud have done.”
Gentleman Tom said nothing, as was his habit, but McGinty crawled under the kitchen lounge. And upstairs mother was lying back on her pillows shaking with laughter. “Poor Tom!” she said. “Oh, poor Tom!”
Mrs. Merridew talked and laughed all the way upstairs. She lifted her awful fat arms and removed her hat, showing snow-white hair lying in sleek molded waves around a face that might once have been pretty but whose red-brown eyes were lost in pockets of flesh. The red sweet mouth was red still…rather too red. Lipstick was not in vogue at Silver Bush…but the lavish gleam of gold in the teeth inside detracted from its sweetness. As for the laugh that Uncle Tom had remembered, it was merely a fat rumble…yet with something good-natured about it, too.
“Oh, honey, let’s sit outside,” exclaimed Mrs. Merridew, after she had got downstairs again. They trailed out to the garden after her. Uncle Tom, still voiceless, brought up the rear. Pat did not dare look at him. What on earth was going on in his mind? Mrs. Merridew lowered herself into a rustic chair, that creaked ominously, and beamed about her.
“I love to sit and watch the golden bees plundering the sweets of the clover,” she announced. “I adore the country. The city is so artificial. Don’t you truly think the city is so artificial, sugar-pie? There can be no real interchange of souls in the city. Here in the beautiful country, under God’s blue sky”…Mrs. Merridew raised fat be-ringed hands to it…“human beings can be their real and highest selves. I am sure you agree with me, angel.”
“Of course,” said Pat stupidly. She couldn’t think of an earthly thing to say. Not that it mattered. Mrs. Merridew could and did talk for them all. She babbled on as if she were on the lecture platform and all her audience needed to do was sit and listen. “Are you interested in psychoanalysis?” she asked Pat but waited for no answer. When Judy announced supper Pat asked Uncle Tom to stay and share it with them. But Uncle Tom managed to get out a refusal. He said he must go home and see to the chores.
“Mind, you promised to take me for a drive this evening,” said Mrs. Merridew coquettishly. “And, oh, girls, he didn’t know me when I got off the train. Fancy that…when we were sweethearts in the long ago.”
“You were…thinner…then,” said Uncle Tom slowly.
Mrs. Merridew shook a pudgy finger at him.
“We’ve both changed. You look a good bit older, Tom. But never mind…at heart we’re just as young as ever, aren’t we, honey boy?”
Honey boy departed. Pat and Cuddles and Mrs. Merridew went in to supper. Mrs. Merridew wanted to sit where she could see the beauty of the delphiniums down the garden walk. Her life, she said, was a continual search for beauty.
They put her where she could see the delphiniums and listened in fascinated silence while she talked. Never had any one just like this come to Silver Bush. Fat ladies had been there…talkative ladies had been there…beaming, good-natured ladies had been there. But never any one half so fat and talkative and beaming and good-natured as Mrs. Merridew. Pat and Cuddles dared not look at each other. Only when Mrs. Merridew gave utterance to the phrase, “a heterogeneous mass of potentiality,” as airily as if she had said “the blue of delphiniums” Cuddles kicked Pat under the table and Judy, in the kitchen, said piteously to Tillytuck, “Sure and I used to be able to understand the English language.”
The next morning Mrs. Merridew came down to breakfast, looking simply
enormous in a blue kimono. She talked all through breakfast and all through the forenoon and all through dinner. In the afternoon she was away driving with Uncle Tom but she talked all through supper. During the early evening she stopped talking, probably through sheer exhaustion, and sat on the rustic chair on the lawn, her hands folded across her satin stomach. When Uncle Tom came over she began talking again and talked through the evening, with the exception of a few moments when she went to the piano and sang, Once in the Dear Dead Days Beyond Recall. She sang beautifully and if she had been invisible they would all have enjoyed it. Tillytuck, who was in the kitchen and couldn’t see her, declared he was enraptured. But Judy could only wonder if the piano bench would ever be the same again.
“She simply can’t forget she isn’t on the lecture platform,” said Pat.
There was no subject Mrs. Merridew couldn’t talk about. She discoursed on Christian Science and vitamins, on Bolshevism and little theaters, on Japan’s designs in Manchuria and television, on theosophy and bimetallism, on the color of your aura and the value of constructive thinking in contrast to negative thinking, on the theory of re-incarnation and the Higher Criticism, on the planetesimal hypothesis and the trend of modern fiction, on the best way to preserve your furs from moths and how to give a cat castor oil. She reminded Pat of a random verse conned in schooldays and she wrote it of her in her descriptive letter to Hilary.
“Her talk was like a stream that runs
With rapid flow from rocks to roses,
She passed from parakeets to puns,
She leaped from Mahomet to Moses.”
“I do be thinking she ain’t mentally sound,” groaned Judy. “There was a quare streak in the Hindersons I do be rimimbering. Her grandmother was off be spells and her Great-uncle had his coffin made years afore he died and kipt it under the spare-room bed. Oh, oh, the talk it made.”
“I knew the man when I was a boy, “ said Tillytuck. “His wife kept her fruit cake and the good sheets in it.”