A week later Judy looked back to that day and wondered if what had happened had been a judgment on her for thinking life had got a bit dull. For Pat’s birthday had come and that evening Sid had brought May Binnie in and announced, curtly and defiantly, and yet with such a pitiful, beaten look on his face, that they had been married that day in Charlottetown.
“We thought we’d surprise you,” said May, glancing archly about her out of bold, brilliant eyes. “Birthday surprise for you, Pat.”
CHAPTER 36
Pat sat up all that night, looking out over the quiet, unchanged fields of the farm, trying to look this hideous fact in the face. She was in the Poet’s room and she had locked the door. She would not even have Rae with her.
She could not yet believe that this had happened. At first one cannot believe in a monstrous thing. Can one ever believe it? It was a dream…a nightmare. She would waken presently. She must…or go mad.
She had been so happy that evening at twilight…so unusually, inexplicably happy, as if the gods were going to give her some wonderful gift…and now she would never be happy again. Pat was still young enough to think that when a thing like this happened you could never be happy again. Everything…everything…had changed in the twinkling of an eye. Sid was lost to her forever. The very fields she had loved now looked strange and hostile as she gazed on them. “Our inheritance is turned to strangers and our house to aliens.” She had read that verse in her Bible chapter two nights ago and shivered over the picture of desolation it presented. And now it had come true in her own life…her life that a few hours ago had seemed so full and beautiful and was now so ugly and empty.
It had been such a ghastly hour. Nobody knew what to say or do. Pat’s face seemed to wither as she looked at them…at May, flushed and triumphant under all her uneasiness, at Sid, sullen and defiant. May tried to carry the situation off brazenly, after the true Binnie fashion.
“Come, Pat, don’t look so snooty, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones, even if you and I have hated each other all our lives.”
This was only too true but it was terrible to have the feeling dragged into light as nakedly as this. Pat could not answer. She turned away as if she had neither seen nor heard May and walked blindly out of the room. The only feeling she was keenly conscious of just then was a sick desire to get away from the light into a dark place where no one could see her…where she could hide like a wounded animal. May looked after her and her bold handsome face flushed crimson under Pat’s utter disregard. Her black eyes held a flame that was not good to see. But she laughed as she turned to Sid.
“She’ll get over it, honey-boy. I never expected a warm welcome from Pat, you know.”
Rae alone kept her head. Neither mother nor father must be told till morning, she reflected. As for Judy and Tillytuck, they seemed stricken dumb. Tillytuck slipped off to his granary shaking his head and Judy climbed to her kitchen chamber, feeling, for the time at least, more crushed and cowed than ever in her life before.
“I’ve felt it coming,” she muttered, as she crept into bed forlornly. “I’ve been hearing he was going wid the bold young hussy. And Gintleman Tom knew it was coming, that he did. That was why he lit out like the knowing baste he was. He knew he cud niver be standing a Binnie. Oh, oh, if I did be knowing as much av magic as me grandmother I’d change her into a toad that I wud. What’ll be coming av it the Good Man Above only knows. One does be thinking the world cud be run a bit better. I’m fearing this will break Patsy’s heart.”
CHAPTER 37
All the rest of her life Pat knew she had left girlhood behind her on that dreadful night. Hope seemed to be blotted out entirely. Already the hours that had passed seemed like an eternity and tomorrow…all the tomorrows…would be just as bad. Her mind went round and round in a miserable circle and got nowhere. May Binnie living at Silver Bush…Silver Bush overrun with Binnies…they were a clannish crew in their way. Old Mr. Binnie who ate peas with his knife and old Mrs. Binnie who always sopped her bread in her gravy. And all the slangy, loud-voiced crew of them, the kind of people before whom you must always say everything over to yourself beforehand to be sure it was safe. What a crowd for Sid to have got himself mixed up with! No, it could not be faced.
Pat wouldn’t go down when morning came…couldn’t. For the first time in her life she was a shirker. She could hear them talking beneath her at the breakfast-table. She could hear May’s desecrating laugh. She clenched her hands in fury and wretchedness. She pulled down the blind and shut out a world that was too glad with its early sunshine and its purple mists.
Presently Rae came in…trim, alert, competent. Her blue eyes showed no traces of the tears she had shed in the night.
“Pat, I left you alone last night because I realized that a thing like this had much better be talked over in the morning.”
“What is the use of talking it over any time?” asked Pat listlessly.
“We must talk it over because we have to face the situation, Pat. There is no use in turning our back on it or squinting at it out of the corners of our eyes…or ignoring it. Let’s just get down to real things and look to the future.”
“But I can’t face it…Rae, I can’t,” cried poor Pat desperately. “Talk about the future! There isn’t any future! If it had been anybody but May Binnie! I’m not the little fool I once was. I’ve known for long that Sid would marry sometime. Even when I couldn’t help hoping he wouldn’t I knew he would. But May Binnie!”
“I know. I know as well as you do that Sid has made a dreadful mistake and will realize it all too clearly someday. I know May is cheap and common and has no background…kitchen-bred, as Judy would say…but…”
“How could he do it? How could he like her…after Bets…even after poor Dorothy?”
“May is alluring in her own way, Pat. We can’t see it but the men do. And she has always meant to get Sid. We’ve just got to make the best of it and take things as they come.”
“I won’t,” said Pat rebelliously. “They may have to come but I haven’t got to take them without protest. I’ll never reconcile myself to this…never.”
“‘Today that seems so long, so strange, so bitter
Will soon be some forgotten yesterday,’”
quoted Rae softly.
“It won’t,” said Pat dismally.
“I’ve been doing some talking already this morning,” went on Rae. “For one thing I broke the news to dad.”
“And he…what did he…”
“Oh, there were fireworks. The Gardiner temper flared up. But I know how to manage dad. I told him he had to take a reasonable view of it for mother’s sake. When he calmed down he and I worked it out. Sid and May will have to live here for a year or two, until the mortgage is cleared. Then dad will build a house for them on the other place and they can live there.”
“And in the meantime,” said Pat passionately, “life will be unlivable at Silver Bush…you know it will.”
“I don’t know anything of the sort. Of course it won’t be as pleasant as it has been. But, Pat, you know as well as I do that we’ve got to make the best of it for mother’s sake.”
“Does she know?”
“Yes. Dad told her. I funked that.”
“And how…how did she take it?”
“How does mother take anything? Just like the gallant lady she is! We mustn’t fail her, Pat.”
Pat groped out a hand, found Rae’s and squeezed it. Somehow their ages seemed reversed. It was as if Rae were the older sister.
“I’ll do my best,” she choked. “There’s a verse in the Bible somewhere…‘be of good courage’…I’ve always thought it a wonderful phrase. I suppose it was meant just for times like this. But oh, Rae, how can we live with May? Her habits…her ideals…her point of view about everything…are so different from ours.”
“She must have some good points,” said Ra
e reasonably. “She’s really popular in her own set. Everybody says she is a good worker.”
“We have no work for her to do here,” said Pat bitterly.
“You know, Pat, nothing is ever quite so dreadful in reality as in anticipation. We must just look around this. It’s blocking up our view at present because we are too close to it.”
“We can never be ourselves…our real selves…when she is about, Rae.”
“Perhaps not. But she won’t be always around. And she isn’t going to rule here whatever she may think. ‘I’m master here,’ said dad, at the end of our talk, ‘and your mother is mistress of Silver Bush and will remain so.’ So that’s that. I must be off to school now. You won’t have to face May this morning. Sid has taken her home for the day.”
Judy, who, for the first time in her life, had been a coward, crept in now and Pat flew to her old arms.
“Judy…Judy…help me to bear it.”
“Oh, oh, bearing is it? We’ll bear it together, Patsy darling, to the last turn av the screw, wid a grin for the honor av Silver Bush. And just be renumbering, Patsy, what the Good Book says…about happiness being inside av ye and not outside. Thim mayn’t just be the words but it’s what I’m belaving it manes.”
“All very well if things outside would stop poking at you,” said Pat, rather less forlornly.
“We’ve got to be saving Silver Bush from her,” said Judy slyly. “She’ll be trying to spile it while she do be here and we’ll have our liddle bit av fun heading her off, Patsy darlint…diplomatic-like and widout ructions for the honor av the fam’ly. Ye’d have had a laugh this morning if ye’d been down, Patsy, to see Bould-and-Bad turning his back on her, aven if she did be making a fuss over him. She’s rale fond av the animiles so we nadn’t worry over that.”
To Pat it was almost another count against May that she was fond of cats. She hated to admit a good point in her.
“How was Sid, Judy?”
“Oh, oh, looking like innything but a happy bridegroom. And just a bit under her thumb already, as I cud be seeing. Her wid her ‘honey-boy’ and telling av the way his hair curled over his forrid! As if I hadn’t been knowing it all his life. But I was as smooth as crame, darlint, and that rispictful ye’d have died and niver did I be aven glancing at her stockings all in rolls round her ankles. Sure and it was a comfort to me to be knowing Long Alec wasn’t intinding to hand Silver Bush over to Sid, as the Binnies hoped. Long Alec’s not taking off his boots afore he goes to bed. ‘You and yer wife can stay here till I can afford to build a house for ye,’ sez he…and me fine May wasn’t liking it. She’s been telling round what she would do when she got to Silver Bush. ‘I can be getting Sid Gardiner back whin I crook me finger,’ sez she. Oh, oh, she’s got him, worse luck, but she hasn’t got Silver Bush and niver will. A year or two will soon pass, Patsy dear, and thin we’ll be free av her. Maybe aven sooner wid a bit av luck.”
“She has gone home for the day, Rae said.”
“To be getting her boxes and breaking the news to the Binnies. I’m thinking they’ll bear up well under it. She did be insisting on washing the dishes first and I did be letting her for pace’ sake. She did be making as much commotion as a cat in a fit, finding where iverything shud go, and smashed the ould blue plate be way av showing what she cud do. But I’ll not be denying she washed thim clane and didn’t be laving a grasey sink.”
Pat had always washed the dishes. She began to be sorry she hadn’t gone down for breakfast after all. It would have been more dignified…more Silver Bushish.
“Now, come ye down, Patsy darlint, and have a liddle bite,” said Judy wheedlingly. “I’ve been after frying a bit av the new ham and an egg in butter. A cup av tay will restore yer balance like. And we’ll be having our liddle laugh now and agin behind her back, Patsy.”
Pat pulled up the blind again. There was a little chill at her heart which had never been there before and which she felt would always be there henceforth. But afar the Hill of the Mist was lovely in the September sunshine. When she looked at it it gave her some of its own pride and calm and faint austerity.
She went up to see mother after she had had her breakfast and found her, as always, serene and clear and pale, like a star seen through the rifts of storm-cloud.
“Darling, it’s hard, I know. I’m sorry for Sid…he has made a great mistake, poor boy. But if we all do our best things will work out somehow. They always do.”
Poor brave darling mother!
“We’ll be all right when we get our second wind,” said Pat staunchly. “I’m going to be decent to May, mother, and there won’t be any bickering….I won’t have that here. But Silver Bush is going to be saved from the Binnies, mother, and no mistake about it.”
Mother laughed.
“Trust you for that, Pat.”
THE SEVENTH YEAR
CHAPTER 38
Pat and Rae felt, in the months of that following winter, that they needed every ounce of philosophy and “diplomacy” that they possessed. The first weeks were very hard. At times adjustment seemed almost impossible. May’s quick temper increased the difficulty. Some of the scenes she made always remained in Pat’s memory like degrading, vulgar things. Yet her spasms of rage were not so bad, the girls thought, as her little smiles and innuendos about everything. “I think I have some rights surely,” she would say to Sid, with a toss of her sleek head. “It’s hard to do anything with somebody watching and criticizing all the time, isn’t it now, honey-boy?” And Sid would look at Pat with defiant and yet appealing eyes that nearly broke her heart.
When May could not get her way she sulked and went round for a day or two “wid a puss on her mouth,” according to Judy. Then, finding that nobody paid any attention to her sulks, she would become amiable again. Pat set her teeth and kept her head.
“I won’t have quarrels at Silver Bush,” she said. “Whatever she does or says I won’t quarrel with her.” And even when May cried passionately, “You’ve always tried to make trouble between me and Sid,” Pat would smile and say, “Come, May, be reasonable. We’re not children now, you know.” Then go up to her room and writhe in secret over the torment and ugliness of it all.
In the long run May succumbed to the inevitable, compromises were made on both sides, and life settled once more into outward calmness at Silver Bush. One thing nobody could deny was that May was a worker; and fortunately she liked outside work better than inside. She took over the care of milk and poultry, Judy making a virtue out of necessity in yielding it to her and never denying that the separator was thoroughly cleaned. “May,” Mrs. Binnie said superfluously, “is not a soulless sassiety woman. I brought all my gals up to work.”
To be sure, May made a frightful racket in everything she did and at Silver Bush, where household ritual had always been performed without noise, this was something of a domestic crime. Pat, suffering too much to be just, told Rae that May made more fuss in ten minutes than anyone else could make in a year.
Judy and May had one battle royal as to who was to scrub the kitchen. Judy won. May never attempted to usurp Judy’s kitchen privileges again.
Pat found she could get used to being unhappy…and then that she could even be happy again, between the spasms of unhappiness. Of course there were changes everywhere…little irritating changes which were perhaps harder to bear than some greater dislocation. For one thing, May’s friends gave her a “shower,” after which Silver Bush was cluttered up with gimcracks. Pat’s especial hatred was a dreadful onyx-topped table. May put it in the hall under the heirloom mirror. It was a desecration. And May’s new gay cushions, which made everything else seem faded, were scattered everywhere. But May did not get her own way when it came to moving furniture about. She learned that things were to be left as they were and that a large engraving of Landseer’s stag, framed in crimson plush and gilt a foot wide, was not going to be hung in the dining room. May, after
a scene, carried it off to her own room, where nobody interfered with her arrangements.
“I suppose your ladyship doesn’t object to that,” she remarked to Pat.
“Of course you can do as you like in your own room,” said Pat wearily.
Would this petty bickering go on forever? And that very afternoon May had broken the old Bristol-ware vase by stuffing a huge bouquet of ’mums into it. Of course it was cracked…always had been cracked. May said she didn’t hold with having cracked things around. She had her own room re-papered…blue roses on a bright pink ground. “So cheerful,” Mrs. Binnie said admiringly. “That gray paper in what they call the Pote’s room gives me the willies, May dearie.”
May brought her dog with her, an animal known by the time-tested name of Rover. He killed the chickens, dug up Pat’s bulbs, chewed the clothes on the line…Tillytuck had a pitched battle with May because his best shirt was mangled…and chased the cats in his spare time. Eventually Just Dog gave him a drubbing which chastened him and Rae, in May’s absences, used to spank him so soundly with a stiff, folded newspaper that he learned manners after a sort. There were even times when Pat was afraid she was learning to like him. It was hard for Pat not to like a dog if he had any decency at all.
As Pat had foreseen Silver Bush was overrun with the Binnie tribe. May’s brothers flicked cigarette ashes all over the house. Her sisters and cousins came in what Judy called “droves,” filled the house with shrieks, and listened behind doors. Judy caught them at it. And they were always more or less offended no matter how they were treated. If you were nice to them you were patronizing them; if you left them alone you were snubbing them. Olive would bring her whole family.