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 about 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.