3
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 to- morrow ... 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 realised 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 realise it all too clearly some day. 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."
"'To-day 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 Rae 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 honour av Silver Bush. And just be remimbering, 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 honour 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."