“Yes, I remember them,” said Myrtle. “And I remember another walk I took ... alone.”
“Oh, take this chair,” said Lisle, wondering what on earth Myrtle meant. She had heard she was getting a little queer. But fifty was too young for that. Lisle Rogers, at fifty, still thought herself quite young. Hadn’t Dr. Blythe guessed her age as forty?
“You’ll find it heaps more comfortable. Why, you are shivering. A good cup of tea will warm you up in a trice. Do you remember how we used to laugh at the old ladies with their cups of tea? Fifty seemed to us very venerable then, didn’t it?”
“I didn’t come for a cup of tea,” said Myrtle.
“Of course not. But we’ll have one all the same. It won’t be a mite of trouble. And we’ll have a gabfest over old times. Nothing better than a good gossip over a cup of tea, I always say, is there, darling? Though people do say there never was a woman less addicted to gossiping than I am. But with an old friend like you it’s different, isn’t it? We just have a million things to talk over. Didn’t we have some silly old quarrel years ago? What did we fight about anyhow?”
Miss Shelley had not intended to sit down in Lisle Rogers’ house but she accepted the proffered chair because she felt a little queer.
“You ... you took Ronald Evans away from me at the Clark barn dance,” she said stonily.
Lisle Rogers stared for a moment. Then her plump shoulders shook.
“Who on earth was Ronald Evans? I seem to remember the name. Was that what we squabbled over? Weren’t we a pair of idiots? I was a terror to the boys in them days. I had only to look at them. It was my eyes ... folks used to say there was something about them ... sort of come-hither, really. Even yet, there are some old widowers and bachelors ... but I’ve had enough of the men. They are all alike ... blaming every mistake they make on the women. I don’t know but you were wise never to marry. Susan Baker says the only woman she knows that she would change places with is Mrs. Dr. Blythe. I’ve never met her. What is she like?”
Myrtle Shelley had not come to Lowbridge to discuss Mrs. Dr. Anybody. She did not reply and Mrs. Rogers babbled on.
“I remember Ronald now. Whatever became of him? He was a perfect clown to dance with, in spite of his good looks ... stepped all over my toes. I could never wear those slippers again. But he could pay compliments. It all comes back to me though I haven’t thought of him for years. Ain’t men funny? Put your feet up on this hot fender.”
“Do you remember that I slapped your face?” persisted Miss Shelley.
Lisle Rogers burst out laughing as she measured the tea into the teapot.
“Did you really? Yes, I believe you did. I’d forgotten that part of it. Well, never mind sitting on the mourner’s bench now about it, honey. Forgive and forget has always been my motto. Now we’ll have a real nice visit together and never think of all our old foolishness. We were only children anyhow. People do quarrel over such simple things, don’t they?”
To be forgiven when you came to forgive!
Myrtle Shelley stood up. Her face had turned a dull crimson. Her faded blue eyes flashed fire. Deliberately she slapped Lisle Rogers across her smiling face ... a hard, no-nonsense-about-it, tingling slap.
“You didn’t remember that first slap,” she said. “Perhaps you will remember this one,” she said.
Miss Shelley walked back to Glen St. Mary minding neither cold wind nor fallen arches after that satisfying slap. She did not even care what the Rev. Mr. Meredith might think about it. She had seldom done anything that gave her such a sense of not having lived in vain. Yes, Lisle would remember that slap if she had forgotten the other.
The Cheated Child
Uncle Stephen Brewster’s funeral was over ... the house part at least. Everybody had gone to the cemetery, or home ... everybody except Patrick, who wanted to be called Pat and never got anything but Patrick, save from Walter Blythe, out at Glen St. Mary. And he seldom saw Walter. Uncle Stephen did not like the Blythes ... he said he did not like educated women; it spoiled them for their duties in life. So it was only the Brewster boys who ever called Patrick Pat ... and they mostly called him Patty and laughed at him because they knew he hated it.
But he was glad they had not taken him to the cemetery. Graveyards always frightened him ... though he could not tell why. The father he did not remember at all and the mother he remembered so dimly had been swallowed up in a graveyard.
But all at once the loneliness of the big house overwhelmed him. Loneliness is a terrible thing for anyone and most of all when you are only eight and nobody likes you. Patrick knew quite well that nobody liked him ... unless it was Walter Blythe, with whom he had felt a strange kinship the few times they had met. Walter was like himself ... quiet and dreamy ... and did not seem to mind owning up that he was afraid of some things.
Patrick thought that he, himself, was afraid of everything. Perhaps that was why Uncle Stephen had never liked him. He was quiet and dreamy and sensitive ... like Walter Blythe again ... and Uncle Stephen liked boys to be robust and aggressive ... real “he-boys” ... or said he did. As a matter of fact, he did not like any kind of boy. Patrick did not know very much ... but he knew that. Though people were always telling him how good his uncle was to him and how grateful he ought to be to him.
The maids, in their stiff, starched uniforms, were busy restoring the rooms to order ... and talking in low voices of how little Master Patrick seemed to feel the death of his uncle. Patrick went into the library where he could escape hearing them and the sense of guilt they gave him ... because he knew quite well that what they were saying was true and his uncle’s death did not really matter much to him. It ought to have ... he felt that ... but there was no use in pretending to oneself.
He knew how Walter Blythe would have felt if his father had died or even his Uncle Davy. But he could not feel that way about Uncle Stephen. So he made his escape into the quiet library and curled up on the window seat in the early September sunshine, where he could look out into the maplewood and forget the house.
The house had never liked him either. In his few brief visits to Ingleside ... there was some distant relationship between Dr. Blythe’s mother and Uncle Stephen or they would not have been permitted, he felt quite sure ... he had felt, without any telling, that the house loved all the people in it ... “Because we love it,” Walter had explained to him. But Oaklands was always watching him ... resenting him. Perhaps it was because it was so big and splendid it had no use at all for a little boy who felt lost and insignificant in its magnificence ... who did it no credit. Perhaps it liked people to be afraid of it, just as Uncle Stephen had liked people to be afraid of him. Patrick knew that, too, though he could never have told how he knew it. Walter Blythe, even, could not explain it. Walter owned up to being afraid of many things but he could not understand being afraid of your own relations. But then Walter’s relations were very different. Patrick would never have been afraid of Dr. or Mrs. Blythe either.
It was very strange to think of Uncle Stephen being dead. In fact, it was impossible. Patrick could see him plainly still ... as plainly as when he was alive ... sitting over there in his high-backed chair, wearing his heavy brocaded dressing gown, and looking as if he had never been young ... had he, really? A little boy like him and Walter? It seemed absurd ... and would never be old. He did not look old, although he had been silver-haired as long as Patrick could remember. He had some heart ailment and Dr. Galbraith often came to see him. Sometimes Dr. Blythe came in from Glen St. Mary for a consultation. Patrick always had a queer feeling of shame on these occasions, much as he liked Dr. Blythe. Uncle Stephen was always so rude to him. But Dr. Blythe never seemed to mind. He could sometimes hear him and Dr. Galbraith laughing as they drove away from the house, as if at some exquisite joke. He loved Dr. Blythe and Mrs. Blythe, but he was very careful never to let Uncle Stephen suspect it. He had a secret feeling that if he did he would never be allowed to go to Glen St. Mary again.
Uncle Stephen was u
sually very sarcastic and remote; but he could be affable and amusing when he liked to be. At least other people thought him amusing. Patrick didn’t. He remembered that he had never heard his uncle laugh. Why? Ingleside rang with laughter. Even old Susan Baker laughed upon occasion. He wondered what it would be like to live with a person who laughed sometimes.
He wondered, too, what would become of him, now that Uncle Stephen was dead. Would he just go on living in this unfriendly house, with Miss Sperry giving him lessons and glaring at him through her glasses when he spelled wrongly? The prospect filled him with horror. If he could only escape ... get away anywhere ... hop on that bus which had just gone tearing past the big gates ... go to some place like Ingleside to live!
Patrick had always longed to ride on a bus. The Ingleside children often did. He never could, of course. When Patrick went out he went in the big car driven by Henry. He didn’t like the big car and he knew Henry thought him a dumb kid. He had heard him tell the housekeeper so.
If he could only have one single ride on a bus! Or, as he and Walter Blythe had planned, fly across the country on a black courser ... Walter’s choice was a white one, and his mother didn’t laugh when he told her ... taking fences and everything as a matter of course! That would be glorious. He did that in his other world. But just now that other world seemed too far away. He could not get into it.
Walter Blythe had another world, too. His mother seemed to understand it. But he remembered Dr. Blythe laughing and saying that if they broke their leg on some wild drive it would be a very painful matter, since anaesthetics had not been discovered. Dr. Blythe seemed to think the present century better than all that had gone before.
As long as Patrick could remember he had lived at Oaklands with Uncle Stephen. At first, like a dim dream, there had been a mother; and, like a dimmer dream still, the memory of being with that mother in a lovely place ... a place something like Ingleside ... in a house that smiled at you on a hill ... in a garden where the walks were bordered with crimson geraniums and big white shells ... and far down, over long, still fields, sand dunes lying in a strange, golden magic of sunshine, with white gulls soaring over them. There was a flock of white ducks in the yard and somebody gave him a slice of bread with honey on it. He had, he remembered, felt so near his other world then ... so near that a step would have taken him into it forever. And somebody like Dr. Blythe, only younger, carried him about on his shoulder and called him Pat.
Mother was nowhere soon after that ... some people told him she had gone to heaven but Patrick believed she had just stepped into his other world. Uncle Stephen had told him she was dead ... Patrick did not know what that meant ... and had said he didn’t like squalling brats. So Patrick had not cried much except when he was in bed at night.
He did not cry now. In fact, he felt no inclination to cry, which perhaps was why the housekeeper said he was the most unfeeling child she had ever known. But he wished he had a dog. Uncle Stephen had hated dogs and he knew Miss Sperry would never let him have one. She said dogs were insanitary. Yet they had dogs at Ingleside and Dr. Blythe was a doctor. There were dogs in his other world ... and slim little deer, racing through vast forests ... horses with shining skins and dainty hooves ... squirrels so tame, they fed from your hands ... only there were plenty of them at Ingleside ... and lions splendidly maned. And all the animals were very friendly.
And there was a little girl in a scarlet dress! Not one of the Ingleside girls, much as he liked them. He had never told even Walter about her. But she was always there, ready to play with him ... talk with him ... ready to stick her tongue out so saucily at him, like little Rilla out at Ingleside ... only she wasn’t really a bit like Rilla.
What would Miss Sperry say if she knew about her? Likely, in a voice as cold as rain,
“Control your imagination, Patrick. It is this world with which we are concerned at present. Your answer to this multiplication sum is WRONG.”
Just like that, in capitals. Just as Susan Baker would have spoken if she had been a teacher and a pupil had brought her a sum with a wrong answer. Only Susan was not a teacher and he rather liked her except when she scolded Walter for writing poetry.
When they came back from the cemetery they all came into the library to hear Uncle Stephen’s will read. Lawyer Atkins had asked them all to be present. Not that any of them had much interest in it. The money would go to Patrick. Stephen had told them so often enough. He was only their half-brother, while Patrick’s father was his full brother. Still, there was the matter of a guardian. There would have to be one or more. Likely Lawyer Atkins but you could never tell, with an eccentric creature like Stephen.
Patrick watched them filing in. They had all been pretending to be crying. Aunt Melanie Hall, Uncle John Brewster and Aunt Elizabeth Brewster, Uncle Frederick Brewster and Aunt Fanny Brewster, Aunt Lilian Brewster and her cousin who lived with her, Miss Cynthia Adams. He was afraid of every one of them. They were always finding fault with him. As his eye caught Aunt Lilian’s he nervously unwrapped his legs from the chair rungs.
Her very look said,
“Sit properly at once.”
Strange. When he was at Ingleside Susan Baker was always scolding the children for that very thing. And he never minded her but strove to obey her.
Lawyer Atkins followed them with a paper in his hand. The tortoise-rimmed glasses on his big handsome face made Patrick think of an owl ... an owl that had pounced on a poor trembling mouse. Which did Lawyer Atkins a great injustice. He was an honest man who had had a hard time of it with his client, Stephen Brewster, and did not approve of the will at all.
Also he liked poor little Patrick and felt sorry for him. However, he cleared his throat and read the will.
It was short and to the point. Even Patrick understood it.
Oaklands was to be sold ... he was glad of that. At least, he would not have to live there. Lawyer Atkins was appointed his legal guardian, but Patrick was to live with an uncle or aunt until he was twenty-one when a sum of money so enormous that it had no meaning for Patrick was to be his. Only he felt sure it would be enough to buy a place like Ingleside. He was to choose for himself the relative with whom he preferred to live. Having made his choice, there could be no change, unless the chosen one died. But in order that he might know what he was doing he was first to live with each uncle and aunt for three months. When he had done this he was to make his permanent choice. The sum of two thousand a year was to be paid to the temporary guardian until Patrick was twenty-one, as compensation for his board, lodging and care generally.
Patrick desperately wrapped his legs around the chair rungs again. Aunt Lilian might look her eyes out, he thought, but he had to do something to steady his body.
He didn’t want to live with any of them. If he could only go to Glen St. Mary now, and live at Ingleside! The very thought seemed like heaven. But alas, the Ingleside people were of no relation to him, except so distantly it didn’t count.
And he didn’t want to live with any who were. He hated the very thought ... hated it bitterly, as he knew Uncle Stephen had known very well.
Aunt Melanie Hall was a widow. She was big, capable, and patronizing. She patronized everybody. He had heard Dr. Blythe say once she would patronize God.
Uncle John Brewster always thumped him on the back and Aunt Elizabeth Brewster had such an extraordinarily long face ... long forehead, long nose, long upper lip and long chin. Patrick could never bear to look at her.
Live with that face for years and years! He just couldn’t!
Uncle Frederick Brewster was a thin, beaten little man of no importance. But Aunt Fanny was every inch an aunt. He had heard Uncle Stephen say she wore the breeches ... a favourite expression of Susan Baker’s at Ingleside also. Patrick didn’t know what it meant ... but he did know he didn’t want to live with Aunt Fanny.
Aunt Lilian was not married and neither was Cynthia Adams. They pretended not to care but Patrick knew somehow that they did care. Susan Baker, n
ow, was honest about it. She always admitted frankly that she would have liked to have been married.
Uncle Stephen would never see Aunt Lilian and Cynthia Adams at the same time.
“I can stand only one old maid at once,” he used to say.
Patrick thought that even one old maid, at least one like Aunt Lilian, was more than he could stand. Still, Susan Baker was an old maid and he liked her. It was all very puzzling.
“Wouldn’t you know Stephen would make a crazy will like that!” Aunt Fanny was saying in a disgusted tone. “I see Dr. Blythe is one of the witnesses. I shouldn’t wonder if he put him up to it.”
She was thinking,
“I should have him. He should live with other children. He always seemed so different for a while after he came back from one of those Ingleside visits. I never cared for either Dr. Blythe or his wife ... but they have a family ... and Patrick never seemed so odd for a while. Not so odd and unchildlike. But I suppose he won’t choose me ... I’ve always felt he never liked me. I suppose Stephen poisoned his mind against me. Still ... there’s the three months ... it might be possible to win his affection if we were all very nice to him. That two thousand ... it would take care of the boys’ education ... otherwise I don’t see how we can ever manage it. And Frederick and I could have a holiday. I wish I’d made more of him ... but he’s always been such a strange, shy child ... more like that little Walter Blythe at Ingleside than any of his own kin. And I know I’ll have trouble with the boys ... they do love to tease ... I don’t seem to have any influence over them. Ah, children are not what they were in my young days. They listened to their parents then.”
“It would provide for Amy’s wedding,” Aunt Elizabeth was thinking. “He’ll never be happy with those awful boys of Fanny’s. They are really young demons. And the very idea of an old maid like Lilian having him is laughable. That chinchilla cape ... Fanny couldn’t put on any more airs about her moleskin coat. I saw the most marvellous lace tablecloth at Moore and Stebbins’. Of course I know Patrick doesn’t like me ... Stephen knew it, too ... but in three months ...”
The Blythes Are Quoted Page 24
