Lucy Montgomery - Mistress Pat

"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 school-boy'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 sympathised 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.