Paddy The Next Best Thing Part 21

After lunch she and Paddy were alone for a few minutes, and Paddy asked with seeming carelessness:

"Didn't Lawrence tell you he was going to India, shortly?"

"I don't think so," very quietly. "He may have, but if so I didn't catch what he was saying.

"I am not very surprised," she continued with an effort, "as he said something about not staying at home long when they first returned."

Paddy was non-plussed.

She had hardly expected Eileen to take it so calmly, and being at a loss for an answer she wisely dropped the subject.

Presently she went in search of Jack.

"Have you heard that Lawrence is going to India in three weeks?" she asked him.

"The General told me this morning," replied Jack. "I can't say I'm particularly sorry."

He was sitting on a gate that overlooked the bay, and Paddy leaned against the top rail beside him.

"I didn't suppose you would be," she retorted; "but it's not very nice for Eileen."

"Why not?" setting his mouth squarely, with an obstinate expression.

"Well, you know a lot of the people about here think they're engaged."

"And if they do--isn't it a thundering good thing they're wrong?"

"No, it isn't," getting nettled. "If Lawrence has been trifling with Eileen I'll kill him."

"Eileen has too much sense to care for a man who would behave so."

"You don't know anything about it. You're just a great, big, blundering baby," and Paddy looked as if she were on the point of tears.

"Whew!" whistled Jack. "What have I been doing now?"

"Nothing, and that's just it.--If I were a man--if I were Eileen's brother, I'd shoot Lawrence. She hasn't got a brother, but you're the next best thing and you ought to do it."

"I fail to see how I could benefit Eileen by getting myself hanged."

"I don't care," exclaimed Paddy. "I don't care for any of you. I'll have it out with Lawrence some day, and make him pay for this."

"My dear child! you're making no end of a fuss about nothing,"

sententiously.

"Child!" echoed Paddy derisively. "And I should like to know what you've ever done to prove yourself a man."

Jack was so astonished, for a moment he could hardly speak. In all their lives he had never known Paddy adopt that tone to him, and he regarded her as if she had suddenly developed into a new species of wild animal.

"Oh, you needn't look like that," ran on poor Paddy, getting more and more beside herself with exasperation; "you know perfectly well you are little better than a mere boy. If you had gone out into the world like other men, and made a way for yourself, you might have come back and won Eileen, and saved her from all that's coming. And instead, you have just sat still and stared at her, and let another man come in and spoil everything!--and you call that loving! If you'd any possible chance of providing a home in a year or two, you might be able to do something even now, but there you sit a mere boy at twenty-five years, and nothing achieved except a good aim and a good yachtsman."

Jack was struck dumb.

For a moment they both forgot that Paddy herself had been one of the princ.i.p.al supporters in his idleness--each in his own way saw only his pain.

He got down from the gate slowly.

"Good Lord, Paddy!" he said, "I believe you're right," and without stopping or looking back, he strode off across the garden toward the mountains with his forehead wrinkled into two perpendicular lines.

Paddy watched him a moment, and then rushed away to a lovely little cove by the sh.o.r.e, and throwing herself down on a bank burst into tears.

She did not quite know what she was crying about, but when she finally sat up and dried her eyes she felt better, and was able to review the situation more calmly.

"Perhaps, after all, Lawrence would soon be back," she argued, "and she was making a great fuss needlessly. Or perhaps Eileen did not care so much as she imagined, and things would all come right yet."

At this point she was aroused by voices, and along the little path through the trees, she descried Eileen and Lawrence coming toward her.

"Lawrence was just telling me about his trip," Eileen said pleasantly.

"He is going to have a splendid tour. I think he is very wise to go about and see the world while he can, don't you?"

Paddy did not answer, and somehow Lawrence carefully avoided meeting her eyes. Eileen's pluck was making him feel less pleased with himself than anything else could have done. They had met accidentally in the afternoon, and she had immediately, in a charming way, congratulated him upon his good fortune in being able to start off travelling again.

He had been a little surprised and a little chagrined, but he had been nearer loving her then, than ever before.

Paddy's quick eyes saw at once how matters stood, and she followed Eileen's lead.

Thus for the present, Eileen managed to blind the loving, watchful eyes of the home circle.

Only to her beloved mountains, and that distant strip of turquoise, which was the sea, she remained still herself and hid nothing. In her lonely little nook, high up on the mountain side, with the dear wonder of loveliness that she so loved, spread out around her, she pa.s.sed through the first of those weary Gethsemanes, that sap the joy out of young lives for a season.

At first it was so incredible to her. Had he not looked his love so often!--shown it in so many ways!--done everything, in fact, except confessed it! And if it were all a mistake, if he had meant none of it, how base then he must be.

This hurt her the most. She had never idealised him, she had rigidly made herself see his failings, but because she had believed them only the result of past circ.u.mstances and companions, and believed his love would soon lift him above them, she had given him of her best in spite of all.

But now everything was changed. Of a surety he did not love her.

Sometimes, remembering a pa.s.sage here and a pa.s.sage there--a look here, a look there--a touch, a tone, a sentence--her whole soul rose up and cried: "It is false, it is a mistake, he does love me, oh! he does--he does--he does--"

There would be a short s.p.a.ce of pa.s.sionate hope, and then calm reason would step in and say with inexorable firmness: "How can that be, since he goes away for no particular reason to the other side of the world, when everything at home needs his presence?"

Then would follow a period of terrible self-depreciation, when poor Eileen's sensitive nature shrank back horrified from the thought of all she had given unasked--and her cheeks burned with a deep sense of shame that she had allowed herself to believe in love where apparently no love was.

Small wonder that her heart grew faint within her. The mountains understood, and the bay, and the lights and shadows, and the strip of turquoise--or it seemed to the sad dreamer that they did--and so upon every possible occasion she stole away to the solitude, to look out upon them all with a world of pain in her beautiful eyes, suffering mutely and alone.

Once or twice her mother had been about to speak, but with quick divination Eileen had seen and stayed her. The wound was too sore yet to bear any probing. She felt, at least, she must suffer alone.

"My child, you are looking ill," her mother said at last, and there was a tremor in her voice that went to Eileen's heart.

"I am quite well, mother dear," she answered in that patient way of hers. "You must not trouble about me; there is no need for it."