Paddy The Next Best Thing Part 47

"Well, I must be off," in the same careless tone. "See you at the picnic, I suppose,"--and almost before she could reply he had pulled away, and gone without once looking at her.

Paddy rowed to the sh.o.r.e, feeling that she wanted to hit some one.

"He's growing as dull as ditch-water!" she exclaimed snappishly, as she tied up her boat.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.

THE PICNIC.

A few days later came the great picnic up the mountain. The Blakes gave the picnic, and the guests numbered about seventy, half of them proceeding to the climbing-place upon bicycles and the other half driving. The weather was not very promising from the first, but it was too large an undertaking to put off, and they accordingly started out.

Paddy went in the Mastermans' carriage with the two aunts. As they drove along she wished, a little unaccountably, that Ted Masterman was one of the party. "After all," she mused, "he was better than no one, and it was so very tame without Jack. Really, there was no one in the least adventuresome or enterprising."

Then she fell to wondering what line Lawrence would take, and whether, perhaps, to-day, he would rise to a quarrel. Once more she hoped he would.

It was, in consequence, more irritating than ever that Lawrence not only proved quite amenable, but appeared in a wholly new light that separated them effectually the whole day. For the first time in any one's recollection, he a.s.sumed, with his most ingratiating charm, the _role_ of host. He was absolutely indefatigable in attending to the wants of his guests, most particularly all the elderly ladies and quiet ones.

The rowdy faction, with Paddy at their head, he ignored just as far as was compatible with his new _role_. Paddy herself he never once addressed. She might, indeed, not have been there.

About five o'clock a slight mistiness frightened most of the older folks home out of the damp, but the younger ones, headed by Paddy, who was beginning to get desperate, started off on a climbing expedition. After a short time most of them gave in and came back again, but a few went on, Paddy still leading. Then these few gave in also, owing to the increasing dampness, and shouted to Paddy to come back.

"Don't wait--I'll soon catch you up," she called, and then she climbed on a little higher to see if she could find the wonderful earthwork entrenchments she and Jack had once thrown up for a miniature sham fight.

The others leaned against rocks and waited, chatting gayly to pa.s.s the time. After a little while, as she did not come, they concluded she had returned to the starting-place by another path, and trooped back without feeling the least concern. Lawrence and Doreen were helping people into their carriages and saying good-by to various guests, when the former heard some one ask casually:

"Isn't Paddy Adair here?"

He glanced round.

"She went with your party up the mountain," he said.

"Yes, but we missed her, and concluded she had come back here ahead of us by another route."

"She is probably with the Parsonage party," and he vent at once to find out.

Meanwhile the mistiness was fast developing into a thick fog, and to linger on the mountain in such was extremely dangerous, owing to the deep bogs in many places, so everyone hastened to depart. Lawrence, without causing any alarm, managed to find out that nothing had been seen of Paddy, and hastened to draw Doreen aside.

"I am going to look for Paddy," he said. "Don't let her absence get to mother's ears or the aunts'. She is not likely to be far away, and they would only worry unnecessarily. You had better go home and we will either follow or go to the Parsonage."

He spoke so quietly and calmly that Doreen felt no misgivings whatever, and most of the others somehow had the idea that Paddy had gone home to Omeath in the Masterman's carriage with her aunts, so that the picnic broke up quite naturally, and the young folks started off on their bicycles in haste to get through the ever-thickening fog, little dreaming that one of their number was risking his life to find another.

Lawrence thought afterward how foolish he had been to go alone, only he had not really imagined Paddy to be more than two or three hundred yards away. He knew the mountain better than most of them, and how there was but one pa.s.sable path from above the spot where they had picnicked, so he kept carefully along this, picking his way step by step with difficulty in the enshrouding fog. After half an hour he stopped to consider. He was now certain Paddy had taken a wrong turn and strayed aside somewhere, but in what direction it was almost impossible to tell.

Should he go back and get help, he wondered. Either course was full of danger, but it was not the danger he feared. So dense was the fog that in going back he knew there was a possibility of losing his own way, and then Paddy would be worse off than ever, the probability being that no one would think of searching for them for hours. No, he decided finally, he would go on and look for her rather than risk getting lost or losing time in returning. Again and again he stood and shouted, but the heavy atmosphere drowned his voice, and there was no answering shout. Then gradually a great fear grew up in his heart. What if harm had come to her? What if this, one of her beloved mountains, had turned upon her in pitiless treachery and swallowed her up in one of its treacherous bogs? He held his breath with horror at the thought.

Surely, surely, no harm could come to her--it could not be; even stern, inexorable Nature could surely let no hair of her head be hurt! Yet all around was unseen danger, that direst of all foes, and he knew that, even if she were alive, to struggle through that mountain mist was to hold one's life by a thread.

Yet he pressed forward, the nameless fear growing ever stronger in his heart and filling all his being with an anguish of intolerable suspense.

By the help of a walking stick he carried he was enabled to find the path and keep to it, otherwise he would have been likely to stray aside into a bog himself. But the thought of personal danger found no room in his brain; he would have risked his life a hundred times for Paddy and thought nothing of it.

He must have been out nearly an hour, going further and further from home all the time, when, in answer to his call, he fancied he heard a distant reply.

"Paddy!" he shouted again. "Paddy!--Paddy! Are you there?"

He listened with painful intentness, and then with a sudden thrill of almost ungovernable joy, as he heard a faint voice call "Here!" and afterward give the cry they had used when searching for each other since childhood.

"I am coming!" he shouted. "Don't move!" and he began picking his steps in the direction from whence the voice came.

After great difficulty and many stumbles, he at last found himself in close proximity to the call that sounded from time to time to guide him, and then through the thickness he saw the wood of a little kind of shelter probably used at some time for tethering goats, and a second later he had gripped hold of Paddy herself.

And she made no effort to resist him as, carried away by a rush of feeling, he could not control, he strained her, half-fainting, to his heart.

Paddy trembled violently from weakness. Her cotton blouse was wet through, and she was perished with cold and dread, for she had pa.s.sed through a terrible time trying to find her way back to the others before she came across the little shelter and sank down worn out. Without quite knowing it, she clung to Lawrence for a few moments, and under the sudden reaction broke down into a few gasping sobs.

He soothed her with the utmost tenderness, and then slipped off his coat and made her put it on, b.u.t.toning it up himself. He next arranged a kind of seat for her, where she could lean back against the framework of the hut, and then set to work at once to make a fire, cursing himself inwardly that he had not had the sense to bring a flask of brandy.

Fortunately he had plenty of matches and some old letters, so that, by pulling down pieces of the shelter, he was quickly able to light a comforting fire, and busied himself keeping it going while Paddy had time to recover herself.

When she did so, however, her first impulse was to shrink away, and there was a questioning expression in her eyes as she watched him.

He noticed it at once, and sought to give her confidence by carefully keeping his face turned away from her.

"Are you warmer now?" he asked. "I'm so vexed I came away without a flask."

"I am quite warm," she said, and then suddenly discovered he was in his shirtsleeves, and exclaimed, "Where is your coat?"

"I got so hot climbing," he replied unblushingly, "and then, after lighting the fire, I could not bear it on."

She looked down at herself.

"No, no, you have given it to me," she cried. "Oh, how could you--you will be frozen!" and she began to take it off.

"No, Paddy," and a firm hand closed over hers; "you are not to take it off."

"But I must," she cried. "I can't see you catching your death of cold.

Let go, Lawrence."

The hand only held more firmly.

"Listen to me. I have got twice the hardihood that you have, and there is not the least fear of my catching cold. You are in my care until someone comes to look for us or we are able to find our way back, and I shall not allow you to take off that coat."

He smiled, and in the firelight his thin face was very winning.

"If you are obstinate, I shall just sit beside you and hold it on."

Paddy buried her face in her hands and became suddenly silent.

Lawrence stood and looked at her bent head in the firelight, and a yearning expression that made his face more attractive than ever stole over his features. He longed to fold her in his arms once more and cheer and soothe her, but, even if it were possible, he had no longer the excuse of a sudden uncontrollable rush of feeling. So, instead, he folded his arms very tightly, bit his teeth together, and, moving to the further side of the fire, stood leaning against the wall. At least there was no harm in looking at her, as long as his gaze did not embarra.s.s her. He would play fair--a great many undesirable things he might be, but he would never have dreamed of taking any advantage of such a circ.u.mstance as this which threw them alone together in peril on the mountain. He would only look when he knew she was unaware of it.

He was glad that she elected to sit thus, with her face buried on her arms. At least it made it possible for him to gaze and gaze. He forgot that he was getting chilled to the bone from the damp in spite of the fire. Why should he remember so slight a thing as that?--why, until it was necessary, remember anything but that they two were alone together, shut off from all the world, in the little hut on the mountain. And, sweetest thought of all, for the time being she was in his care, dependent on him for warmth and safety, perhaps for life itself? So he stood silently on the far side of the hut, tending the fire when it needed it, and watching, with his soul in his eyes, how the little flames shone on her beautiful hair. He was afraid to think of the moment when he had first found her and she had half-clung to him. It unmanned him. If he let his mind dwell on it, he might forget that under no circ.u.mstances must he take advantage of their position. He wondered if she had heard what he said in those first moments, and if that was why she so persistently kept her face hidden? It occurred to him that he had never really known before how beautiful her hair was.

The damp had only made it wave and curl more luxuriantly, and when a specially bright flame shot up, it shone like burnished copper. He felt a sudden longing to touch it--to run his fingers through it, and let the little stray tendrils curl round them. It required all his strength to stay patiently there on the other side of the hut.

After a time he stepped across to her.