Paddy The Next Best Thing Part 49

"Have you blankets?" Lawrence asked, trying not to show what he was suffering, and still quite unable to stand alone.

George took in the situation at a glance, seeing him in shirtsleeves and the deadly pallor on his face.

"The young lady won't hurt for a minute or two," he said with sudden sharpness to the others. "Come and help me chafe the master's limbs,"

and he almost lifted Lawrence bodily, laying him down on a blanket and setting to work with a will, after first giving him some brandy. After a little while the pain gave and the colour came back to his lips, but meanwhile Paddy had awakened, and, without making any sound, sat watching. She knew instinctively what had happened, and she would not for worlds have attracted any attention to herself until Lawrence was better, his drawn face and blue lips going straight to her heart.

After a little, with George's help, Lawrence managed to get to his feet and stand upright, and then he turned at once to Paddy.

"Give me the flask," he said, and the others waited while he poured out some brandy and held it to her lips. Then he seemed quite himself again, and prepared to start for home, arranging everything, and, as usual, compelling acquiescence. Paddy wanted to try and walk, but he would not hear of it, and finally she had to get into the litter he contrived for her with blankets and be carried down the steep and dangerous slope.

At three in the morning the sound of footsteps at last fell on the straining ears at Mourne Lodge, and Mrs Blake hastened wildly to the door, her composure fast giving way.

"Lawrence!" she called out into the night. "Lawrence!" And only a mother could have spoken the name so.

"We're all right, mother," came back the answer cheerily; but as he came up, overcome at last, Mrs Blake fainted into his arms.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.

"STAY HERE WITH ME."

Paddy lay on the drawing-room sofa at the Parsonage and watched the birds skimming over the loch with a strained, anxious expression in her usually laughing eyes. Her aunts had fetched her from Mourne Lodge that morning, and there had been a great scene of general weeping and embracing and exclaiming. The news had somehow got all round the neighbourhood in an incredibly short time, and when Miss Mary was watching casually for Paddy to come home on her bicycle about eleven, there came instead a boy with the news that she and Lawrence had been lost in the fog all night and carried home in the morning.

Instantly there was great consternation in the Parsonage, and the small boy sent flying off for the one conveyance available in Omeath, in which, immediately afterward, the two sisters set out for Mourne Lodge.

They found Paddy still a little dazed and shaken, but otherwise none the worse for her adventure.

"Lawrence saved me," she said as soon as they gave her time to speak.

"If it had not been for him, I should probably have died of cold. He risked his life for me."

That was quite enough, and away rushed Miss Jane, with Miss Mary hurrying after her, to look for Lawrence. They found him in his den, with newspapers lying round him, apparently reading calmly. Only could they have looked in un.o.bserved a moment sooner, they would have seen the newspapers were all out of reach, and, with compressed lips and knitted forehead he was staring gloomily at the floor lost in thought. However, he heard footsteps, and s.n.a.t.c.hed up a paper just as the door opened, and neither of them had good enough eyesight to see that the sheet he held before him was covered with advertis.e.m.e.nts for housemaids and cooks.

Miss Jane came up to him with an almost sublime expression of grat.i.tude.

"Paddy says you saved her life, Lawrence," she said simply. "I feel as if I must go down on my knees to you."

"Pray don't," he answered in his usual manner. "I won't answer for the floor being particularly clean. I simply hate the room being dusted, you know."

He got up, and with a little laugh tried to change the conversation.

But neither of the ladies had the least intention of being put off in this manner, and they tried his patience considerably before they had finished their outpouring of grateful thanks. Then they retired again, and Lawrence closed the door after them with a momentary relief, only to be quickly superseded by his previous gloom. It was as though he had aged since yesterday. Several times last night, and again this morning when he sat beside her a little while in her bedroom, his mother had watched him covertly, and wondered what there was in his face that seemed strange to her. Now, when left alone again, he threw the papers aside and, sitting down at his writing table, buried his face in his hands.

He had been up early in spite of his awful night, had seen George and the other three men, and sat with his mother, and sent the loveliest flowers Mourne Lodge could produce to Paddy's bedroom; and now it was only mid-day, though it seemed half a life-time since he had sat in the hut holding Paddy, regardless of all things in heaven and earth but his precious burden. He went over everything again and again, moment by moment, unable to bring his mind to anything else. The night of such horror to all others was already to him the most precious memory of his life.

Only what was to come next? It was this thought that caused that moody, unheeding stare into vacancy.

"I will not live without her--she shall come to me," he muttered half-fiercely, and dreamt of all he would say to win her when they met.

Meanwhile the aunties took Paddy back with them, insisting upon watching over her as if she were an invalid, and finally inveigling her to the drawing-room sofa to lie quietly with closed blinds.

In this Paddy was not sorry to acquiesce. She wanted to be alone, and the shaded light was soothing. Through a dim sense of confusion--a confusion that she felt incapable of unravelling as to what had, and what had not, taken place--there were certain recollections that made her cheeks burn, and caused her to hide shrinking eyes in the cushions.

How, oh how, was she ever to face him with those recollections lying between them? She half knew that in the first moment she had clung to him, and she had an indistinct remembrance that he had kissed her hair, and spoken in a low, pa.s.sionate voice, calling her soft, endearing names.

Afterward, certainly, they had regained their old footing, but what about that long sleep? Under what conditions had she been able to sleep thus peacefully in the midst of such discomfort? That was the question Paddy dare not face, remembering his pallid cheeks and blue lips, while the old coachman brought the circulation back into his cramped limbs.

She half hoped he would come to-day, while she was lying in the darkened room. It would be easier to get through the interview in the dark. But he did not come, and she lay restlessly, puzzling out the enigma in which their adventure had placed her.

What about that hate of hers! Can one--_may_ one--hate one's preserver!

She half prayed he would let her thank him quietly, and then go away.

For hate or no hate, she perhaps owed him her life, and grat.i.tude was his due.

But two days pa.s.sed, and Lawrence did not come, and as she recovered further from the shock, she rallied herself, and felt more equal to the interview. She believed it was consideration for her that kept him away, and was grateful. In two days more her holiday would be up and she must return to London, and once away the adventure could be put aside. If only it had not been so hard to go--

On the afternoon of the third day Paddy wandered alone to a little creek by the loch, and, sitting down on a fallen tree, sank her chin in her hands and gazed across the water with a whole world of yearning longing in her eyes at the thought of leaving it all and returning to the streets, and chimney-pots, and s.m.u.ts. So rapt was she that she did not hear some one approach over the moss and stand silently beside her--some one who saw the yearning, and read it aright with mingled feelings of regret and gladness.

"I began to think I'd never find you," he said at last in his quietest way, and Paddy started violently, and flushed to the roots of her hair, while she continued gazing across the loch, quite unable to meet his eyes.

He sat down on the log beside her, and leaned forward with his arms across his knees, playing idly with a twig he had picked up.

"I went to the Parsonage first," he continued, "and they told me you had gone out directly after lunch, and they believed you were sailing. I went down to the beach and found the boat, and decided you had taken a walk instead, and came to look for you. I was lucky to find you in such an out-of-the-way corner. Are you quite all right again!"

He was still keeping his eyes from her, playing with the twig, and Paddy unconsciously clenched her hands hard in her effort to feel collected.

"Yes, thank you!" She hesitated, still looking hard at the loch. Then she gulped down a long breath and took the plunge. "I am glad you have come. I have been wanting to see you." She noticed suddenly that he looked white and ill, and his face was a little drawn. "Have you been ill?"

"No, I have not been ill, only worried. I should have come sooner-- only--" he hesitated.

"I wanted to see you to thank you," she interrupted. "Of course I know you risked your life to save mine. I might easily have died up there with the cold--and you might easily have slipped into a bog looking for me. No--" as he tried to stop her, "I must go on. Don't you see how it's just strangling me to remember that you risked so much--after-- after--" her voice died away, she could find no words. She knew all in a moment that the casual acquaintance of the last three weeks was once more the lover, and the further complication unnerved her.

"As if that made any difference," a little harshly. "Haven't I told you that your scorn and threats cannot in any way change me--and never will.

Good G.o.d! do you suppose I care two straws about risking my twopenny-halfpenny life when it is for you?"

She shrank away visibly, and he changed his manner.

"There, I don't want to worry you--but for Heaven's sake don't thank me.

I can't stand it. There can be no question of thanks between you and me."

"But how can I help it?" she cried a little piteously. "Don't you understand that I _must_ thank you--that it is the one and only return I can make?"

He looked into her face a moment and decided to humour her.

"Very well, only let us consider it finished. If it eases your mind, I will accept your grat.i.tude; but I must be allowed to add it is absolutely uncalled-for, seeing I would risk a dozen lives for you cheerfully any day."

Her eyes fell before his, and she clenched her hands yet harder. Then he quite suddenly changed the subject.

"They tell me you are going back to London in two days. Is that so?"

"Yes."

"How you must hate it?" He looked round at the gleaming, beautiful loch and the mountains beyond. "It must be desperately hard to go back."

She could not trust herself to speak, and he continued in a voice that had suddenly grown dangerously sympathetic. "I always think it is harder for you than the others. Your mother and Eileen always have each other, and any one can see how much that means to both. But you, somehow--since the dear old General died--seem to have had no one to take his place."