Paddy The Next Best Thing Part 57

She sat up and drew her hand away. "Lawrence, you must leave me in peace. A man cannot honestly want to marry a girl who--who--" Ah! why did she falter?

"Well, little woman! Who--who--!"

"Doesn't love him," a trifle lamely.

"Ah, Paddy! you were going to say 'hate,' and the lie died on your lips."

She flushed in the firelight, but continued bravely:

"It makes very little difference. The fact remains that I do not love you and I will not marry you."

"Marry me first, and I will soon teach you to love."

She felt her breath coming fitfully and her pulses leaping strangely, and she bit her teeth together to steady herself as she still stared into the fire. Oh! why did he give her that unnerved feeling! What in the world was the matter with her! She felt as if she only waited to hide her face in the cushion. He seemed to understand, for he turned his eyes away, and, leaning forward, softly kissed her hand. "It would be difficult, little woman--you were made for love, and I--well, I somehow seem to just worship you, and that's all about it."

Once more she tried to rally herself, pressing her hands to her eyes as if to shut out everything that distracted her from her one purpose.

"It is no use," resolutely. "Of course, I understand you have a certain power when you like, and that you are so confident because sooner or later you have always won. But that is just what fortifies me now. I don't want to go into the old arguments. I want you to understand once for all that I _am_ fortified, and I _do_ mean what I say, and not all the loneliness in the world will change me. It is no use talking as you do, and hoping as you do, because there are barriers which neither of us could move, even if we were both agreed. Be sensible and be kind. It would be kind to leave me alone in future, and sensible to be content that you have, to a certain extent, broken down my hate."

"Content!--_content_!" and there was a low, vibrating pa.s.sion in his voice that stirred her to her depths. "Content to give in when I have come within sight of my goal! Content to lose my wife for a whim--a prejudice--a quixotic idea of righting a wrong that, has long since been wiped out in the most satisfactory way in the world! Do you hear, Paddy?--_my wife_?--no, by G.o.d, because I choose to think of you like that now, I will not be content and I will not give in."

His violence frightened her, and she shivered a little. He saw it, and, with one of his swift changes, became suddenly penitent.

"There--I didn't mean to frighten you. You look quite bewildered, and so pale. I am a brute. Poor little woman. Don't take any notice-- don't remember anything except that I won't give in, because I know you are not as indifferent to me as you pretend, and also because you are lonely and forlorn." His voice grew entrancingly gentle, "Patricia the Brave, Patricia the Independent, left out in the cold, and no one to realise that she feels it except the Mourne Lodge Bear. Mavourneen-- mavourneen--bears have understanding when they love as I love you."

Big tears gathered in her eyes and splashed down unheeded on her hands.

He leaned nearer, and a tremor pa.s.sed through her. When he spoke in that enthralling, wholly gentle cadence, it was as though her thoughts and faculties became numb. It was as though solid ground were slipping away beneath her feet--branches breaking to which she was clinging for safety. She could only clutch with a spasmodic grasp at the grim spectre of her old resolve. She hid her face in her hands, staggered at the growing feebleness of her own resistance.

"Paddy--dear little girl--my arms are still aching--_come_."

She sprang up, white and trembling.

"Oh, Lawrence, please stop--I am not quite myself to-day. Let us go and look for the others."

He hesitated a moment, then said:

"They don't want us, and you look too tired to walk. I expect you've been lying awake instead of going to sleep the last two or three nights, worrying about future plans. Perhaps it isn't quite fair to press you any more now. Anyhow, I've had more to-day than ever before, and I feel I can afford to wait. If I don't say any more about the future, dear, will you just sit quietly there and rest until tea-time? See, I'll give you two more days to get thoroughly readjusted to the new order of events, then I shall come to the Parsonage and claim you. Will you agree to stay here quietly, Paddy, if I promise not to worry you?"

She murmured an a.s.sent.

"That's a sensible little woman. I'll clean my gun--do you see? I like doing it myself occasionally, and I've often thought how I'd love to do those sorts of things in here with you--I fiddling round with my hobbies and you sitting there--no need to say anything, but just to see your skirts, and your little feet, and your hair, and feel in every breath of me, not only that you are there, but that you _belong_ there." He moved away. "I suppose we're all family men at heart, directly we pa.s.s the frivolous stage and have wearied of ba.n.a.l excitements. I never meant to be anything but a bachelor, but now I want a home and a fireside that is the real thing the same as all the rest of them. I want you--_belonging_ there.

"But I'm trespa.s.sing already. If I don't mind you'll fly yet--you're such a wild little bird. Don't take any notice; you can go to sleep if you like. There's just half an hour before tea-time. No one will know you are here; they are all too taken up with each other to think of anything else."

Paddy closed her eyes gratefully, wondering why she felt so deathly tired.

CHAPTER FORTY TWO.

"WHAT WOULD AN IRISH FUSILIER DO?"

They thought her a little strange at home that evening, but after a time Jack and Eileen vanished, and making a tremendous effort, she contrived to chatter to the aunties about her dispensing in a fairly brisk fashion. She did not, however, altogether blind them, and she was glad enough when the need ceased, and she could go to bed.

Eileen was sleeping with her mother, and Jack at the inn, so that she had his little room all to herself, and as soon as she was alone she flung herself down on the bed and burst into tears, overstrained nature finding no other mode of relief.

When she had had her cry out, she lay quite still and tried to think-- tried to understand how it was that the question she had meant to settle once for all in the afternoon was more unsettled than ever. Why was it more unsettled? There could not possibly be any temptation of giving in. Giving in meant only one solution. It meant that she, Patricia Adair, would marry Lawrence Blake.

Oh! it was impossible--impossible!--the man she had over and over again a.s.serted that she hated, and declared she would kill.

Then why was there any difficulty? Why this growing sense of a problem she could not solve?

Supposing Patricia Adair did marry Lawrence Blake. What of it?

But she tore the thought out of her mind. She would not suppose it.

It came back in another form--a series of mental pictures cruelly contrasting Shepherd's Bush and the dispensary with Mourne Lodge. For Paddy knew well enough that under no circ.u.mstances would she accept a home from Jack and her sister--under no circ.u.mstances give up her work and her independence, to be dependent on any one's bounty. No, she would go back to her work alone, and they would live at The Ghan House without her.

But how it hurt to think of it!

The dingy suburb, the grey street, her aunt's everlasting plat.i.tudes, for of course she would live again at the doctor's house--just grey, lifeless monotony, instead of the lake and the mountains.

And how he had understood!

"_Mavourneen, mavourneen, bears have understanding when they love as I love you_."

She tried to crush out the recollection, conscious that her soul was sounding indefinable warnings as a far-off accompaniment. Oh, of course, he was fascinating--had she not always known it--known all her life that there were two Lawrence Blakes, and one as alluring as the other was repellant. Resolutely, she turned her thoughts to the unpleasing one; she who had somehow had special opportunities of clear sight. She remembered the old rumours of excess and extravagance. Had not her own father shaken his head gravely long ago, and said things he imagined she would not understand. Perhaps she did not then--but now!

Unprincipled, unscrupulous, fast, wild, a gambler. "Wild oats," she told herself--"Wild oats." It was not that that built the barrier--this barrier that was as a grim spectre, waving ghostly arms between them.

Could anything, even mercifully, write "wild oats" over his heartlessness? When she thought of those locked hands in the boat on the loch, her blood still boiled--of how very nearly Eileen's delicate const.i.tution had broken down altogether under her silent fretting--of how her mother had grieved and fretted likewise. She thought of his moods at home. How often--oh, how often--she had longed to strike him for the tone in which he sometimes spoke to his mother and sisters. For his selfishness, his coldness, his sneers. How often she had gone home pitying the girls such a brother, hating him with all her young enthusiasm. And then, further complicating everything, flashed again the recollection, even in those days, of his charm, if he happened to be in the right mood. Why, even Doreen and Kathleen were influenced by it; every one was. If Lawrence were in his charming mood, the whole house was sunny and gay, and Paddy had quickly enough forgotten old feuds, and immensely enjoyed a good-natured, wordy battle with him. When she hated him most, he had still had a lurking attraction for her, or she would not have bothered to cross swords. Only a lurking attraction is not love. The old spectre still stood firm, waving ghostly arms between them. And even if it were love, the feud still stood. Eileen might have forgiven and found other happiness. She might have trampled down all bitterness, but did that make the wrong less wrong--did it affect her, Paddy's, view of the case? A personal wrong may be forgiven by the sufferer without in any way affecting an outside judgment. There is still the wrong in the abstract. True, vengeance is unchristian--but it was not vengeance she wanted any longer; could she--dare she--fly in the face of her own pa.s.sionate sense of Loyalty? It seemed to Paddy that if she yielded to the wave that seemed like to sweep her off her feet, she not only let go her watchword of Loyalty, but she compromised with her half-formed, dimly seen ideal of Love. Always before her mind, if she thought of love in the future, had been the image of such men as the grand old General--the gentle, kindly doctor--the simple, manly, open-hearted Jack. Among such as these, how could she give such as Lawrence the place of honour? It was incredible that she should think of it. To do so, she must surely be disloyal to the past and disloyal to herself. But how resist him? Who could help her? She got up at last and went to the window. In the light of the stars, glimmering faintly across the garden, were the headstones--"where the dead people wait till G.o.d calls."

Feeling suffocated by the four walls of the little room, she hastily threw a shawl round her head, slipped into a big coat, and crept noiselessly out of the house, down the little path, and through the wicket-gate into the churchyard, where a beautiful Maltese cross marked the spot where the brave old soldier was taking his well-earned rest.

"Daddy," she whispered, "daddy, try and help me now. There isn't any one else who would understand."

She leaned her face against the cold granite. It was comforting to be there. "What shall I do, daddy? I know you understand all about it, and how it is so difficult. Daddy--darling old daddy--what would an Irish Fusilier do?"

She clung against the cross yearningly, and in the night air, with the calm stars looking down, the waves whispering on the beach, and her beloved mountains all around, she grew calmer and stronger. It pleased her to whisper her thoughts to the night, as if the unseen spirit of her beloved dead listened near.

"Ought I to run away, daddy? I remember how often you have said only a selfish, vain-glorious officer will risk his men against desperate odds, rather than retreat. 'Retreat, if wiser, and take up a better position--never mind the dispatches home--save your men and win the glory as well; it is sometimes n.o.bler to retreat than to go on.' Is that what I must do, daddy? I feel there are desperate odds against me.

Would it be braver to retreat? Is that what an Irish Fusilier would do? You, at least, will understand that I was not a coward."

She pressed her lips against the granite for love of the grand and simple soul it stood to commemorate.

"Daddy," she whispered, and there was a tiny, wistful smile on the fascinating mouth. "I'm not an Irish Fusilier, but, perhaps, I'm the-next-best-thing."

Then she went quietly back to bed, with her mind made up.

But the next morning, it was only by a great physical and mental effort that she was able to appear at all like herself at the breakfast-table, and when the meal was finished she was glad to slip away un.o.bserved.

Eileen's suspicions, however, had been previously roused in the night by a light step in the pa.s.sage, and, afterward, a dim figure crossing the garden. She was tactful enough to say nothing of this, but at the same time determined to try and find out if anything was wrong, and how she could help. In this Paddy had cause to be grateful, because her plans could scarcely he carried out without Eileen's help.