Paddy The Next Best Thing Part 8

"How?" looking at her keenly.

"It wouldn't be easy to describe. It is just different, that's all,"

and she gazed a little wistfully toward the mountains.

"I expect you are getting too thoughtful," he said.

"You ought to go away somewhere, and see something of the world outside these mountains."

"I am very fond of the mountains," she told him simply. "I don't want to go away. I do not think any place could be as lovely as this."

"That is where you are wrong. I acknowledge the scenery among these mountains is very beautiful, but there are heaps of equally and indeed more beautiful places in the world.

"The only thing is one gets tired," relapsing into a languid manner, that Eileen could not but see had gained upon him during his absence.

"I'd give something not to have seen, nor heard, nor learned, more than you have. To have it all before me, instead of all behind."

"But surely,"--leaning forward with ill-concealed eagerness--"the future is just br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with interest and possibilities for you."

"Why for me particularly?"

"I was thinking of your brains, and your money, and your position--why you have everything to make life interesting."

He shrugged his shoulders, and the expression on his thin cynical mouth was not pleasant.

"Oh, I don't know about that. It's too much bother altogether. I've seen behind the scenes too much to care; it's all rather rotten at the core, you know--everything is."

Eileen looked pained, and gazed away to her beloved mountains. "I am sorry you feel like that," she said simply; "it is all so beautiful to me."

"Just at present perhaps--but by and by--"

"I hope it will be, by and by also. Anyhow, I shall still have my mountains."

"And after all they're nothing in the world but indentations and corrosions on the crust of a planet, that is one in millions."

There was a pause, then she asked slowly: "Is that how you look upon human beings?"

"Yes, more or less. You can't deny we are only like midges, coming from nowhere, and vanishing nowhere; or at best, ants hurrying and scurrying over an ant-hill. 'Life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.'"

"Ah, no! no!" she cried, turning to him with a beseeching look in her eyes. "If that were so, where would be the use of all its sacrifices, and conquests, and n.o.bleness?"

"Where is the use of them?" in callous tones.

She looked at him blankly a moment, then got up and walked to the water's edge, feeling almost as if he had struck her.

After a moment he followed, and stood beside her, idly tossing pebbles into the water.

"Take my advice, Eileen," he said, "and don't get into the way of caring too much about things. It's a mistake. Later on, your feelings will only turn, and hit you in the face."

"And what is it your favourite poet, Browning, says?" she repeated half to herself--

"One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake."

"It sounded well," he sneered. "No doubt if I were to write a novel it would be full of beautiful sentiments that sounded well--and I should care that for them in my heart," and he snapped his fingers carelessly.

She looked up and descried Jack and Paddy coming over the Loch toward them.

"Here are the others," she said, almost with an air of relief. "They have just seen us and are coming in."

"Hullo!" cried Paddy, as they came within earshot. "I hope your Serene Highness is well."

"Very well, thank you," replied Lawrence, giving her his hand as the boat reached the landing-stage. "I was just remarking to your sister, that you had not succeeded in getting yourself transported to a better clime yet!"

"No, the old proverb seems to be reversed in my case, I am not too good to live, but too good to die."

"Or else too bad, and so you are always getting another chance given you," remarked Jack.

"Be quiet, Jack O'Hara, for the pot to call the kettle black is the height of meanness. Come out of that boat and say 'how do you do'

prettily to this great man from abroad," and her brown eyes shone bewitchingly.

Everybody in the neighbourhood teased Paddy, and Lawrence was no exception.

"'Pon my soul!" he exclaimed with feigned surprise, "I believe you're growing pretty, Paddy."

"Nothing so commonplace," tossing her small head jauntily. "What you take for mere prettiness is really _soul_. I am developing a high-minded, n.o.ble, sanctified expression; as I consider it very becoming to my general style of conversation. Father thinks it is 'liver,' but that unfortunately is his lack of appreciation, and also his saving grace for all peculiarities."

"I should call it pique," said Jack, "if by any chance I was ever treated to a glimpse of anything so utterly foreign in the way of expressions, on your physiognomy."

"Oh, _you_ wouldn't recognise it," was the quick retort. "'Like to like' they say; and I never find it is any use employing anything but my silliest and most idiotic manner and expression with you.

"But with Lawrence, of course," running on mischievously, "it is only the high-souled and the deeply intellectual that he is in the least at home with. Witness his companion last night, with whom he was so engrossed he could not even stop and shake hands with old friends from cradlehood."

"To tell you the honest truth," said Lawrence, "my cousin, Miss Harcourt, had got so thoroughly into the swing of some extraordinary harangue, which required nothing but an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n every five minutes from me, and seemed to go delightfully on without any further attention whatever, that it would have been downright cruelty to interrupt such a happy state of affairs. I knew I should be seeing you all to-day, and at the last moment my heart failed me. I might add that the harangue lasted until we got home, and a final e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n on the door-step, with a fervent 'by Jove,' satisfied, her beyond my best expectations. If my life had depended upon it, I could not have told anyone what she had been talking about."

"It must simplify life tremendously, to have such a perfect indifference to good manners," said Paddy, who could never resist a possible dig at Lawrence.

To her, he was the essence of self-satisfied superiority, and she apparently considered it one of her missions in life to bring him down to earth as much as possible. Lawrence found it on the whole amusing, and was not above sparring with her.

"You are improving," he remarked, with a condescension he knew would annoy her; "that is a really pa.s.sable retort for you."

"I am glad that you saw the point. I was a little afraid you might have grown more dense than ever, after being absent from Ireland so long."

"Ah! Lawrence Blake!" exclaimed a voice close at hand, as the General and Mrs Adair joined them from a side walk. "How are you? I'm very glad to see you back again. We all are, I'm sure," and he bowed with old-world courtliness.

Lawrence thanked him, and walked on a few paces with Mrs Adair to answer her warm inquiries for his mother and sisters.

Afterward he told them about the dance to take place shortly, for his sisters' "coming out" and left Paddy doing a sort of Highland Fling with Jack round the tennis court to let off her excitement. She tried to make her sister join in, but Eileen only smiled a little wistfully, and when no one was looking, stole off by herself to the seat down by the water, where Lawrence had found her in the afternoon.

There she sat down and leaned her chin on her hand, and gazed silently at the whispering Loch.

Was she glad or sad?