Paddy The Next Best Thing Part 12

"Well, you see, I caught my foot on the top of the wall, when I somewhat hastily left the Parsonage just now, and he happened to be on the other side, in just the right spot to catch me."

"I expect the poor chap was nearly crushed to death," remarked Jack.

"He'll go home with a nice opinion of wild Irish girls."

"I shall, indeed," was the fervent rejoinder, looking hard at Paddy; but as usual she was already attending to something quite different, and the remark, with its double meaning was entirely lost upon her.

Later on, they all four strolled down to the water after dinner, and Jack managed to detain Eileen a little behind the others.

He was a trifle awkward and shy as if he had something on his mind, and at last, without much preliminary, he blurted out, "You'll give me the supper-dance, won't you, Eileen? I wanted to ask you before, but I thought you'd think I was so silly to be asking so soon."

"Oh! I'm sorry, Jack," with genuine regret for his sake; "I've promised it."

"You've promised it!" he echoed in astonishment.

"Yes, this afternoon."

"To whom?" looking hard into her face.

"To Lawrence Blake," and she did not meet his eyes.

Jack stood still suddenly, without quite knowing it, and stared across to the mountains. It seemed to him all in a moment as if some grim phantom had suddenly risen, and menaced him for the first time in his life, with a vision of striving and failure.

He ground his teeth together angrily.

"Curse Lawrence Blake," he muttered, and kicking some pebbles angrily into the lake, strode forward.

CHAPTER TEN.

A LETTER FROM CALCUTTA.

Paddy sat on the morning-room table swinging her feet, and Jack leaned against the mantelpiece with his hands in his pockets, biting at the end of an empty pipe fitfully, as was his wont when all did not fall out as he wished.

"There was a little girl And she had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead,"

sang Paddy.

"And when she was good She was very, very good; And when she was naughty, she was 'orrid."

"Are you going to save me the supper-dance, Paddy!" he asked, without moving.

Paddy put her head on one side like a little bird, and eyed him quizzically a moment in silence.

"How many people have you already asked!" she said suddenly.

He coloured a little under his sunburn.

"Why should you suppose I have asked anyone!"

"I only wanted to know if you had. You have got a very tell-tale face, and now I can see for myself. Was it Eileen!"

"Are you going through this cross-examination with all your partners?"

with a touch of sarcasm.

"It wouldn't be necessary. You are the only one likely to use me as a makes.h.i.+ft."

"You are in a beastly temper this morning."

"Oh no, I'm not," good-naturedly. "I only had reasons of my own for wanting to know. I suppose Eileen was already promised to Lawrence Blake!"

"It was like his impudence," savagely.

"I don't see that. 'First come, first served,' is a perfectly fair rule. You should have been sharper and got there before him. You see you're too late in this quarter also."

"What! Have you promised too?"

"Yes; yesterday."

Jack bit his lip and felt furious with himself and all the world.

"What in the name of fortune am I to do?" he asked. "With neither you nor Eileen for the supper-dance, I shan't know myself."

"You must ask Kathleen Blake, of course. It is what you ought to have done all along," and then suddenly Paddy swung herself half across the room and stepped out of the French window into the garden, and vanished in the direction of the sh.o.r.e. It was unpleasantly present in her mind that Jack had not been sufficiently interested to ask to whom she had promised the dance; and it left her in that mood when the only relief is occupation. So she untied the boat, stepped in, and proceeded to take a steady row. If Jack continued blind, she wondered vaguely, what would become of them all?

"Heigho!" she murmured, resting on her oars. "It seems to me we're all changing. Jack's getting serious, and Eileen is getting serious, and if I don't mind I shall get serious too. What a pity we can't stay children another ten years." She looked a little dreamily to the horizon. "I wonder if something's going to happen," she mused. "I've an odd feeling somewhere, either in my head, or in my boots--I don't quite know which--that there's something in the air; an 'Ides of March'--sort of feeling that makes me inclined to be quite tragic and Julius Caesarish. Well! well!"--gripping her oars again--"if it comes, it comes, Paddy Adair, and you'll just have to make the best of it.

Meanwhile you had better make hay while the sun s.h.i.+nes, and go out with the boys shooting as you promised," and she turned homeward again.

Eileen, from far up in the mountain, watched her a little wonderingly, recognising the boat and Paddy's vigorous strokes, even from that distance. But she was too engrossed with her own thoughts to wonder long, and presently gained her own favourite nook, in which the October sun was s.h.i.+ning warmly. Here, sitting down in her favourite att.i.tude, she leant her chin in her hands and gazed at the turquoise sea on the horizon. But the old soft dreaminess was changed to-day for that wistful, troubled look that had grown of late, and in the depths of the deep blue eyes there was a new sadness.

"I cannot help it," she said at last. "Whether he is a good man or not; whether it is right or wrong, I love him, I love him."

Then, raising her eyes to the deep vault of the blue above, she breathed softly, "Oh G.o.d! help me to help him; teach me, teach me, that if the time comes that he should want me, I may be ready and strong to lead him back to love, and faith, and happiness. For the rest, if there must be suffering, I will try to be brave and content."

Then she got up and started down the mountain, and when she was about half-way home she turned a boulder and came suddenly upon Lawrence Blake with his gun and his dogs.

Instantly his thin face lit up with a smile.

"I saw your sister with Masterman and O'Hara about fifteen minutes ago,"

he said, "and I wondered where you were. Your sister shot a rabbit running in fine style."

"She is a splendid shot," replied Eileen warmly. "She killed her first snipe this summer."

"Did she, indeed! That's excellent for a girl. But then she ought to have been a boy, really, oughtn't she? One can't help feeling there's good material wasted."

"Why wasted?" she asked.

"Well, to be rather rudely candid, I am not an admirer of your s.e.x at all."

"Isn't it rather poor to judge the many by a few who may have disappointed you?"