Paddy The Next Best Thing Part 26

"Don't, Jack, please," she said. "It is better not to bring any other name into our talk."

"I am sorry. Forgive me. Only it's so much more terrible than you can know. It's like a raging fire in one's heart to feel as I do about it all. Only it does not make any difference to my feelings for you, and I do not think it ever will, even if you marry him. In any case I want you to feel that I am your slave wherever I am, and that nothing would be too much to ask me to do for you. I shall hear of all that happens from the aunties, and, perhaps, Paddy will write if she has time, and after a few years I shall come back to see you all."

He stood up, and there was a new look of determination in his handsome, boyish face.

"I mean to try and make up for all the time I have wasted," he said, "and prove that there is some good stuff in me yet."

"Oh, Jack! you know we all think the world of you," she urged.

"I know you have all combined to spoil me ever since I was a little chap," with a wistful smile, "and I guess it was about time Mother Fate took me by the shoulders, so to speak, and pushed me out into the cold.

"She seems to have started off with the hardest blows first though," he added. "It just feels like a clean sweep of everything I cared for most. To-morrow I must tell the aunts. I keep putting it off, because I can't bear to begin, but it won't make it any easier in the end. I think I'll go for a tramp now. Trudging over the mountains helps a little and I feel--oh! I feel as if nothing in heaven or earth mattered much because of you, Eileen," and he ground his teeth together to keep his self-command. A second later, feeling himself giving way, he strode across the room, and, pa.s.sing out, closed the door quietly behind him.

Eileen rested her arms on the table, and leaning her tired head down upon them, sobbed her heart out in the old library.

That was the night Jack went up to his room and shut himself in without appearing at the supper-table, and the two little ladies clasped each other's hands in mutely questioning distress, vaguely conscious that some new blow was about to fall. The next evening he told them.

They were sitting as usual, one on either side of the big, old-fas.h.i.+oned fireplace, and Miss Jane's cap had got tilted a little to one side when she went to the door to speak to Eliza Spencer, whose baby had the whooping-cough. Miss Mary's looked to be preparing itself to follow suit. They both wore little white shawls folded crosswise on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and pinned with large Cairngorm brooches, which looked as if they might have come out of the Ark; and black silk mittens over their pretty little hands. In the morning the shawls were grey or black, and the mittens of fine wool, but in the evening, all through the winter, they sat on each side of the fireplace, dressed precisely the same, with the same species of knitting in their fingers, reminding one of two china ornaments. Almost ever since Jack could remember it had been the same, and he took in each little detail now with a new tenderness, from the quaint little elastic-side boots just showing on each footstool, to the softly waving white hair growing perceptibly thinner each year and the dainty caps that had such a habit of getting awry. Until that evening he felt he had never quite known how dear his two second mothers had become to him.

He sat now over by the table with his arms on a newspaper he was supposed to be reading. He felt as if he could control his voice better if he did not come too near.

For a little while they talked in their kind, sympathetic way of Eliza Spencer and her sick child, and then there was a breathing silence. All felt that something unusual was in the air. At last Miss Jane looked up from her knitting, and saw that Jack was not reading at all, but sitting with his eyes upon their faces, and a deeply troubled expression on his own.

"Is there anything wrong, dear?" she asked.

He cleared his throat, but the rising lump would not go, and he waited several moments before he answered. A pained look came into each little, wrinkled face. They knew then that something fresh was to come upon them.

"I'm afraid you'll both be very upset," he said at last, and again he had to pause.

"Go on, dear," said Aunt Jane encouragingly, seeing what ah effort it was to him.

"I am going away," he blurted out, almost like a schoolboy. "I am going to South America to earn my own living," and then he buried his face on his arms, for he could not bear to see the distress come into their eyes.

"Going away!" He heard Miss Jane repeat it as if she could not believe her own ears; and then: "South America--going away--to South America--"

Each piece of knitting went down into each lap, and two wrinkled faces looked at each other as if they could not understand, and then turned slowly to the man's bowed head--the fair head that it seemed only yesterday had nestled to their hearts in babyhood.

"He can't mean it," breathed little Miss Mary. "Indeed, sister, he can't mean it--" There was a long silence, and then with tears coursing silently down her cheeks Miss Jane said very quietly:

"Yes, he means it, sister. The time has come for our bird to leave the nest and fly away."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

EXPLANATIONS.

"It's just this way, aunties," he explained. "Somehow, while you and father made me feel you only wanted me to stay at home with you, I was too easy-going and happy to care about the future at all."

He had come over to the fire place now and pulled a chair between them, so that he was quite close to each. The ice being once broken, it was easier, and Miss Jane was helping him by her brave self-control.

"Then, a little while ago something happened which made me suddenly think of what I meant to be or do in the future, and I realised how I was wasting the years. Since the dear old General died, and we heard that Paddy and Eileen and their mother were poor, I have felt awful about it, as if, had I only been making the most of these years, I might have been able to help them now."

"Poor Jack," murmured Miss Jane gently, and little Miss Mary laid her small withered hand upon one of his big ones. "I am afraid it is chiefly our fault, sister," she said sadly. "In our love we have been selfish."

Miss Jane pressed her lips together tightly. She was thinking the same thing, but it was hard to say it.

"You will have all that we have some day, Jack," she said presently.

"You will not be poor."

"I know you will do all you can for me, aunties," he answered, "but I hope it will be a long, long time before anything that is your becomes mine."

Then he told them all about his plans and about his friend, and they tried to listen as if they were glad for his sake, and finally arranged that Mr Wilkinson should be brought over to the Parsonage the following day, so that they might get to know him and hear all about the country he had come from. It was quite late when they finally went upstairs to bed, and no one spoke as they kissed their usual good-night in the sisters' room, for their hearts were too full. Five minutes later, however, there was a gentle tap upon Jack's door, and in answer to his voice little Miss Mary slipped into the room and softly pushed the door to behind her.

Jack was sitting on his bed, feeling utterly wretched, and he had remained so since he came upstairs. Miss Mary sat down beside him and slipped one arm through his.

"Jack dear," she said, "you know that sister and I don't really care for anything in the world except you and your happiness, and that if we thought you were unhappy it would be impossible for us to be otherwise?"

"Yes, auntie, I know," he answered, with a catch in his voice. "You are just too good to me, that's all."

"No, dear, because no words could ever tell all you have done for us.

If you had not come into our lives to keep us young and hopeful, a sorrow that nearly broke my heart, and Jane's for my sake, would probably have ended in making us sour, embittered old maids."

Jack shook his head; he knew how impossible that would have been.

"But it might, Jack," the little lady urged; "and so we must always feel we cannot ever do enough for you."

That Jack had had no choice in the matter of coming into their lives did not appear to strike her; but what of that?--she could not love him less or more either way.

"What I want to say, Jack dear," she continued, "is that sister and I have often thought how foolish it was that you should have to wait until we are dead to have our money when we would much rather you had it now.

As you know, we have three hundred pounds a year each, and however much we try we cannot spend more than fifty pounds each, living in this quiet country parsonage. So we think if you would take the remaining five hundred pounds a year you might be able to win something of all you want, and we should never miss it at all."

"How good you are--how good you both are," was all he could say.

"And you will take it?" with unconcealed eagerness.

"No, no," hastily. "It is impossible--quite, quite impossible. Oh, auntie! how could I--a great strong fellow such as I--with my health and strength, take away the income of two frail women?"

"Jack dear," she urged tearfully, "don't look at it in that way. It is only that we long to repay you for all the happiness you have brought into our lives."

"It is impossible, auntie," he said, and his eyes glistened.

"Jack,"--there was a new note of tenderness in Miss Mary's voice--"is there anything between you and Eileen?"

For answer he dropped his face in his hands with a low groan. For some moments Miss Mary was silent. She could not trust herself to speak.

"Don't think your old auntie over-curious, Jack," she said at last. "I love you so. It is just as if the pain was mine again, as it was long ago. It is because I suffered so once, and understand it all, I came to you to-night. Perhaps if you could tell me about it--"

"You are an angel, auntie," he murmured, and gripped the little hand in his until he hurt it.