Paddy The Next Best Thing Part 28

"Married!" gasped Eileen incredulously.

"Yes, dear, he was married to a great friend of the hospital nurse who had nursed him--a rich heiress."

"Oh! auntie, what did you do? How terrible for you, how terrible!"

"I was very ill for some time, there at the hotel in Cairo, and my G.o.dmother and Jane nursed me night and day. Afterward, as soon as I could be moved, they got me away to Switzerland, and there I gradually grew well again. I thought it was hard at the time, Eileen, for I wanted so to die, but I have lived to understand how poor and weak that was." She stroked the girl's hand tenderly.

"It is cowardly to want to turn and run away directly the path gets hard and stony. I was a coward. I see it clearly now, and I have lived to feel ashamed. I am thankful that G.o.d did not hear my pa.s.sionate pleas, for it has comforted me often to feel I am trying to make up for the weakness of that terrible year. But it was so hard at the time; oh! my dear, I know so well, when the future looks all black and hopeless. But it is never really so. What G.o.d takes away from us with one hand, He repays with the other. I was quite certain no joy was left in all the world for me--nothing but a long, lonely single life. And instead, it has all been so blessed and so sweet. What I have lost in husband and child, I seem to have found again a thousand times in you and Paddy and Jack, and all the young folks and children around that I love so well.

It has been the same with Jane, I think. For twenty-five years--that is since Jack was born--we have been intensely happy in this dear, quiet spot. It is hard to lose him now, and you and Paddy also, and most of our happiness will go with you, but we shall still have each other, and it is not right to repine when one is drawing near old age and the portals of the great New Day. I only pray I may live to see you all happy, for yours is not the only aching heart, Eileen--My poor boy!" she added softly.

"I wonder you don't feel angry with me," Eileen whispered.

"My dear, how should I?--though it hurts us to know that Jack is unhappy, we have lived long enough to see that sorrow is a great teacher and a great helper, and we believe that by and by he will be glad again, and bless the Hand that let the sorrow come."

"How good you are!" Eileen breathed. "It helps me only to hear you talk."

"I want very much to help you," the little lady said sadly. "You are going away to a hard change, my child, and carrying more than one heavy cross with you. I wish I could bear something for you. But you must try not to brood, lest it injure your health and add to your mother's sorrow; and you must try to be bright to help poor Paddy. London will be terrible to her, poor child I fancy I see her now straining her eyes to the horizon, dreaming of her dear mountains and loch."

There was a short silence, and she said in a changed voice:

"But I have not finished my story yet. I have not told you what happened to Jane and Patrick. It was not until we came back to England, a year later, that I knew, and then it was a shock to me. I am afraid I was very selfish all through that year, or I should have drawn it from Jane sooner. It seems that Allan's conduct made her very angry with the whole family, and while in Cairo nursing me she learnt a great deal about the world generally that she had never known before. Among other things she heard how wild Patrick and his brother had been, and she made up her mind she would have no more to do with anyone of the name of Quinn, for my sake. By a strange chance, Patrick's regiment came to Cairo, and he sought her out at once and asked her to marry him. A very stormy scene followed, in which Jane vented her wrath against Allan upon poor Patrick and denounced the whole family. Then she accused him of drinking and betting, told him she believed no one of his name could keep faith, and sent him away.

"Poor Patrick; poor Jane--looking back now, I believe theirs was, after all, the saddest case. You see she loved him all the time, though she did not know how much until she had sent him away. And he loved her, too. For her sake he would have changed, and there was much good in him; only when she sent him away like that he just gave in and sank deeper, and not very long afterward he died of sunstroke in India. For a long time Jane never breathed a word concerning him, and then one day I found her accidentally with her head down on his photograph, and I made her tell me all.

"It was a strange mystery how one man's perfidy should be permitted to spoil three lives, but it is good to think that what looks so mysterious to our dim eyes is perfectly clear to Him, and in the end we shall understand and be satisfied.

"That is all, dear! Now you know why sister and I have never married, yet are rich because we have known the deep wonder of Love. It is worth some sorrow to have that knowledge, and there is no life so barren, whatever else it holds, as the life that has not known a deep and true Love."

She got up, and in the firelight it seemed to Eileen that some inner radiance lit up her sweet, lined face, reflecting a faint aureole round her silver hair.

"I hear them coming upstairs. G.o.d bless you, dear," and she stooped to kiss Eileen's forehead before the others stepped softly into the room.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

GOOD-BYE.

It was the early January twilight the day before they left that Jack and Paddy went round to take their last farewells. They slipped out quietly and went alone on purpose, as neither felt particularly sure of themselves, and they were determined not to upset the others. This very fact made Paddy remark resolutely, as they walked down to the quay:

"Now, we're not going to be sentimental, Jack, and we're not going to act as if saying good-by was awful. We've just got to pretend we like it, do you see!"

"I'm with you," he answered at once, "only you'll have to show me the way."

"Let's take hands and pretend we're children again to begin with," was the prompt reply, and then, hand in hand, they stood and looked across the water to Warrenpoint.

"We've had some fun there, haven't we!" said Paddy. "Do you remember the first time we crossed alone, when you were about ten and I was six, and what a row we got into afterward!--and three weeks later we decided it was worth it and went again? Jack! what a scoundrel you were!" and she laughed up into his face.

"I, a scoundrel indeed! I like that! Why, you put me up to nearly everything, and called me a coward if I held back."

"Did I?" innocently. "How wrong of me! Good-by, my dear loch, we're only going away for a little while, and well soon be back. Mind you don't forget." And she turned briskly away, pulling Jack after her.

All through the grounds of The Ghan House and the Parsonage, path by path, they trampled, laughing at a recollection here, an escapade there, each pretending not to notice how near to tears they both felt. Last of all they came to the churchyard, and the hand in Jack's tightened involuntarily.

"It will be the making of us, you know, Jack," she said, throwing back her head with an odd little jerk, and speaking at random. "I can see it well enough now. If you had not been suddenly awakened to the true state of things, you'd just have hung on here, and never been anything at all but two dear little old maids' spoiled darling. By and by you would have taken to sipping tea, and knitting, and having your slippers warmed, and a hot-water bottle at nights, and grown very stout, and quite forgotten you were ever meant to be a man. You'd have been for all the world like one of Lady Dudley's precious kittens, that are not allowed out in the rain for fear of getting their feet wet. You wouldn't have been able to help yourself--just everything would have tended to it.

"Oh! of course it's a splendid thing for both of us," running on. "I'd have developed into an oddity of some sort, you may be sure, and been a kind of show person of the neighbourhood. Or perhaps I'd never have grown up at all. I'd just have remained a rowdy kid--and fancy a rowdy kid of thirty-five! wouldn't it be awful! Now I'm going to be a good son--it sounds lovely, doesn't it? I'm so glad daddy put it that way.

Being a good daughter sounds namby-pamby and Sunday-schoolish, but being a good son, when you happen to be a girl, sounds just fine. And then it's splendid not having to teach, isn't it? Not that I could, for I don't know anything; but I might have had to be a nursery governess and worry about after tiresome children. Mixing medicines sounds much more exciting, though, I think, if I might have had my choice of anything, I'd have been one of the keepers at the Zoo. It would be just lovely to be with the animals all day long, and find out all their funny little ways, and make friends of them. But best of all would have been to come to the Argentine with you," hurrying on without giving him time to speak. "You'll ride bare-headed over endless gra.s.s plains, and have great times with the cattle, and shoot and fish, and have wide-spreading skies all around you still, while I'll be suffocated among the s.m.u.ts and chimney-pots. Oh, Jack, Jack!" clinging to him with sudden weakness, "G.o.d might have made me a man, mightn't He? Then I could have come and been a cowboy with you, instead of mixing silly medicines among the s.m.u.ts and chimney-pots."

Jack put his arm round her, but for a few moments he could not trust himself to speak.

"It'll be all right by and by, Paddy," he said at last. "You'll get married, you know, to some awfully nice chap, who'll take you back to the country again and just spoil you all day long."

She shrank away from him suddenly, almost with an angry gesture.

"No, I won't get married," she said. "I tell you I won't--I won't--I won't!"

Jack looked taken aback.

"Why ever not!" he asked.

"Because I won't, that's why. You're no better than the other men, Jack--and you're all a lot of blind owls. You think a girl can't do without getting married--that just that, and nothing else, is her idea of happiness! Such rubbish--you ought to have more sense."

Jack was quite at a loss to understand in what way he had so unexpectedly offended, and for the matter of that Paddy was not much wiser but under her show of determination and spirit her heart was just breaking, and she felt she must go to one extreme or another to keep up at all. And then that he could talk so calmly of her getting married and belonging to someone else? Was it possible he would not care the least little bit if his old playfellow could be the same to him no longer? Did his love for Eileen make her no more of any account at all?

Of course it was so--she could see it plainly now; he did not really mind leaving anything or anybody except Eileen; the rest of them were all in a bunch--just people he had been fond of once. Her goaded heart ran on, exaggerating every little detail in its misery, and adding tenfold to its own loneliness; while in every thought she wronged Jack.

Before all things he was intensely affectionate and true; and so deep was his distress at leaving his aunts and the old home and each inmate of The Ghan House, that he had given less thought to Eileen than usual, as the day of departure approached.

"What have I done, Paddy?" he said, seeing the wild, strained look in her eyes.

"Go away," she said. "Go away to Eileen, and leave me with daddy."

The tears rained down her cheeks, as she turned from him to her father's grave, and leaning against a tombstone behind it buried her face in her hands, murmuring pa.s.sionately:

"Why did you go away, daddy, when I wanted you so? Didn't you know I hadn't anyone else?--that I'd be just all alone? Mother loves Eileen best, and Jack and the aunties love her best, but you and I belonged to each other, and we didn't mind. It wasn't kind to go away and leave me.

It wasn't good of G.o.d--it was cruel. I'll be a good son, because I promised, but I'd much rather come to you, and no one would mind.

Daddy, daddy, can't you hear me? Ah! I know you can't or you'd come to me. You couldn't stay in Heaven or anywhere else if you knew your Paddy had this awful--awful lonely feeling--you'd just make G.o.d let you come back to me. Only you can't hear, you can't hear, and I'm all alone-- alone. What shall I do through all the long years to come?"

She was now in a paroxysm of weeping, all the more intense that she had kept up so long, and Jack was frightened. His impulse was to run and fetch one of the aunts, but something held him back. Instinct told him that there was in Paddy a kindred soul, which would shrink from letting anyone see her in tears if she could possibly help it. So he stood and waited beside her silently, as he would have wished her to do had he been in her place. And when Paddy grew quieter, this action in itself appealed to her more than anything else could have done, and all her anger against him died away.

"I'm awfully silly, Jack. I don't know what you'll think of me," she said, trying to stay the tears.

"I think you're rather unkind," he answered.

She seemed surprised and asked "Why?"

"You know I think the world of you," he blurted out, feeling very near tears himself. "You know you're just the best pal a chap ever had."

Paddy gave a little crooked smile.