Paddy The Next Best Thing Part 61

Paddy shook her head.

"I can't tell you anything, Eily," she answered. "Please don't ask me."

And Eileen had to give in.

Jack tried when he came for a flying visit about wall-papers and paint and things, and it was then for the first time that they learnt of Paddy's unlooked-for decision.

"What colour is your room to be, Paddy?" he asked. "I am waiting your orders."

"You are very good," a little uncomfortably, "but I'm not coming to live at The Ghan House."

"Not coming to live at The Ghan House!" as if he could not believe his own ears, while Eileen and her mother looked up in amazement.

Paddy had to brace herself with the utmost determination.

"I have thought it all over carefully," she said, "and I have decided to stay in London. I have developed a very independent spirit of late, somehow," with a little smile, "and I mean to stick to my post."

"But, my dear child--" began Mrs Adair in great distress, while Jack threw a newspaper at her head and said:

"Don't talk rubbish, Paddy."

Eileen looked dumbfounded.

"It is not rubbish," Paddy went on bravely, "and nothing you can say will alter me. I have spoken to uncle about it, and he is going to let me live with them and pay something." She paused a moment, drawing a pattern on the tablecloth. "He does not want me to pay," she went on, "he says he will be only too glad to have me, but I would like to feel perfectly independent. He is lonely sometimes, and he always wanted a daughter."

A mistiness crossed her eyes, and she smiled a little crooked smile as she added:

"Daddy always wanted a son, and I did my best. He is daddy's brother, and he wants a daughter--I am going to do my best again. I never seem to quite 'get there,' do If--I am evidently destined only to s.h.i.+ne as a subst.i.tute--to be only the-next-best-thing."

"But, Paddy," coming behind her and leaning over the table with his arm across her shoulders, "you hate London so," coaxed Jack. "How are Eileen and I to be perfectly happy, thinking of you pining for fresh air here?"

"You must not think--it would only be silly--you will have each other and,"--there was a little catch in her voice--"mother."

Mrs Adair looked up quickly; hitherto she had not spoken.

"No, Paddy," she said, "I shall stay with you. I do not mind London at all now I have got used to it, and I could not leave you behind alone.

I should not be happy at Omeath without you."

But Paddy would not hear of it, and after a long discussion it was finally decided that she should remain with her uncle for six months.

Having gained her point, she quickly drew their attention back to the wall-papers, which were eagerly discussed in their turn, amid the usual amount of nonsense and twitting on her part and Jack's.

The next day she told her uncle that she had won her point, and was coming to them, at any rate for the present. Something like tears instantly dimmed the kindly doctor's eyes; he had grown more than fond of his young dispenser and niece.

"It will be as good as having a daughter," he said, a little huskily.

Paddy laughed. "It is my particular _forte_," she said, "to be the-next-best-thing."

Her aunt was no less pleased.

"Really, my dear," she remarked, folding her hands contentedly upon her ample front, "I shall be very pleased to have you. I don't like girls, as a rule--they're all so flighty and flirty, and fond of gew-gaws and things, but you are somehow different. You are not as interested in the church guilds and parish meetings as I could wish, and you are a little wanting in respect to poor Mr d.i.c.kinson," naming the meek young curate; "but you are young yet, and by and by you will see how empty and shallow and vain are all amus.e.m.e.nts compared with church work and the beautiful church services."

Paddy had her doubts, but she kept them to herself, and just then Basil came in to give his opinion.

"The guv'nor says you're going to stay here after March," he exclaimed.

"How beastly, jolly, thundering nice!"

"My dear boy!" gasped his mother, horror-struck; "what an extraordinary way of expressing yourself."

"Says what I mean pretty straight, anyhow. I guess I'll have a key of the dispensary and only allow Paddy in at her proper hours. If we don't mind she'll go messing about with those silly old medicines half the day."

So it was all arranged, and Paddy was somewhat relieved, but her heart was unusually heavy on that February afternoon, with the weight of a longing that, in its steady insistence, was beginning to undermine those strong defences of hers, built up by that spirit of fanaticism so strangely blended with her open, generous nature.

It had been there for some time now, this creeping, growing longing, but until the Christmas holiday it had been given such short shrift, it scarcely dared to hold up its head. Whenever it did, seizing advantage of some soft moment, it was almost immediately stamped on by the warrior-like, fanatical Paddy, nursing her sense of injury, and armour-plating herself against a softness her heart clamoured more and more strongly to yield to.

But during the Christmas holiday the longing had developed an ache, which gave it a new power. The ache of an incredible loneliness, which seemed to come down suddenly out of nowhere. And always when the ache was strongest, it seemed to sound insistently in her ears and in her soul just one sentence: "Mavourneen, mavourneen, bears have understanding when they love as I love you..."

And with the sentence came other thoughts. Thoughts that thrilled and frightened her both at once, setting her heart beating to a strange new measure. It was a measure she had experienced for the first time that afternoon in his den, when all the others were paired off, and they two left alone together. When, sitting quietly at his fireside, she had felt as if her little world were entirely changed, and she left in a position that required much readjusting all round. And it was so difficult to readjust herself. With Eileen and Jack married and living at The Ghan House, and her mother with them, what was to be her place in the general scheme? Was there, indeed, nothing for her but that independent spirit, and the dispensary, and this fighting against an ache that threatened to overpower her heart? And then would come the thought, suppose she gave up fighting?... suppose... suppose... But there Paddy usually stopped short--a strange new world she was shyly afraid of lay beyond that word, and the fanatical spirit was promptly re-enforced. Of course she could not give up fighting. It was monstrous to think it; and for a little while the old flash would be in her eyes, and the old resolute set of the lips.

And then, at the first "letting go," back would come the same engrossing memory: "Mavourneen, mavourneen, bears have understanding when they love as I love you."

Ah, what understanding he had, what wild allurement!

Fancy played with her then, laughing at the fanatic, snapping light fingers at the warrior-spirit. "Supposing you were to let yourself go,"

said Fancy, "and to swim out into the comforting warmth of that understanding, shutting away the loneliness with it, and letting all the readjusting solve itself into just sitting by a fireside that was all your own for ever...!"

How the ache and the longing grew when Fancy triumphed, how alluringly the voice sounded.

So it came to a day when Paddy the Fearless asked herself a question, and left it unanswered because she was afraid. But though she spoke no reply, perhaps it was given just as poignantly in a bright head buried in a pillow, and a little reluctant whisper, breathed to the feathers: "Oh, Lawrence, I can't help it. I want you. I want you."

And the next afternoon, that sombre February day, she stood in the window still remembering, still vainly wrestling and puzzling, when a taxi drew up at the door, and Gwen stepped out.

"Wait," she said to the driver and ran up the steps with a haste that was somewhat startling.

Paddy went out into the hall and opened the door herself, and immediately Gwen exclaimed: "Oh, I'm so glad you're in, Paddy. Lawrence has been hurt in a motor smash. He wants to see you badly, and I said I would take you. Be quick, won't you? I don't like leaving him. He is in great pain, and one never knows..."

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE.

THE INVALID.

Paddy hesitated a moment, looking straight into Gwen's eyes, almost with a challenge.

"How much is he hurt?"

"I don't know. It happened three days ago, and he was taken to a hospital, but father had him brought in an ambulance to our house to-day. Surely you are not going to refuse to come...!"

"No," said Paddy slowly, "I am coming;" but her instinct told her he would not have been moved if he had been very badly hurt, and she believed that Gwen knew it. Still, when she saw him, her heart smote her indefinably; for Lawrence lying on a sofa with his arm in a splint, and a white, exhausted air of endurance, was something she could not steel herself against. She wished vaguely that Gwen had not left them alone so quickly, and moved away a little further, uncertain of herself.

"I'm not much hurt," he told her carelessly, though even as he spoke she saw that a spasm of sharp pain made him clench his hands and teeth.

"But I expect I'm in for a bad time with my arm, and may have to have it off in the end. Serves me right, I suppose." Then he added: "I don't want the mater to know anything about it yet. She would only worry herself ill. How are you? It was nice of you to come." He was looking at her as if he could read her soul, and Paddy felt her colour rising, and was unable to meet his eyes. She longed suddenly to go to him in his pain-wrung helplessness and touch his bandaged arm, and the fear that she would show it held her silent and constrained and aloof. With his quick intuition Lawrence noted everything.