Читать книгу Paddy-The-Next-Best-Thing - Gertrude Page - Страница 20

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 makeshift.”

“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 shore. 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 shines, 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 shining warmly. Here, sitting down in her favourite attitude, 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 God! 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 sex at all.”

“Isn’t it rather poor to judge the many by a few who may have disappointed you?”

“It would be more correct to say the ‘few’ by the many who have disgusted me.”

“I am sorry,” she said simply: “I wish it had not been so.”

“If you knew the world as I do, you would see that it could hardly be otherwise.”

“Still, I am sorry,” she reiterated; “dreadfully sorry.”

He watched her a moment covertly.

She was looking her best, with the freshness of the mountain air glowing in her eyes and cheeks. He was thinking she looked as well in her tam-o’-shanter, short skirt, and blouse, with linen collar and cuffs, as anything he had ever seen her in. Compared with some of the resplendent beauties he had admired, she was as the cosy fireside is to the marble palace, or the fragrant violet is to the dazzling poppies. And then for a moment on the mountain side, with the fresh blowing winds, and the fragrance, and the loveliness of the lake and mountains, an unusually soft mood seemed to take possession of him, and something apart from her beauty to stir his pulses and rest his senses. As they moved on, he dropped the bitter, sneering tone so habitual to him, and chatted to her frankly and charmingly with unmistakably an assumption of some special link between them.

Later on, Eileen went in home with shining eyes and light footsteps, feeling as if already her prayer had been answered; and Lawrence’s mother glanced at him across the luncheon table, wondering to what good angel they were indebted for his amiability, instead of his more usual taciturn moodiness.

In the afternoon he drove her out himself to pay a call some miles distant, chatting pleasantly all the way; and at dinner, he condescended to discuss various matters connected with the dance, instead of preserving his customary silence.

Then he went into his den for a smoke, and so preoccupied was he for a few moments that he did not notice a large, flat piece of pasteboard lying on the table, which had evidently arrived by the evening post. Instead, he glanced with a casual air of appreciation round his beloved bachelor domain, wondering, half-unconsciously, if perhaps the time were coming for him to settle down and give up his wanderings.

His eye roved dreamily over his fine collection of foreign swords, picked up in all quarters of the globe, and many other strange weapons of warfare, arranged fantastically upon the walls—his sporting prints, worth large sums of money as originals—his guns and riding stocks—his trophies of big game shooting.

Lastly, his books, of which he had also a fine collection, though it could not altogether be said to be a credit to his taste; and his prints and photographs strewn in all directions.

“I wonder what Eileen would think of them?” was the involuntary thought in his mind, and his thin lips parted in a slight smile.

Then he caught sight of the carefully tied pasteboard, and stepping forward picked it up with a curious expression.

“By Jove!—Queenie,” he muttered, seeing the writing, and proceeded to cut the string.

Then he drew from its wrappers the full-length portrait of a beautiful girl in fancy dress.

For a long time he stood perfectly still looking at it, then he held it at arm’s length, trying it in different lights, and surveying it with keenly criticising eyes.

“Superb,” was his final verdict, muttered under his breath; then he leaned it up against another photograph in the place of honour on his writing desk, and turned his attention to a little scented note that had accompanied it. A printed slip of newspaper was enclosed in the letter, but first he read, in a bold, girlish handwriting:

“Dear Old Lawrie—

“Read the enclosed slip and bow down—even your cynical old head owes homage to such a paragon, and foreseeing my victory, in gracious acceptance of the same homage, I send you the latest portrait of this Queen of Beauty.

“When shall we prepare your den for you, and duly banish your favourite enemies? You said you would come again in the autumn—and consequently Calcutta waits.

“Earl Selloyd haunts our door-step, and mamma has a fancy for a peer as son-in-law. Comprenez?

“Queenie.”

On the slip of newspaper he read:

“At the fancy dress ball last night, given in honour of Lord Kitchener, one of the most striking among the younger women was the beautiful Miss Gwendoline Grant-Carew, only daughter of the Hon. and Mrs. Jack Grant-Carew. She is undoubtedly one of the reigning queens of English beauty, and as charming and vivacious as she is fair to look upon.”

Holding the letter in his hand, Lawrence again gazed critically at the portrait on his desk, and the suggestion of a pleased expression dawned on his face.

“So Selloyd’s trying to get in the running there, is he?” he mused. “Beastly cad! I owe him one or two since our college days. It will be almost as good sport as tiger shooting to spoil his game for him. I think I’ll start for India next month.”

Then he put the little note carefully into his pocket-book, and, lighting a cigar, sank into a deep arm-chair and stared into the fire, dreaming of Gwendoline Grant-Carew.