Paddy-The-Next-Best-Thing. Gertrude Page
again, and to be happy instead of hard and indifferent.”
The stars came out and a crescent moon hung over the mountains.
The night was gloriously beautiful—gloriously still—and a deep restfulness stole over her spirit. In the deep, silent depths of her Celtic imagination, in which dwelt ever paramount, before all, that divine love of beauty which imbues a too often prosaic world with a vague wonder of loveliness, and fair promise, she saw only the heights to which men might rise, and the power of goodness, and held to her ideals in the face of all destroying.
She was aroused at last by a step approaching over the shingle that was so like the step of the afternoon that she started and held her breath in wondering expectation.
But it was only Jack, seeking for her with anxious qualms about the damp night air, and a certain glow in his eyes when he found her, which might have told her many things, had she had leisure to observe it.
“You had better come in, Eileen,” he said simply. “It is too damp to sit by the water. I have been looking for you everywhere; I was so afraid you would take cold.”
She got up at once, and with a murmured word of thanks, followed him silently to the house, still lost in a far-off dream of happiness.
Chapter Eight.
Paddy’s Pigs.
A spell of beautiful autumn weather brought Lawrence often to the beach as of old to get his boat, but Kathleen and Doreen no longer accompanied him. They were not asked, and had they been would have declined the honour. A nameless feud was waging between the dilettante brother and the two lively Irish girls, scarcely less wild than Paddy, who resented his cool superiority and cutting sarcasms to their inmost core.
It did not interfere with anyone’s pleasure, however, as they had hosts of friends all over the countryside, and Lawrence preferred having Eileen to himself. It was hardly realised by the elders that with so many young folks about two should have much opportunity of being alone, or a little more discretion might have been shown. They were all supposed to be out together, and probably were at the start-off, but a moment’s thought might have suggested Paddy and Jack most unlikely occupants of Lawrence’s trim yacht.
However, they were mellow, dreaming days, and an atmosphere of peaceful dreaminess seemed to pervade them all—like the calm before a storm.
To do Lawrence justice, he did not go out of his way to win Eileen’s love. On the contrary, he did go a little out of his way to shock her, but since she possessed divination enough to realise something of this, it had the opposite effect. She was so simple and natural herself that she was incapable of understanding deception. She believed Lawrence wanted her to know him at his worst—to know all the thoughts he harboured so directly opposed to her dearest beliefs—and so let her love him as he was instead of as she would have him.
And the mere idea only stimulated her love. Pained she inevitably was, but the offered up her pain at the shrine of Love, and went deeper into the maze.
If Lawrence dimly perceived this, he blinded himself to it. To him love-making was a very different process to this calm interchange of ideas, and he certainly refrained from much that he would not have thought twice about with any other pretty girl who interested and pleased him. Could any more be expected? No one could ever say he made love to Eileen. He did not make love to her, but he sought her companionship beyond all other, and looked his admiration of her quiet loveliness, regardless that to such as she these delicate attentions were almost a declaration. For the rest, a man must have something to amuse him, and her naïvété really was rather refreshing, and of course it wouldn’t hurt her to learn a little more about the world generally from a less narrowed horizon. So he sought her day by day, and made no further allusion to that projected Eastern tour, till Eileen forgot all about it, and waited in a dreaming ecstasy for her joy to take actual shape.
The only two who seemed at first to scent danger were the harum-scarums, Paddy and Jack. Such glorious days could not, of course, be wasted in a piffling little sail on the Loch or mooning on the beach, but there was time occasionally for a passing thought of the two who sailed and mooned so contentedly.
“I can’t think why Eileen doesn’t pack him off,” Paddy said once. “He makes me want to stamp, with his calm superiority. Fancy spending hours listening to the drivel he talks when she might be ratting with us,”—which somewhat remarkable comparison would no doubt have rather astonished the Oxford B.A.
As a matter of fact, he was enlightened with it the following day, for while leaving The Ghan House to go home, he was suddenly knocked nearly silly by a flying, furious apparition, who charged into him round a sharp corner, carrying a blackthorn in one hand and a ferret in the other.
For one second Paddy regarded him with unmistakable disgust for staying her progress, then her face suddenly grew excited again, as she exclaimed: “There! there, see, there it goes. Come on—we’ll have him yet,” and dragging the astonished Lawrence after her, charged on down the hill. “Here! you take the ferret,” she gasped, “but mind how you hold him. He bites like old Nick,” and she thrust the offensive little beast into his hand. Lawrence took it with as good a grace as he could! command, and when they ran the rat to earth exhibited a momentary enthusiasm nearly equal to hers.
“There!” said Paddy, holding up the slaughtered vermin, with shining eyes. “Wasn’t that a good catch?”
“Very. What shall I do with this!” and Lawrence held up the ferret, with which he had again been unceremoniously saddled, with a comical air of martyrdom.
“Put it in your pocket for the present,” promptly “or are you afraid of spoiling the shape of your coat?” with a scornful inflection, as he looked vaguely disgusted.
“You can put it so, if you like,” he retorted, “though. I have many other coats.”
“What’s the matter with Peter?” eyeing the ferret affectionately. “He’s a beauty—if only he didn’t bite so. I’ll take him, if you like. Come along back to the barn and I’ll find you another blackthorn. You can’t think what sport it is. Fancy sitting in a spick and span little yacht, that could hardly turn over if it tried, and talking about stuffy, uninteresting people like Browning and Carlyle, when you might be ratting!” Leading the way up the hill again.
“Fancy!” ejaculated Lawrence. “You must really take me in hand. I’m afraid my education has been guided into foolish and worthless channels.”
“You needn’t bother to be sarcastic,” hurrying on, with her eyes eagerly on the barn. “It’s all wasted on me. I know what’s life and fun. You only know a lot of useless stuff that someone thought about life a long time ago, I don’t know how Eileen has the patience to listen to you. Come on,”—growing more excited—“Jack and Mr. Masterman have evidently unearthed some more!”
“I bow to your superior wisdom,” with a little smile that made his face suddenly almost winsome, and straightway threw himself heart and soul into the ethics of ratting, noting with a slight amusement, the big, cheery Ted Masterman’s evident predilection for the fair ratter.
But it was over Paddy’s adventure with the pigs that he won his first real spark of approval from her.
Paddy and Jack had a great friend near by in the person of one Patrick O’Grady, who farmed a small farm with an Irishman’s dilatoriness, helped therein by the two playmates. Paddy had sown seed for him, ploughed, harrowed, and dug potatoes—Jack likewise—both considering it their due, in return, to be consulted on all matters pertaining to the farm. This was how it came about that Paddy was mixed up in the sale of the pigs. She was at the farm when the disposal of those forty-five young pigs was discussed, and naturally took an active part in the impending decision. It was finally decided they should be sold