PATTY CHOOSES HER CAREER.
The dinner party on Christmas Eve was the first of a series of
brilliant festivities, extending all through the hot last week of
1880, and over the cool new year (for which fires were lighted and
furs brought out again), and into the sultry middle of January, and up
to the memorable anniversary of the day on which the three Miss Kings
had first arrived in Melbourne; and when they were over this was the
state of the sisters' affairs:--Elizabeth a little tired with so much
dissipation, but content to do all that was asked of her, since she was
not asked to leave her husband's side; Eleanor, still revelling in the
delights of wealth and power, and in Mr. Westmoreland's accumulating
torments; and Patty worn and pale with sleepless nights and heart-sick
with hope deferred, longing to set herself straight with Paul Brion
before she left Australia, and seeing her chances of doing so dwindling
and fading day by day. And now they were beginning to prepare for their
voyage to a world yet larger and fuller than the one in which they had
lived and learned so much.
One afternoon, while Mrs. Duff-Scott and Eleanor paid calls, Elizabeth
and Patty went for the last time to Myrtle Street, to pack up the
bureau and some of their smaller household effects in preparation
for the men who were to clear the rooms on the morrow. Mr. Yelverton
accompanied them, and lingered in the small sitting-room for awhile,
helping here and there, or pretending to do so. For his entertainment
they boiled the kettle and set out the cheap cups and saucers, and they
had afternoon tea together, and Patty played the Moonlight Sonata; and
then Elizabeth bade her husband go and amuse himself at his club and
come back to them in an hour's time. He went, accordingly; and the two
sisters pinned up their skirts and tucked up their sleeves, and worked
with great diligence when he was no longer there to distract them. They
worked so well that at the end of half an hour they had nothing left
to do, except a little sorting of house linen and books. Elizabeth
undertaking this business, Patty pulled down her sleeves and walked to
the window; and she stood there for a little while, leaning her arm on
the frame and her head on her arm.
"Paul Brion is at home, Elizabeth," she said, presently.
"Is he, dear?" responded the elder sister, who had begun to think
(because her husband thought it) that it was a pity Paul Brion, being
so hopelessly cantankerous, should be allowed to bother them any more.
"Yes. And, Elizabeth, I hope you won't mind--it is very improper, I
know--but _I shall go and see him._ It is my last chance. I will go and
say good-bye to Mrs. M'Intyre, and then I will run up to his room and
speak to him--just for one minute. It is my last chance," she repeated;
"I shall never have another."
"But, my darling--"
"Oh, don't be afraid"--drawing herself up haughtily--"I am not going to
be _quite_ a fool. I shall not throw myself into his arms. I am simply
going to apologise for cutting him on Cup Day. I am simply going to set
myself right with him before I go away--for his father's sake."
"It is a risky experiment, my dear, whichever way you look at it. I
think you had better write."
"No. I have no faith in writing. You cannot make a letter say what
you mean. And he will not come to us--he will not share his father's
friendship for Kingscote--he was not at home when you and Kingscote
called on him--he was not even at Mrs. Aarons's on Friday. There is no
way to get at him but to go and see him now. I hear him in his room,
and he is alone. I will not trouble him long--I will let him see that
I can do without him quite as well as he can do without me--but I must
and will explain the horrible mistake that I know he has fallen into
about me, before I lose the chance for the rest of my life."
"My dear, how can you? How can you tell him your true reason for
cutting him? How can you do it at all, without implying more than you
would like to imply? You had better leave it, Patty. Or let me go for
you, my darling."
But Patty insisted upon going herself, conscientiously assuring her
sister that she would do it in ten minutes, without saying anything
improper about Mrs. Aarons, and without giving the young man the
smallest reason to suppose that she cared for him any more than she
cared for his father, or was in the least degree desirous of being
cared for by him. And this was how she did it.
Paul was sitting at his table, with papers strewn before him. He had
been writing since his mid-day breakfast, and was half way through
a brilliant article on "Patronage in the Railway Department," when
the sound of the piano next door, heard for the first time after a
long interval, scattered his political ideas and set him dreaming and
meditating for the rest of the afternoon. He was leaning back in his
chair, with his pipe in his mouth, his hands in his pockets, and his
legs stretched out rigidly under the table, when he heard a tap at the
door. He said "Come in," listlessly, expecting Betsy's familiar face;
and when, instead of an uninteresting housemaid, he saw the beautiful
form of his beloved standing on the threshold, he was so stunned with
astonishment that at first he could not speak.
"Miss--Miss Yelverton!" he exclaimed, flinging his pipe aside and
struggling to his feet.
"I hope I am not disturbing you," said Patty, very stiffly. "I have
only come for a moment--because we are going away, and--and--and I had
something to say to you before we went. We have been so unfortunate--my
sister and brother-in-law were so unfortunate--as to miss seeing you
the other day. I--we have come this afternoon to do some packing,
because we are giving up our old rooms, and I thought--I thought--"
She was stammering fearfully, and her face was scarlet with confusion
and embarrassment. She was beginning already to realise the difficulty
of her undertaking.
"Won't you sit down?" he said, wheeling his tobacco-scented arm-chair
out of its corner. He, too, was very much off his balance and
bewildered by the situation, and his voice, though grave, was shaken.
"No, thank you," she replied, with what she intended to be a haughty
and distant bow. "I only came for a moment--as I happened to be saying
good-bye to Mrs. M'Intyre. My sister is waiting for me. We are going
home directly. I just wanted--I only wanted"--she lifted her eyes, full
of wistful appeal, suddenly to his--"I wanted just to beg your pardon,
that's all. I was very rude to you one day, and you have never forgiven
me for it. I wanted to tell you that--that it was not what you thought
it was--that I had a reason you did not know of for doing it, and that
the moment after I was sorry--I have been sorry every hour of my life
since, because I knew I had given you a wrong impression, and I have
not been able to rectify it."
"I don't quite understand--" he began.
"No, I know--I know. And I can't explain. Don't ask me to explain.
Only _believe_," she said earnestly, standing before him and leaning
on the table, "that I have never, never been ungrateful for all the
kindness you showed us when we came here a year ago--I have always
been the same. It was not because I forgot that you were our best
friend--the best friend we ever had--that I--that I"--her voice was
breaking, and she was searching for her pocket-handkerchief--"that I
behaved to you as I did."
"Can't you tell me how it was?" he asked, anxiously. "You have nothing
to be grateful for, Miss Patty--Miss Yelverton, I ought to say--and
I cannot feel that I have anything to forgive. But I should like to
know--yes, now that you have spoken of it, I think you ought to tell
me--why you did it."
"I cannot--I cannot. It was something that had been said of you. I
believed it for a moment, because--because it looked as if it were
true--but only for a moment. When I came to think of it I knew it was
impossible."
Paul Brion's keen face, that had been pale and strained, cleared
suddenly, and his dark eyes brightened. He was quite satisfied with
this explanation. He knew what Patty meant as well as if there had been
but one word for a spade, and she had used it--as well, and even better
than she could have imagined; for she forgot that she had no right or
reason to resent his shortcomings, save on the ground of a special
interest in him, and he was quick to remember it.
"Oh, do sit down a moment," he said, pushing the arm-chair a few inches
forward. He was trying to think what he might dare to say to her to
show how thankful he was. It was impossible for her to help seeing the
change in him.
"No," she replied, hastily pulling herself together. "I must go
now. I had no business to come here at all--it was only because it
seemed the last chance of speaking to you. I have said what I came to
say, and now I must go back to my sister." She looked all round the
well-remembered room--at the green rep suite, and the flowery carpet,
and the cedar chiffonnier, and the Cenci over the fire-place--at Paul's
bookshelves and littered writing-table, and his pipes and letters on
the chimney-piece, and his newspapers on the floor; and then she looked
at him with eyes that _would_ cry, though she did her very best to help
it. "Good-bye," she said, turning towards the door.
He took her outstretched hand and held it "Good-bye--if it must be so,"
he said. "You are really going away by the next mail?"
"Yes."
"And not coming back again?"
"I don't know."
"Well," he said, "you are rich, and a great lady now. I can only wish
with all my heart for your happiness--I cannot hope that I shall ever
be privileged to contribute to it again. I am out of it now, Miss
Patty."
She left her right hand in his, and with the other put her handkerchief
to her eyes. "Why should you be out of it?" she sobbed. "Your father
is not out of it. It is you who have deserted us--we should never have
deserted you."
"I thought you threw me over that day on the racecourse, and I have
only tried to keep my place."
"But I have told you I never meant that."
"Yes, thank God! Whatever happens, I shall have this day to
remember--that you came to me voluntarily to tell me that you had never
been unworthy of yourself. You have asked me to forgive you, but it is
I that want to be forgiven--for insulting you by thinking that money
and grandeur and fine clothes could change you."
"They will never change me," said Patty, who had broken down
altogether, and was making no secret of her tears. In fact, they were
past making a secret of. She had determined to have no tender sentiment
when she sought this interview, but she found herself powerless to
resist the pathos of the situation. To be parting from Paul Brion--and
it seemed as if it were really going to be a parting--was too
heartbreaking to bear as she would have liked to bear it.
"When you were poor," he said, hurried along by a very strong current
of emotions of various kinds, "when you lived here on the other side of
the wall--if you had come to me--if you had spoken to me, and treated
me like this _then_--"
She drew her hand from his grasp, and tried to collect herself.
"Hush--we must not go on talking," she said, with a flurried air; "you
must not keep me here now."
"No, I will not keep you--I will not take advantage of you now," he
replied, "though I am horribly tempted. But if it had been as it used
to be--if we were both poor alike, as we were then--if you were Patty
King instead of Miss Yelverton--I would not let you out of this room
without telling me something more. Oh, why did you come at all?" he
burst out, in a sudden rage of passion, quivering all over as he looked
at her with the desire to seize her and kiss her and satisfy his
starving heart.
"You have been hard to me always--from first to last--but this is the
very cruellest thing you have ever done. To come here and drive me
wild like this, and then go and leave me us if I were Mrs. M'Intyre or
the landlord you were paying off next door. I wonder what you think
I am made of? I have stood everything--I have stood all your snubs,
and slights, and hard usage of me--I have been humble and patient as
I never was to anybody who treated me so in my life before--but that
doesn't mean that I am made of wood or stone. There are limits to
one's powers of endurance, and though I have borne so much, I _can't_
bear _this_. I tell you fairly it is trying me too far." He stood at
the table fluttering his papers with a hand as unsteady as that of
a drunkard, and glaring at her, not straight into her eyes--which,
indeed, were cast abjectly on the floor--but all over her pretty,
forlorn figure, shrinking and cowering before him. "You are kind enough
to everybody else," he went on; "you might at least show some common
humanity to me. I am not a coxcomb, I hope, but I know you can't have
helped knowing what I have felt for you--no woman can help knowing when
a man cares for her, though he never says a word about it. A dog who
loves you will get some consideration for it, but you are having no
consideration for me. I hope I am not rude--I'm afraid I am forgetting
my manners, Miss Patty--but a man can't think of manners when he is
driven out of his senses. Forgive me, I am speaking to you too roughly.
It was kind of you to come and tell me what you have told me--I am not
ungrateful for that--but it was a cruel kindness. Why didn't you send
me a note--a little, cold, formal note? or why did you not send Mrs.
Yelverton to explain things? That would have done just as well. You
have paid me a great honour, I know; but I can't look at it like that.
After all, I was making up my mind to lose you, and I think I could
have borne it, and got on somehow, and got something out of life in
spite of it. But now how can I bear it?--how can I bear it _now?_"
Patty bowed like a reed to this unexpected storm, which, nevertheless,
thrilled her with wild elation and rapture, through and through. She
had no sense of either pride or shame; she never for a moment regretted
that she had not written a note, or sent Mrs. Yelverton in her
place. But what she said and what she did I will leave the reader to
conjecture. There has been too much love-making in these pages of late.
Tableau. We will ring the curtain down.
Meanwhile Elizabeth sat alone when her work was done, wondering what
was happening at Mrs. M'Intyre's, until her husband came to tell her
that it was past six o'clock, and time to go home to dress for dinner.
"The child can't possibly be with _him_," said Mr. Yelverton, rather
severely. "She must be gossiping with the landlady."
"I think I will go and fetch her," said Elizabeth. But as she was
patting on her bonnet, Patty came upstairs, smiling and preening her
feathers, so to speak--bringing Paul with her.