Ted Masterman.
“Was that all?” asked Ted Masterman, reaching across to tuck his
rain-proof coat, which he fortunately had with him, closer round her,
and looking still more amused.
“Not quite, but it’s all I’m going to tell you,” said Paddy.
“Oh, no, it isn’t,” with a smile; “you’re going to tell me the rest.”
“How do you know I am?” archly.
“Because people always have to do what I want them to.”
“How very odd!” in feigned surprise; “that is exactly how it is with
me!”
“So I should imagine,” looking into her laughing eyes with growing
interest.
“That’s pretty of you,” she said, “so I’ll go on. I was told you had a
lovely smile.”
“Someone was a kindly judge then. I wonder what you said.”
The twinkle in Paddy’s eyes literally shone.
“I said that if you bought picture post-cards and had a lovely smile
you must be a nincompoop.”
Ted threw his head back and shouted with laughter, exclaiming, “That’s
the best of all, and I quite agree with you!” Then they ran up against
the landing-stage, and he hurried her out of the boat and along the
road to his aunt’s as fast as she would go.
“My dear child!” was all Mrs Masterman said, when she saw her, and
without another word bustled her off upstairs, and flew to prepare a
hot bath.
“It’s nothing new,” she explained in answer to Ted’s queries later,
shaking her head drolly. “She’s just the wildest harum-scarum that ever
breathed, and her father positively delights in it. I must take you to
call. He’ll laugh himself nearly ill over this escapade, but for my
part, I think he would do better returning thanks for the multitudinous
times she has been given back to him, from the very gates of death.”
“But she wouldn’t have been drowned to-day, aunt. She could have swum
ashore.”
“She might have had cramp, or caught her death of cold, or a hundred
other things. It’s dreadful, to my thinking, for a girl to be so
absolutely a boy in everything. But there! she’s young yet, and I
daresay she’ll improve by and by.”
Ted, standing at the window with his hands in his pockets, staring
across the Loch, had an odd, inward conviction that there was no room
for improvement, but this he kept to himself, asking instead of her
father and home.
A little later, he made their acquaintance, as his aunt decided to keep
Paddy all night, and sent him to The Ghan House with a note of
explanation. Jack and Eileen were just returning from the Parsonage as
he arrived, and while Mrs Adair read the note aloud to the General, out
on the lawn where they were sitting, the two young people sauntered up.
“Lord love us!” exclaimed the General gleefully; “was there ever such a
girl before! Capsized, did she?—right out by Greenore!—managing the
boat alone, too!—and out there a day like this—by my faith a
good-plucked one! Here, Jack! you young scoundrel! why weren’t you out
with Paddy this afternoon? Here she’s been getting capsized right out
by Greenore and fished out of the water by this young man, while you
were wasting cartridges trying to hit snipe.
“Here’s my hand, sir,” turning to Ted and giving him a hearty
hand-shake, “and an old soldier’s thanks and blessing, and if there’s
anything I can do for you at any time just name it. Lord! what a girl
she is!” he finished, and held his sides and shook with laughter.
Meanwhile Mrs Adair added her thanks in a low, eager voice, asking
anxiously after Paddy’s welfare; and Jack took stock of the stranger
generally.
When he had finished reassuring Mrs Adair concerning her daughter, and
reasserting that he had really done nothing at all deserving of thanks,
Ted returned Jack’s scrutiny with almost as great interest, wondering
if this handsome young Irishman were Paddy’s brother.
“Let me introduce you to _my_ eldest daughter,” said Mrs Adair.
“Eileen, this is Mr Masterman from Dunluce.”
Eileen shook hands with her usual charming smile, and then Mrs Adair
introduced Jack, who, after a little further scrutiny, started on his
favourite topics of shooting and sailing, and finding Ted as interested
as himself, they quickly became good friends.
“Your daughter called out something about returning in the morning,”
Ted said to Mrs Adair, as he prepared to leave. “Some fishermen have
been out for the boat this afternoon, so very likely she will return in
it.”
“Perhaps you will accompany her,” said Mrs Adair at once. “_We_ shall
be delighted to see you to lunch if you will.”
Ted thanked her and accepted the invitation gladly, then hurried back
with various portions of Paddy’s belongings to Carlingford, hoping
vaguely that she might have insisted upon getting up and coming down to
dinner. Manlike, he had quite forgotten she could hardly appear without
a dress, and he felt quite unreasonably disappointed when he found the
table only laid for three, and he and his uncle and aunt sat down
together.
“I took the precaution of locking Paddy’s door,” Mrs Masterman
remarked, as they sat down. “I know what a terror she is to manage, and
after such a wetting it is most important that she should remain in bed
for the rest of the day.”
She had scarcely finished speaking when an apparition in the doorway,
clothed in an assortment of odds and ends of borrowed garments, and
with a face wreathed in smiles, remarked: “I wish roses hadn’t thorns.
Coming down the spout was child’s play, but the beastly thorns on the
rose creeper have quite spoilt my elegant hands.”
Mrs Masterman’s arms went up in horror, but the depressed rescuer was
instantly all smiles likewise, while he made room for her in his seat.
“If you’d known me as well as my own father does,” Paddy replied to her
hostess’ expostulations, “you’d as soon have thought of putting me down
the well, as locking me in a ‘common or garden’ bedroom. There’s always
a spout, or a coping, or a bow-window with leads, or something. How do
you do, Colonel Masterman?” extending her hand graciously. “I couldn’t
be expected to stay upstairs, with such delicious odours coming from
the kitchen, could I now?”
“Why, of course not, of course not,” exclaimed her host, who vied with
her father in enjoying all her adventures; “you must be very hungry
after such an adventure.”
“I should just think I am—_ravenous_!”
“But my dear, there is a tray all ready for you, and I was just going
to send your dinner upstairs.”
“I know you were, and you are very sweet and kind, but I’ve got an odd
failing about meals. I simply can’t eat, however hungry I am, if I’m
alone. It’s quite terrible, you know,” looking abnormally serious. “I
might be ready to eat myself with hunger, and if I’m all alone I
couldn’t take one single bite.”
“A lucky thing for yourself,” laughed Colonel Masterman, “though not,
perhaps, for anyone who chanced to be with you—for you’d be quite
certain to begin on them first.”
“It would depend upon who it was, and if they were nice and plump.”
“Oh, my dear,” exclaimed Mrs Masterman in a shocked voice; “what a
dreadful idea!”
“Then we’ll change the subject,” said Paddy, adding roguishly, “Do you
like picture post-cards, Mr Masterman?”
“I think people are very wanting in taste and very out-of-date who
don’t,” he answered promptly; “but perhaps in an out-of-the-way place
like this you have not yet seen many?”
“On the contrary,” sweetly, “we have seen so many that we are
positively sick of the very sight of them. I’m thinking of starting a
society, like the one in New York, for suppressing the tune called
‘Hiawatha,’ only mine will be directed against the post-card craze.”
“But I think they are so beautiful,” said Mrs Masterman, looking up
from her plate with a puzzled expression. “Really! sometimes I can
hardly tear myself away from Linton’s, they have such beautiful
specimens.”
“No? Well, you must take Mr Masterman with you to-morrow. He’ll simply
love it, and he won’t know how to tear himself away either. Colonel
Masterman will have to come by the next train to try and lure you both
home again.”
Ted Masterman’s expression had a “wait-till-I-catch-you” air, but she
only went off into an airy description of her youthful admirer on the
tennis court, which lasted until the two elder ones retired to their
books, leaving her and Ted to amuse each other over their coffee in the
conservatory. Paddy at once opened fire with a cross-examination.
“So you live in London?” she remarked; “seems to me one might as well
live in a coal mine.”
“Oh, come! that’s rather strong; London is a grand place.”
“It’s a good thing you think so, since you live there. I loathe the
very name of it.”
“But why?”
“Why? Everything’s why. Look at the dirt, and the smoke, and the
smuts,” in a tone of unutterable disgust. “On a fine day the poor sun
struggles to shine through the atmosphere, and only succeeds in giving
a pale, sickly glow, and on a wet day the clouds appear to literally
rest on the house-tops and rain-smuts. If you look up, you see nothing
but roofs and chimneys, and if you look down, you see nothing but
paving-stones and basements, and if you look round generally, you see
little else but pale, sickly, tired people all trampling on each other
to live.”
“Didn’t you ever look in the shops?”
“Yes, and I got so sick of them, I just longed to go inside the windows
and jumble everything up into a heap anyhow, and then write a big 1
shilling 11 pence farthing over the whole lot.
“The only thing I really enjoyed,” running on, “was the front seat on
the top of an omnibus, with a talkative driver. That was always funny,
whether he discoursed on politics, or religion, or the aristocracy; or
expressed himself forcibly on motor-cars and the ‘Twopenny Tube.’ Do
you use the Tube much?”
“Nearly every day of my life.”
“Goodness!—and you still live! Don’t you think Dante must wish he had
thought of a Tube for his Inferno? It must be like Heaven to come here
and sniff our lovely mountain air all day long. I wonder you don’t go
about with your nose in the air too busy sniffing to speak.”
“It reminds one of what one might imagine Heaven, in various ways,” he
said, with smiling innuendo.
“Eileen and mother might stand for the angels,” she ran on, “and Jack
for the prodigal son or penitent sinner.”
“And where would you be?”
“Well, I guess I’d be most useful helping Saint Peter keep the door,”
looking wicked, “but perhaps I shouldn’t be admitted at all.
“Not but that I’d stand as good a chance as Jack,” she finished with a
decisive air.
“Is Jack Mr O’Hara?”
“Yes. He lives at the Parsonage next door to us.”
“And you’ve known him all your life?”
“Every single bit of it. I can remember hitting him in the face, and
kicking at him generally, as soon as I can remember anything.”
“Then I suppose you’ve made up for it all since.”
“Oh, dear no! except to hit harder as I grew stronger.”
“He’s very handsome,” said Ted a little thoughtfully. “He’s Irish,”
replied Paddy promptly.
“Ah, yes! I forgot,” slyly; “it covers a multitude of sins, doesn’t it,
to be Irish?”
“We usually call them virtues!” she rapped out, quick as lightning, and
then they both laughed, and a moment later the Colonel was heard
calling to them to come and play Bridge with him.
The following morning they sailed back together, and Ted was made to
remain, much to his delight, for the rest of the day. They played
tennis all the afternoon, and then, after having tea on the lawn, rowed
across the Loch to Warrenpoint to listen to the Pierrots. When they
came to sit quietly, however, everything did not continue quite so
smoothly. Jack had been playing tennis with Paddy most of the
afternoon, because it made more even games, but now he manifested a
marked desire to talk to Eileen, just as Ted, who had been playing with
Eileen, wanted now to talk to Paddy. With the usual contrariness of
events, Eileen was perfectly indifferent which of the two she talked
to, but Paddy, a little upset by her old playfellow’s growing
predilection for her quiet sister, wanted to talk to Jack.
The time had hardly come yet for Paddy to realise just why she was
upset. She only knew that Jack somehow stood alone in her little world,
and felt vaguely that no future could be happy without him.
For a little while she succeeded in keeping the conversation general,
but as Eileen grew more and more dreamy, and Jack silent, she finally
tossed her head, told them they were the dullest pair she had ever the
misfortune to be out with, and went for a walk along the front with
Ted.
Meanwhile, left to themselves, Jack again introduced a certain topic
constantly in his mind.
“The Blakes came back to-day,” he said suddenly; “they crossed last
night.”
Eileen gave a little start, and was silent a moment.
“How do you know?” she asked at last.
“Barrett, at the station, told me they were in the boat train.”
“How many of them?” trying to speak naturally.
“All, Mrs Blake, Kathleen, Doreen, and Lawrence.”
There was a pause, then he added, “I suppose Lawrence has just come to
settle them in.”
Eileen remained silent. The news had taken her by surprise, as she had
not expected them for a week or two, and she felt her pulses throbbing
oddly.
Then an unaccountable presentiment that Lawrence was somewhere near
took possession of her, and, making some excuse about feeling cold, she
got up to follow Paddy and Ted Masterman along the front. Jack, wishing
very much to remain as they were, was obliged to get up also, and they
walked briskly in the direction of Rostrevor.
They had not gone far before Eileen caught her breath a little, at the
sight of two figures coming toward them.
Nearer they came and nearer, the girl chatting merrily, and the man
listening with languid amusement. Eileen felt herself
watching—watching—for the upward glance, the recognition, the pleased
greeting.
They were almost together now—he looked up—the recognition came
instantly, but a second later, Lawrence Blake had raised his hat and
passed on with a bow.