A Letter from Calcutta.
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.