The Scrimmage Party.
Yet the very next morning he was again at Eileen’s side, again looking
that unspoken homage into her eyes.
It was the occasion of what was generally known as a Scrimmage Party at
The Ghan House, to which he has been inveigled partly on false
pretences.
“Are you coming to my birthday party?” Paddy had shouted to him as he
was riding past in the morning, from the top of a hen-house where she
was busily endeavouring to mend leakages in the roof.
He reined in his horse, and came as near as he could get.
“What in the name of fortune are you doing up there?”
“I’m fixing on a few odd slates to keep out the rain. Don’t you admire
my handiwork?”
“Why don’t you let your man do it? Lord!” with amusement, “I never saw
such a position.”
Paddy glanced at her somewhat generous display of ankle, and her feet
trying to hang on to the roof.
“To tell you the honest truth, Jack was supposed to be going to do it,
while I handed up the slates, but we quarrelled.”
“You seem to enjoy quarrelling with your friends beyond anything. I
wonder you have any left.”
Now that he had come near, he was in no violent hurry to go on, for
Paddy, perched on her hen-house roof, had a roguish, dare-devil look
that was distinctly alluring.
“Oh! they come round again,” airily. “It would often be more fun if
they didn’t. That’s why I like quarrelling with you. Your
thunder-clouds last longer.”
“Then in future I shall suppress them altogether.”
“Not you. You wouldn’t know yourself amiable too long.”
“Am I so very bad-tempered?”
Paddy glanced up from her work.
“You’re the most detestable person I know, as a rule,” she informed
him.
Lawrence could not help laughing, though she was evidently quite
serious.
“I suppose the few intervals when I bask in the sunlight of your
favour, are when I buy pigs to oblige you, and that kind of thing! I
shouldn’t have taken you for a time-server, Paddy—only liking people
for what you can get out of them.”
“Daddy was ill over the pigs,” she remarked, ignoring his thrust. “I
told him while we were at tea, and he choked, and got dreadfully ill,
because every time he was just calming down, he remembered about Dan’el
on the floor, or about you having to buy my fifteen. I daren’t even
mention such a thing as a pig in his hearing now. He isn’t strong
enough for it. You see he hadn’t quite got over my charging into you
when I was after that rat, and then making you carry the little beast
of a ferret and join in,” and her eyes shone bewitchingly.
“If you think I’m detestable, what do you suppose I think of you?” he
asked.
“Oh, no one thinks at all when it’s me,” with a funny little pursing up
of her lips, and a sweeping disregard of grammar. “You see, I can’t be
judged after any ordinary standard, as I’m not ordinary. I’m not a
girl, and I’m not a boy—I’m Paddy—‘Paddy-the-next-best-thing.’”
He laughed again. “Oh no! you’re not ordinary,” he agreed, “and I’m
rather sorry there are not some more Paddys—I like the breed.”
“Jack doesn’t,” calmly going on with her tinkering. “He started helping
me to do this job, and then he got wild, and when I suggested he took
the slates off the good part to mend the bad, he went off in a huff. He
implied that he could do with me when I was funny, but not when I was
silly,” and she chuckled to herself with a remembering relish.
“He has very bad taste. He should like you in any mood.”
“His taste is apparently much the same as yours.” Paddy looked up with
a queer expression in her eyes, before which he glanced away. He knew
she was alluding to Eileen. “Unfortunately for him,” she finished
calmly.
Lawrence glanced at her again, and when he did so he blew that she had
spoken with intent. She had given him either a hint or a warning; he
could not quite say which; but he understood at once, that in her eyes
he was already her sister’s recognised suitor. He touched up his horse
to ride on. “Well, good-by,” lightly. “May I bring you a birthday
present this evening?”
“No,” she laughed back, “bring a few thunder-clouds to entertain me.”
It was not until the evening began, that he discovered what kind of a
party he had accepted an invitation for.
Paddy enlightened him.
“You’ve got to begin by sitting on the floor, and playing, ‘Brother,
I’m bobbed!’” she announced. “You’ll find it rather hot work, but you
can cool down afterward, while someone takes your place.”
“I’ve a great admiration for you, Paddy,” he answered calmly. “But not
for all the Paddys in the world will I sit on the floor and play,
‘Brother, I’m bobbed!’”
“Tut tut!” mimicked, Paddy, screwing up an imaginary eyeglass.
“Your—your—shoe a little too tight—did you say!—or was it
your—ahem—divided skirt...?”
“I said I should not play ‘Brother, I’m bobbed,’” repeated Lawrence,
laughing; “but if a score has to be kept of the bobbing—whatever
process that may be—I am at your service.”
“You can go and sit with Daddy, and the old people,” scathingly. “You
might have guessed my birthday party wasn’t very likely to be reclining
in arm-chairs, and conversing politely.”
“May I, as a special favour, be allowed first to mention a package in
the hall, intended for your Serene Highness—?”
“A package!—in the hall!—Oh! go and sit where you like, and do what you
like,” and she flew off to look for it, returning triumphantly with the
finest production in confectionery that Newry could boast.
After that Lawrence was left in peace, to sit by the delighted old
soldier, who laughed till he was again ill, at the wild scenes which
ensued; until the climax of Paddy on the floor, with a small table of
bric-à-brac, and the coal box on top of her, with the coals flying in
all directions, proved too much for him. When she at last scrambled to
her feet, with a face Jack and Doreen Blake had surreptitiously smudged
with coal dust, he had to be led away to his own den for a smoke,
whither Lawrence accompanied him. “These Scrimmage Parties are too much
for me now-a-days,” said the fine old warrior, sinking back into his
big chair. “Lord! what a girl she is!—what a girl she is!” and there
was a ring of delight and pride in his voice, which his gentle,
beautiful daughter never inspired.
“She informed me this morning she was not a girl,” remarked Lawrence.
“She said she was neither a girl, nor a boy, she was Paddy!”
The father chuckled in delight. “It’s about true, for there’s not her
like anywhere. Begorra, lad!—if she’d been a boy—there’d not have been
a soldier in the British army to touch her. But she’ll go far yet,”
nodding his head sagely. “I’ll give any beautiful woman points in
another two or three years, and back Paddy against her. While the other
woman’s doing her hair, and arranging her dress, and thinking what to
say, Paddy’ll be getting there. She won’t need to stop and think.
She’ll be just herself, and if I’m not much mistaken, the men’ll go
down before her like ninepins. O Lord!—and she’ll snap her fingers in
their faces, and go rampaging on, like a real, thoroughbred Irish
Fusilier.
“But I shall not be there to see,” dropping his voice suddenly to a
note of sadness. “Take my advice, Lawrence, and marry young. I married
too late, and when everything is just at its best, I shall get my
summons to go.” He shook his head mournfully, and sank for a moment
into a reverie, seeing his heart’s darling, his boy that was a girl,
queening it over an admiring throng, and he no longer at hand to
rejoice. Lawrence commenced to chat with him of his travelling
adventures, in his most engaging manner, to cheer him up; smiling
inwardly a little at his estimate of the tom-boy, whom he could hardly
conceive as yet, compelling anything but the indulgent fondness for an
amusing child.
A little later she broke in upon them herself, to say they were all
going for a row on the Loch by starlight, to finish up with an
impromptu open-air concert, with Ted Masterman’s banjo, and Kathleen’s
guitar. They rose to follow her, and soon after the whole night seemed
to ring with merry choruses from the two boats; a rowdy one containing
Jack and Paddy, and a few other kindred spirits; and a quiet one with
Lawrence and Eileen, little Miss Mary, and one or two other less
boisterous members of the party.
Eileen was very quiet. Owing to the number in the boat, she and
Lawrence, he rowing and she in the bow, were nearer than they had ever
been before, and only the alluring darkness around them. The rowers
shipped their oars for a little to listen to the others, and Lawrence
turned round to the silent figure, half-sitting, half-reclining, beside
him.
It was an entrancing night, warm and luscious and still, but for the
lapping of the water against the boat, and the merry sounds from the
other party. Overhead gleamed and glittered a million stars. All round,
mysteriously grand, mysteriously lovely, towered the Mourne Mountains.
Eileen felt herself breathing fitfully, under the spell of some
ravishing, dream-like ecstasy. He was so close to her that his coat
brushed against her arm, and the touch thrilled through all her being.
Yet she never moved nor spoke, looking out into the fathomless,
mystical depths of the night, one little hand resting lightly on the
edge of the boat, unconsciously near to her companion.
And something in the enervating atmosphere, and the dream-like charm,
again had that dangerously soothing effect upon Lawrence. Look where he
would, think as he would, he could not turn his consciousness from the
sense of that little soft hand so temptingly close to him in the
darkness. What would she do if he followed his impulse, and clasped his
own over it.
He tried to think of other things and forget it. If it had been any
other girl—but not Eileen—no, he dare not trifle with Eileen. Yet it
was such a little thing, and he wanted desperately at the moment to
feel the touch of the little warm fingers in his. One more effort to
forget—one more failure—and in the shadows his thin, artistic fingers
closed over those others.
Eileen did not move nor speak. For the moment she was too much taken
aback, and then she was only aware of a swiftly beating heart, and a
heavenly sense of delight. But in a few moments, out of the shadows,
shot the other boat straight toward them, with Paddy leaning over the
side. She reached out her hand, and grasping at the bow that held
Lawrence and Eileen. Her grasp closed over a dim white object, two
hands—a man and a woman’s—clasped together.
“Ah!” said Paddy to the darkness, with rather startling suddenness, and
then subsided into silence.