The First Awakening.
It was through her father, a few days later, that Eileen first heard of
Lawrence’s plans. He came blustering in from his usual daily walk one
morning and exclaimed:
“That fellow Lawrence is off again—going back to India to kill a few
more tigers—never knew such a chap—can’t stay quiet scarcely a
month—pity he doesn’t look after his estate at home, I think, instead
of gadding off over the seas again, and I nearly told him so.”
Mrs Adair, at the first words, had looked up in surprise, but Paddy,
who was interested in a small sailing boat at the window, turned and
covertly watched Eileen. As she half expected, she saw her turn deadly
pale, as if the news were a shock, and Paddy knew at once that Lawrence
had not told her the evening of the dance, although his plans were
already formed, and she hated him yet more vigorously.
Meanwhile, Mrs Adair asked wonderingly:
“Are you sure you are right, dear! Nothing was said about it the
evening of the dance.”
“I had it from Lawrence himself half an hour ago. I asked him if he
would aid me in getting something done to the drainage in Omeath, and
he said he would give me a subscription, but he was going away himself
for some time. He then told me he was going to India in three weeks.”
Eileen looked up. A sudden thought had come to her.
“It must have been decided in a great hurry?” she said a little
questioningly, and hung on the General’s reply.
“No,” came only too promptly. “It was all arranged before he came back
to Omeath. I don’t know why he did not mention it sooner, but he is
never one to talk of his arrangements. If I had only known, I would
have hurried on this scheme of sanitation, for I want his personal
support as well as his money. It is very tiresome. Bless the man! he’s
like a wandering organ-grinder.”
There was a pause, and presently Eileen rose and left the room. Her
mother’s eyes followed her with a look of suffering, but Paddy bit her
teeth together and said under her breath: “I’ll kill him yet.”
Half an hour later they all sat down to lunch, and Eileen joined them
with just her usual calm manner; only the shadows under her eyes had
deepened, and she seemed to avoid every one’s glance.
After lunch she and Paddy were alone for a few minutes, and Paddy asked
with seeming carelessness:
“Didn’t Lawrence tell you he was going to India, shortly?”
“I don’t think so,” very quietly. “He may have, but if so I didn’t
catch what he was saying.
“I am not very surprised,” she continued with an effort, “as he said
something about not staying at home long when they first returned.”
Paddy was non-plussed.
She had hardly expected Eileen to take it so calmly, and being at a
loss for an answer she wisely dropped the subject.
Presently she went in search of Jack.
“Have you heard that Lawrence is going to India in three weeks?” she
asked him.
“The General told me this morning,” replied Jack. “I can’t say I’m
particularly sorry.”
He was sitting on a gate that overlooked the bay, and Paddy leaned
against the top rail beside him.
“I didn’t suppose you would be,” she retorted; “but it’s not very nice
for Eileen.”
“Why not?” setting his mouth squarely, with an obstinate expression.
“Well, you know a lot of the people about here think they’re engaged.”
“And if they do—isn’t it a thundering good thing they’re wrong?”
“No, it isn’t,” getting nettled. “If Lawrence has been trifling with
Eileen I’ll kill him.”
“Eileen has too much sense to care for a man who would behave so.”
“You don’t know anything about it. You’re just a great, big, blundering
baby,” and Paddy looked as if she were on the point of tears.
“Whew!” whistled Jack. “What have I been doing now?”
“Nothing, and that’s just it.—If I were a man—if I were Eileen’s
brother, I’d shoot Lawrence. She hasn’t got a brother, but you’re the
next best thing and you ought to do it.”
“I fail to see how I could benefit Eileen by getting myself hanged.”
“I don’t care,” exclaimed Paddy. “I don’t care for any of you. I’ll
have it out with Lawrence some day, and make him pay for this.”
“My dear child! you’re making no end of a fuss about nothing,”
sententiously.
“Child!” echoed Paddy derisively. “And I should like to know what
you’ve ever done to prove yourself a man.”
Jack was so astonished, for a moment he could hardly speak. In all
their lives he had never known Paddy adopt that tone to him, and he
regarded her as if she had suddenly developed into a new species of
wild animal.
“Oh, you needn’t look like that,” ran on poor Paddy, getting more and
more beside herself with exasperation; “you know perfectly well you are
little better than a mere boy. If you had gone out into the world like
other men, and made a way for yourself, you might have come back and
won Eileen, and saved her from all that’s coming. And instead, you have
just sat still and stared at her, and let another man come in and spoil
everything!—and you call that loving! If you’d any possible chance of
providing a home in a year or two, you might be able to do something
even now, but there you sit a mere boy at twenty-five years, and
nothing achieved except a good aim and a good yachtsman.”
Jack was struck dumb.
For a moment they both forgot that Paddy herself had been one of the
principal supporters in his idleness—each in his own way saw only his
pain.
He got down from the gate slowly.
“Good Lord, Paddy!” he said, “I believe you’re right,” and without
stopping or looking back, he strode off across the garden toward the
mountains with his forehead wrinkled into two perpendicular lines.
Paddy watched him a moment, and then rushed away to a lovely little
cove by the shore, and throwing herself down on a bank burst into
tears.
She did not quite know what she was crying about, but when she finally
sat up and dried her eyes she felt better, and was able to review the
situation more calmly.
“Perhaps, after all, Lawrence would soon be back,” she argued, “and she
was making a great fuss needlessly. Or perhaps Eileen did not care so
much as she imagined, and things would all come right yet.”
At this point she was aroused by voices, and along the little path
through the trees, she descried Eileen and Lawrence coming toward her.
“Lawrence was just telling me about his trip,” Eileen said pleasantly.
“He is going to have a splendid tour. I think he is very wise to go
about and see the world while he can, don’t you?”
Paddy did not answer, and somehow Lawrence carefully avoided meeting
her eyes. Eileen’s pluck was making him feel less pleased with himself
than anything else could have done. They had met accidentally in the
afternoon, and she had immediately, in a charming way, congratulated
him upon his good fortune in being able to start off travelling again.
He had been a little surprised and a little chagrined, but he had been
nearer loving her then, than ever before.
Paddy’s quick eyes saw at once how matters stood, and she followed
Eileen’s lead.
Thus for the present, Eileen managed to blind the loving, watchful eyes
of the home circle.
Only to her beloved mountains, and that distant strip of turquoise,
which was the sea, she remained still herself and hid nothing. In her
lonely little nook, high up on the mountain side, with the dear wonder
of loveliness that she so loved, spread out around her, she passed
through the first of those weary Gethsemanes, that sap the joy out of
young lives for a season.
At first it was so incredible to her. Had he not looked his love so
often!—shown it in so many ways!—done everything, in fact, except
confessed it! And if it were all a mistake, if he had meant none of it,
how base then he must be.
This hurt her the most. She had never idealised him, she had rigidly
made herself see his failings, but because she had believed them only
the result of past circumstances and companions, and believed his love
would soon lift him above them, she had given him of her best in spite
of all.
But now everything was changed. Of a surety he did not love her.
Sometimes, remembering a passage here and a passage there—a look here,
a look there—a touch, a tone, a sentence—her whole soul rose up and
cried: “It is false, it is a mistake, he does love me, oh! he does—he
does—he does—”
There would be a short space of passionate hope, and then calm reason
would step in and say with inexorable firmness: “How can that be, since
he goes away for no particular reason to the other side of the world,
when everything at home needs his presence?”
Then would follow a period of terrible self-depreciation, when poor
Eileen’s sensitive nature shrank back horrified from the thought of all
she had given unasked—and her cheeks burned with a deep sense of shame
that she had allowed herself to believe in love where apparently no
love was.
Small wonder that her heart grew faint within her. The mountains
understood, and the bay, and the lights and shadows, and the strip of
turquoise—or it seemed to the sad dreamer that they did—and so upon
every possible occasion she stole away to the solitude, to look out
upon them all with a world of pain in her beautiful eyes, suffering
mutely and alone.
Once or twice her mother had been about to speak, but with quick
divination Eileen had seen and stayed her. The wound was too sore yet
to bear any probing. She felt, at least, she must suffer alone.
“My child, you are looking ill,” her mother said at last, and there was
a tremor in her voice that went to Eileen’s heart.
“I am quite well, mother dear,” she answered in that patient way of
hers. “You must not trouble about me; there is no need for it.”
For answer Mrs Adair put her hand on the bright head beside her.
“I understand, my girlie,” she said in a pain-wrung voice. “I
understand so well. God bless and help you and comfort you.”
Eileen could not trust herself to speak, but afterward she thanked God
that He had given her so dear a mother.
So the three weeks passed, and Lawrence came to say good-by. He would
gladly have escaped the ordeal, but that he saw was impossible, so he
drove over with his mother the last afternoon, at her suggestion. He
need not have minded, for there was no change in anyone. Mrs Adair was
far too proud to show by word or sign any symptom of her feelings, and
both she and Eileen went through the afternoon with brave, smiling
faces and perfectly natural manners.
Only when he was alone with Eileen for a few moments was there any
constraint. Then, in spite of herself, she was white to the lips, and
her hands played nervously.
Lawrence watched her covertly, and for the first time in his life felt
a cur.
“Good-by,” she said, to break the almost unbearable silence, looking up
with an effort at brightness.
He took her outstretched hand and looked hard into her eyes.
“Good-by, Eileen,” he answered, and hesitated a moment as if he would
fain say something else. Then he suddenly dropped her hand, and went
out to see about the horses.
Paddy was in the stables petting them with sugar and apples, and
stroking lovingly their smooth, glossy coats, for she had a passionate
love for all animals. When Lawrence came in she glanced over her
shoulder, and, seeing who it was, turned her back to him, and continued
playing with the horses.
Lawrence watched her a moment, and the thought crossed his mind that in
fire and spirit she was a good match for them.
The man went to pull out the phaeton, and Lawrence loosened the
headstalls, speaking in a low, winsome voice to his pets. Both horses
immediately looked round, and playfully bit at his coat-sleeve. Paddy
at the same time drew aside. The voice that enticed them, evidently
repulsed her.
Lawrence glanced over one glossy back, with a slightly amused
expression, and remarked:
“I am not universally hated; you see. Castor and Pollux put up with me,
in spite of my manifest shortcomings.”
“You feed them,” she retorted. “All animals love the hand that gives
them food.”
“Ah! I see we are to part enemies!”
“Better an honest enemy than a false friend,” icily.
“Yet I’m rather sorry,” he went on. “I like you much too well to want
to look upon you as my enemy.”
“I do not feel as flattered as you may suppose. It seems to me there is
little enough to gain in being your friend.”
“Very likely,” and he shrugged his shoulders with a sudden return of
his old cynicism. “This seems likely to prove a striking illustration
of my pet theory that it is wisest not to care. I had, forgotten it for
the moment.”
The horses were harnessed and the man stood at their heads ready to
lead them round to the door.
“Go on,” said Lawrence, “I will follow.”
He turned again to Paddy.
“You have far more occasion to be glad than angry,” he said, “but it is
hardly likely you will see it yet. By and by—say in five years’
time—you will understand. At present you do not know your world.”
“Nothing will change my estimate of you,” she answered cuttingly. “I
wish Miss Gwendoline, what’s-her-name—Carew, joy of her bargain.”
“Now we are descending to personalities,” with a fine sneer, “so
perhaps I had better depart.”
“A most excellent notion, O Theophilus!” tossing her small head.
A gleam of admiration came unbidden to his eyes.
“You’re good stuff, Paddy,” he said, almost under his breath. “I like
your fieryness uncommon well.”
“That is how I like your absence,” came quick as lightning.
“Well, good-by,” and he held out his hand.
She put hers behind her, with unmistakable meaning.
He shrugged his shoulders expressively, and turned away.
When he had gone a few paces, he looked back. She was still standing
where he had left her. A sudden instinct brought him again to her side.
“Don’t be a little fool, Paddy! Come, be friends. I may never come
back.”
“It is not of the smallest consequence to me whether you do or not.”
She still stood with her hands behind her, and her eyes never once
wavered before his. He could not choose but admire her dauntless
attitude, now she had declared war. He hesitated a moment, unwilling to
show himself beaten. Then he gave a little laugh.
“I declare—I believe you’ve given me an object in life. It will be
quite entertaining, some day, to break down your defences.” He looked
into her face. “Do you hear, Patricia, when I come back, I shall storm
the fortress, and make you cry Peace yet. Will you have a bet on it?”
“No,” unbendingly, “I do not care to bet with you.” She hesitated a
second, and then finished with unflinching gaze: “I despise you.”