In Which the Worst Came.
The shadow upon the Parsonage had become actual distress—deep,
poignant, all-absorbing distress. The two little ladies still looked
mutely at each other, while this thing that had come upon them began to
take actual shape. First there had been the vague anxiety for Eileen
and Jack—then the loss of their old friend the General—then the bitter
news that The Ghan House must be given up; and it seemed for the time
that their cup of trouble was full. And yet the worst was still to
come.
But it is necessary first to go back and review the events of the weary
week that has dragged past since the flowers were laid upon the
new-made grave in the little churchyard.
There had been many consultations, and many tears, and much pain, ere
it was finally decided the good doctor’s offer must indeed be accepted,
and early in the new year the mother and her daughters must start for
London in order that Paddy might begin her studies at once.
Meanwhile, Jack had been absent a great deal in Newry, and had returned
always with a deeply thoughtful expression, and moved about in the
preoccupied manner of one having some project weighing heavily upon his
mind.
One evening he had come in quickly and gone straight to his room
without saying a word to anyone, and he had not come down again, though
Miss Jane had gone upstairs and begged him to come and have some
supper, or let her carry it to his room for him.
“I couldn’t eat anything to-night, auntie,” he had answered, “but I am
quite well. Please don’t worry about me,” and poor Miss Jane had gone
back to the dining-room with tears in her eyes, wondering what had
happened to make their boy shut himself away even from them.
“Perhaps he has seen Eileen,” little Miss Mary suggested. “I know he
went across to The Ghan House, and as Mrs Adair is laid up, and Paddy
had to go to Newry, there would be only Eileen about.”
And little Mary was right.
Jack had seen Eileen. He had had his first uninterrupted talk with her
since her father died. He had found her sitting alone over the library
fire, leaning back with a tired, wasted look on her face, and a closed
book on her knee.
“May I stay!” he asked her, and she had mutely acquiesced, and he had
closed the door, with a strange throbbing in his heart.
“Won’t you sit down!” she said, and he had shaken his head without
speaking, and remained standing with his back to the fire, leaning
against the mantelpiece, where he could watch her face the better. He
could see that she was looking ill, and the sight smote him. He
realised that, perhaps, she was suffering even more than the others.
Indeed, it was so, if possible, for in her longing for her father, her
heart would turn and turn piteously to Lawrence, and only feel the
greater desolation. Yet no word or sign escaped her. Only that frail,
wasted expression grew on her face, and the unchanging sadness deepened
in her eyes.
“It seems impossible that only a few weeks ago we were all so happy,”
he said at last. “It’s very hard when Life lets you go on being
careless and light-hearted for years and years; and then, without any
warning, suddenly grips you by the throat and makes you feel half
strangled by the weight of it all.”
She did not speak, and looking straight before him he ran on:
“It seems as if the death of the dear old General would have been
enough in itself, but on the top of that comes this awful separation.
Do you know, Eileen, sometimes I think it can’t be true—that it is too
awful to be true—that The Ghan House should stand here and none of you
in it, and that the sounds craning over to the Parsonage should be from
other voices than yours. Sometimes I feel I can’t bear it; and yet I
know it will have to be borne.”
Still she did not speak. She was so tired—so tired—and what was there
to say?
“And that isn’t all, Eileen,” in a voice that would tremble in spite of
himself. “It seems somehow as if it were my fault that you have to go
to London, and Paddy must work.”
“Your fault!” she asked wonderingly.
“Yes, Eileen, in a way. You see if I had taken the opportunities that I
might have had for the asking when I was eighteen, I should probably
have been doing very well indeed now, and been in a position to do
something for you all.”
“You are very good, Jack, but it isn’t likely that we should have let
you, though we should have loved you for thinking of it.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Everything might have been different.” He
paused, then added: “You know. I think I have always loved you, Eileen,
ever since you were a solemn-faced little girl; though it is only
lately I have realised just all it meant. I know I have generally ran
about with Paddy, and been far more with her, but she was like a boy
friend, while you were always my ideal of all that is best and sweetest
in a woman. It is only lately I have actually understood that all my
life I should love you better than the whole world.”
“Oh, Jack!” she breathed, in a distressed voice, “please don’t go on.”
He smiled down at her, and there was something strangely beautiful in
his smile.
“Yes, let me go on,” he said. “It does me good to speak of it. I am not
one of those men who feel bitter about loving when it is not returned,
and too vain to acknowledge that it is so. To me it is such a simple,
natural thing to love you; and such an unlikely possibility that you
should return my love. Perhaps, if I had been more of a man the last
nine years, and had started to make my way in the world, and then come
to you with something to offer, it might have been different; but now!
ah! that is just the hard part of it all.”
“No, no, you mustn’t feel like that,” she cried. “What should we have
done without you?—what would the aunties have done?—and I don’t think
it would have made any difference, Jack.”
He looked at her searchingly.
“If there is someone else, Eileen, perhaps not, and yet—and yet—how
often have you lectured me about being idle and good-for-nothing! Would
to Heaven I had awakened, and listened to you sooner.”
She buried her face in her hands.
“I suppose I ought not to ask if there is someone else,” he said,
watching her. “It would sound like an impertinence, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, Jack, don’t talk like this,” she begged. “Please, please forget
about me. It hurts me so much to feel that I am hurting you.”
“No, I can’t forget,” he answered very firmly. “I don’t want to; but I
have no right to bother you with my love, when I have nothing in the
world to offer. But I am going away, Eileen. I am going right away out
of the country altogether, and some day, if I have succeeded, I shall
come back; and if you are free I shall tell you again what I have told
you to-day.”
“You are going away!” she repeated incredulously, sitting up and gazing
at him with questioning eyes. “Going away!—out of the country!”
“Yes. I ought to have gone before.”
“But the aunties, Jack!—whatever will the aunties do?”
“I am afraid they will feel it very much, but I know they will
understand, and I must go.”
“But where to? Have you actually arranged it?”
“Yes. There is a man is Newry named Wilkinson—I don’t know if you know
him. He is home from the Argentine for a few months’ holiday. He has a
large cattle ranch out there, and he wants me to go back with him. I
have decided to go.”
“Oh, Jack!” was all she could say. “Need it have been so far?”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” with a wintry smile. “I believe it is a
good thing. Wilkinson is a nice fellow, and he has done very well in
the ten years he has been out there. We were chums at school, you know,
and he offers me a better job than anyone else would.”
“Poor aunties! It will half kill them.”
There was a long silence, then Jack spoke again:
“I hoped—perhaps—that is,” he began hesitatingly—“Eileen, couldn’t you
give me one word of hope to live on all the years I must be away?” He
drew nearer and sat on the arm of her chair, as he had so often done
through the time they had grown up together. “You’ll miss me a little,
perhaps, and wish I could come back sooner—tell me, Eileen, that you’ll
miss me.”
“We shall miss you terribly, Jack,” she answered, struggling to keep
back the tears. “England will not be the same without you. Mother and
Paddy and I will miss you terribly.”
“Is that all?”
He leant forward and clasped one hand over both hers, looking hard into
her face.
“Is that all, Eileen!” and his voice was a prayer.
“I’m afraid so, Jack. Oh! I wouldn’t have hurt you like this for the
world. I never dreamt! I never thought! Are you sure you mean it,
Jack?—Isn’t it just a dream or something?”
“No, it is not a dream—I mean every word of it—but there is nothing for
you to blame yourself about, and you must never do so. I think,
perhaps, there is someone else—I was half afraid—only I wanted so to
think it was a mistake.”
There was another long pause, and tears rolled slowly down Eileen’s
white cheeks.
“I wish I could think that you were happy,” he said painfully. “It
makes things worse going away and feeling that you are breaking your
heart. It isn’t as if he were worth it. I don’t even think he could
make you happy if he tried; he’s too set in his own ways and opinions.”
“Don’t, Jack, please,” she said. “It is better not to bring any other
name into our talk.”
“I am sorry. Forgive me. Only it’s so much more terrible than you can
know. It’s like a raging fire in one’s heart to feel as I do about it
all. Only it does not make any difference to my feelings for you, and I
do not think it ever will, even if you marry him. In any case I want
you to feel that I am your slave wherever I am, and that nothing would
be too much to ask me to do for you. I shall hear of all that happens
from the aunties, and, perhaps, Paddy will write if she has time, and
after a few years I shall come back to see you all.”
He stood up, and there was a new look of determination in his handsome,
boyish face.
“I mean to try and make up for all the time I have wasted,” he said,
“and prove that there is some good stuff in me yet.”
“Oh, Jack! you know we all think the world of you,” she urged.
“I know you have all combined to spoil me ever since I was a little
chap,” with a wistful smile, “and I guess it was about time Mother Fate
took me by the shoulders, so to speak, and pushed me out into the cold.
“She seems to have started off with the hardest blows first though,” he
added. “It just feels like a clean sweep of everything I cared for
most. To-morrow I must tell the aunts. I keep putting it off, because I
can’t bear to begin, but it won’t make it any easier in the end. I
think I’ll go for a tramp now. Trudging over the mountains helps a
little and I feel—oh! I feel as if nothing in heaven or earth mattered
much because of you, Eileen,” and he ground his teeth together to keep
his self-command. A second later, feeling himself giving way, he strode
across the room, and, passing out, closed the door quietly behind him.
Eileen rested her arms on the table, and leaning her tired head down
upon them, sobbed her heart out in the old library.
That was the night Jack went up to his room and shut himself in without
appearing at the supper-table, and the two little ladies clasped each
other’s hands in mutely questioning distress, vaguely conscious that
some new blow was about to fall. The next evening he told them.
They were sitting as usual, one on either side of the big,
old-fashioned fireplace, and Miss Jane’s cap had got tilted a little to
one side when she went to the door to speak to Eliza Spencer, whose
baby had the whooping-cough. Miss Mary’s looked to be preparing itself
to follow suit. They both wore little white shawls folded crosswise on
their breasts and pinned with large Cairngorm brooches, which looked as
if they might have come out of the Ark; and black silk mittens over
their pretty little hands. In the morning the shawls were grey or
black, and the mittens of fine wool, but in the evening, all through
the winter, they sat on each side of the fireplace, dressed precisely
the same, with the same species of knitting in their fingers, reminding
one of two china ornaments. Almost ever since Jack could remember it
had been the same, and he took in each little detail now with a new
tenderness, from the quaint little elastic-side boots just showing on
each footstool, to the softly waving white hair growing perceptibly
thinner each year and the dainty caps that had such a habit of getting
awry. Until that evening he felt he had never quite known how dear his
two second mothers had become to him.
He sat now over by the table with his arms on a newspaper he was
supposed to be reading. He felt as if he could control his voice better
if he did not come too near.
For a little while they talked in their kind, sympathetic way of Eliza
Spencer and her sick child, and then there was a breathing silence. All
felt that something unusual was in the air. At last Miss Jane looked up
from her knitting, and saw that Jack was not reading at all, but
sitting with his eyes upon their faces, and a deeply troubled
expression on his own.
“Is there anything wrong, dear?” she asked.
He cleared his throat, but the rising lump would not go, and he waited
several moments before he answered. A pained look came into each
little, wrinkled face. They knew then that something fresh was to come
upon them.
“I’m afraid you’ll both be very upset,” he said at last, and again he
had to pause.
“Go on, dear,” said Aunt Jane encouragingly, seeing what ah effort it
was to him.
“I am going away,” he blurted out, almost like a schoolboy. “I am going
to South America to earn my own living,” and then he buried his face on
his arms, for he could not bear to see the distress come into their
eyes.
“Going away!” He heard Miss Jane repeat it as if she could not believe
her own ears; and then: “South America—going away—to South America—”
Each piece of knitting went down into each lap, and two wrinkled faces
looked at each other as if they could not understand, and then turned
slowly to the man’s bowed head—the fair head that it seemed only
yesterday had nestled to their hearts in babyhood.
“He can’t mean it,” breathed little Miss Mary. “Indeed, sister, he
can’t mean it—” There was a long silence, and then with tears coursing
silently down her cheeks Miss Jane said very quietly:
“Yes, he means it, sister. The time has come for our bird to leave the
nest and fly away.”