“What would an Irish Fusilier do?”
They thought her a little strange at home that evening, but after a
time Jack and Eileen vanished, and making a tremendous effort, she
contrived to chatter to the aunties about her dispensing in a fairly
brisk fashion. She did not, however, altogether blind them, and she was
glad enough when the need ceased, and she could go to bed.
Eileen was sleeping with her mother, and Jack at the inn, so that she
had his little room all to herself, and as soon as she was alone she
flung herself down on the bed and burst into tears, overstrained nature
finding no other mode of relief.
When she had had her cry out, she lay quite still and tried to
think—tried to understand how it was that the question she had meant to
settle once for all in the afternoon was more unsettled than ever. Why
was it more unsettled? There could not possibly be any temptation of
giving in. Giving in meant only one solution. It meant that she,
Patricia Adair, would marry Lawrence Blake.
Oh! it was impossible—impossible!—the man she had over and over again
asserted that she hated, and declared she would kill.
Then why was there any difficulty? Why this growing sense of a problem
she could not solve?
Supposing Patricia Adair did marry Lawrence Blake. What of it?
But she tore the thought out of her mind. She would not suppose it.
It came back in another form—a series of mental pictures cruelly
contrasting Shepherd’s Bush and the dispensary with Mourne Lodge. For
Paddy knew well enough that under no circumstances would she accept a
home from Jack and her sister—under no circumstances give up her work
and her independence, to be dependent on any one’s bounty. No, she
would go back to her work alone, and they would live at The Ghan House
without her.
But how it hurt to think of it!
The dingy suburb, the grey street, her aunt’s everlasting platitudes,
for of course she would live again at the doctor’s house—just grey,
lifeless monotony, instead of the lake and the mountains.
And how he had understood!
“_Mavourneen, mavourneen, bears have understanding when they love as I
love you_.”
She tried to crush out the recollection, conscious that her soul was
sounding indefinable warnings as a far-off accompaniment. Oh, of
course, he was fascinating—had she not always known it—known all her
life that there were two Lawrence Blakes, and one as alluring as the
other was repellant. Resolutely, she turned her thoughts to the
unpleasing one; she who had somehow had special opportunities of clear
sight. She remembered the old rumours of excess and extravagance. Had
not her own father shaken his head gravely long ago, and said things he
imagined she would not understand. Perhaps she did not then—but now!
Unprincipled, unscrupulous, fast, wild, a gambler. “Wild oats,” she
told herself—“Wild oats.” It was not that that built the barrier—this
barrier that was as a grim spectre, waving ghostly arms between them.
Could anything, even mercifully, write “wild oats” over his
heartlessness? When she thought of those locked hands in the boat on
the loch, her blood still boiled—of how very nearly Eileen’s delicate
constitution had broken down altogether under her silent fretting—of
how her mother had grieved and fretted likewise. She thought of his
moods at home. How often—oh, how often—she had longed to strike him for
the tone in which he sometimes spoke to his mother and sisters. For his
selfishness, his coldness, his sneers. How often she had gone home
pitying the girls such a brother, hating him with all her young
enthusiasm. And then, further complicating everything, flashed again
the recollection, even in those days, of his charm, if he happened to
be in the right mood. Why, even Doreen and Kathleen were influenced by
it; every one was. If Lawrence were in his charming mood, the whole
house was sunny and gay, and Paddy had quickly enough forgotten old
feuds, and immensely enjoyed a good-natured, wordy battle with him.
When she hated him most, he had still had a lurking attraction for her,
or she would not have bothered to cross swords. Only a lurking
attraction is not love. The old spectre still stood firm, waving
ghostly arms between them. And even if it were love, the feud still
stood. Eileen might have forgiven and found other happiness. She might
have trampled down all bitterness, but did that make the wrong less
wrong—did it affect her, Paddy’s, view of the case? A personal wrong
may be forgiven by the sufferer without in any way affecting an outside
judgment. There is still the wrong in the abstract. True, vengeance is
unchristian—but it was not vengeance she wanted any longer; could
she—dare she—fly in the face of her own passionate sense of Loyalty? It
seemed to Paddy that if she yielded to the wave that seemed like to
sweep her off her feet, she not only let go her watchword of Loyalty,
but she compromised with her half-formed, dimly seen ideal of Love.
Always before her mind, if she thought of love in the future, had been
the image of such men as the grand old General—the gentle, kindly
doctor—the simple, manly, open-hearted Jack. Among such as these, how
could she give such as Lawrence the place of honour? It was incredible
that she should think of it. To do so, she must surely be disloyal to
the past and disloyal to herself. But how resist him? Who could help
her? She got up at last and went to the window. In the light of the
stars, glimmering faintly across the garden, were the headstones—“where
the dead people wait till God calls.”
Feeling suffocated by the four walls of the little room, she hastily
threw a shawl round her head, slipped into a big coat, and crept
noiselessly out of the house, down the little path, and through the
wicket-gate into the churchyard, where a beautiful Maltese cross marked
the spot where the brave old soldier was taking his well-earned rest.
“Daddy,” she whispered, “daddy, try and help me now. There isn’t any
one else who would understand.”
She leaned her face against the cold granite. It was comforting to be
there. “What shall I do, daddy? I know you understand all about it, and
how it is so difficult. Daddy—darling old daddy—what would an Irish
Fusilier do?”
She clung against the cross yearningly, and in the night air, with the
calm stars looking down, the waves whispering on the beach, and her
beloved mountains all around, she grew calmer and stronger. It pleased
her to whisper her thoughts to the night, as if the unseen spirit of
her beloved dead listened near.
“Ought I to run away, daddy? I remember how often you have said only a
selfish, vain-glorious officer will risk his men against desperate
odds, rather than retreat. ‘Retreat, if wiser, and take up a better
position—never mind the dispatches home—save your men and win the glory
as well; it is sometimes nobler to retreat than to go on.’ Is that what
I must do, daddy? I feel there are desperate odds against me. Would it
be braver to retreat? Is that what an Irish Fusilier would do? You, at
least, will understand that I was not a coward.”
She pressed her lips against the granite for love of the grand and
simple soul it stood to commemorate.
“Daddy,” she whispered, and there was a tiny, wistful smile on the
fascinating mouth. “I’m not an Irish Fusilier, but, perhaps, I’m
the-next-best-thing.”
Then she went quietly back to bed, with her mind made up.
But the next morning, it was only by a great physical and mental effort
that she was able to appear at all like herself at the breakfast-table,
and when the meal was finished she was glad to slip away unobserved.
Eileen’s suspicions, however, had been previously roused in the night
by a light step in the passage, and, afterward, a dim figure crossing
the garden. She was tactful enough to say nothing of this, but at the
same time determined to try and find out if anything was wrong, and how
she could help. In this Paddy had cause to be grateful, because her
plans could scarcely he carried out without Eileen’s help.
When her sister sought her upstairs, and asked in a quiet, firm way,
“What is the matter, Paddy? Something has happened to you,” she only
hesitated a second, and then replied with as much calmness as she could
muster:
“Yes, Eily, I’m in rather a difficulty. I was going to ask you and Jack
to help me.”
“Paddy, we will do anything—anything,” Eileen cried earnestly.
“I know you will, but it isn’t much I want—only that I am going back to
London to-night, and I want you to help me manage it without any more
questions and explanations than can possibly be helped.”
At first, Eileen was dumbfounded and greatly distressed, but Paddy was
evidently desperately in earnest and meant to go.
“Don’t ask me anything, Eily, if you really want to help,” she said
wearily. “Just break it to mother and the aunties a little while before
I start and help to arrange some excuse for me to any others who ask
questions.”
In the end it was all managed so, and Jack prepared to go to Greenore
with her and see her safely on the boat for Holyhead, from whence she
would go straight back to her uncle’s.
At the last moment Aunt Jane stole softly into her bedroom—Aunt Jane,
whose heart had always leaned to Paddy, just as Aunt Mary’s had leaned
to Eileen.
“My child,” she said very tenderly, “I can see that you are in some
great trouble, and I shall not know how to keep from fretting about
you, because you have always been as my own child to me, and I would
rather suffer myself than see you suffer. Only we may not choose who
shall be glad and who sad, and no doubt if we could, things would only
be worse in the end. But you won’t forget your ‘old maid’ auntie by the
loch, darling, whose heart will ache silently, thinking of you day and
night.”
The tears gushed from Paddy’s eyes, and for a moment she seemed about
to break down altogether, but in a few minutes she had managed to pull
herself together again.
“Are you sure you must go away alone like this?” Aunt Jane asked
yearningly.
“Yes, auntie, quite sure. I love you so much for coming to me now, but
you mustn’t make me break down. Please help me to keep up, auntie, just
until I get away.”
And Miss Jane did—having her own cry out later by herself—while the
steamer started into the black, wintry night, and Jack stood watching
it from Greenore pier, with a mist before his eyes and a queer
huskiness in his throat. Just when life was opening for him with all
its sweetest and best, it seemed hard, indeed, that Paddy—his old chum
and playmate—should be assailed with this trouble of which she would
not speak, and in which apparently none of them could help her. Jack
cared just as much as his present happiness made it possible for him to
care about anything. Long ago, though he only remembered it with a
smile, the sole problem of his life had been which of the sisters he
loved the best. Fate had tipped the balance to the elder’s side,
without in any measure depreciating the other; but Jack never knew, and
never would know, what a difference that final choice had made to
Paddy.