Part 12 (2/2)
with a touch of sarcasm.
”It wouldn't be necessary. You are the only one likely to use me as a makes.h.i.+ft.”
”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 sh.o.r.e. 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 s.h.i.+nes, 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 s.h.i.+ning warmly. Here, sitting down in her favourite att.i.tude, 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 G.o.d! 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 s.e.x at all.”
”Isn't it rather poor to judge the many by a few who may have disappointed you?”
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