Part 21 (2/2)

Jack was struck dumb.

For a moment they both forgot that Paddy herself had been one of the princ.i.p.al 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sage here and a pa.s.sage 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 s.p.a.ce of pa.s.sionate 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.”

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