Part 55 (2/2)
”I'm thinking that isn't quite what brought Jack home after all,”
remarked Miss Jane.
”Ask Eileen,” said Jack, in a way that made Eileen blush.
”What, more secrets!” cried Paddy. ”It seems to me you'd better just start at the beginning, and tell me everything that has been going on behind my back in this barefaced fas.h.i.+on.”
”Yes, only unfortunately we don't quite know where the beginning is, do we, Eileen?”
”It's too bad, Paddy, to tease you so,” put in Eileen quickly. ”The real truth is that last summer, when you didn't happen to be at home to see, letters from the Argentine began to come much oftener, and were not handed round for public perusal as usual. And then--You go on Jack,”
smiling at him.
”And then,” said Jack readily enough, ”some one wanted desperately to go along with the letters, and for some time could not find a way. At last, some one wrote and asked if he might come if he could find ways and means, and all unbeknown to every one but themselves, letter-writer and recipient arranged a little plan, if they could only manage to bring it off. While still in doubt as to ways and means, distant relative most obligingly dies, and then it is hey presto! and catch the next boat.”
Paddy crossed the fireside circle in a flash, and flung herself upon Eileen.
”Oh, Eily, Eily,” she cried, ”you are engaged?--are you really engaged to Jack?”
”Yes, Paddy,” and her voice and eyes spoke all she could not say.
”Oh, I'm so glad, I'm so glad, I feel as if I must just hug you both!
and the aunties too, and every one. What a lovely Christmas present, a new brother.”
”But that isn't really all,” cried Jack. ”We're going to live at The Ghan House. Only think of it! and you and your mother are to have the west wing all to yourselves, and live there with us just as long as ever you will.”
After that every one joined in, and the rest of the afternoon was spent in discussing numerous projects, interesting to all alike. Paddy joined in likewise with seeming eagerness, but deep down in her heart, minute by minute, a certain dragging weight made itself more and more apparent.
She would not for worlds have said so yet, for fear she might damp their happiness, but she knew quite well she would not go and live at The Ghan House with Jack and Eileen. An indefinable something, she hardly knew what, made her shrink instinctively and very certainly from such an arrangement. No, she would prefer to go back to her dispensing, and be independent, even if it was London, and she had to go alone.
There were tears on Paddy's eyelashes that night when she fell asleep.
It seemed to her as if a sudden, most unlooked-for weight of loneliness were crus.h.i.+ng her, and her whole soul longed and longed for the father sleeping quietly in the churchyard close beside her. She did not for one moment grudge Jack and Eileen their happiness--only just at first, just until she had got used to the new order and readjusted her own feelings a little--it was not easy to rejoice without one single qualm of painful remembrance.
The following day a lively call from Doreen and her _fiance_ on horseback cheered her considerably and helped her still better to hide everything from the rest; and the day after there was a little teasing and good-humoured raillery about a parcel from South Africa which had been forwarded from England. It contained a beautiful white ostrich-feather boa, and there was a delightful letter with it, begging her to accept it as a Christmas token, all of which told its own tale of constancy and steady persistence on the part of the lonely Englishman exiled there, and still dreaming of her when he had time to dream at all. Jack made most of such an opportunity and gave her little peace, and Paddy took it in excellent part, because she was glad of anything that would help to blind them to a certain circ.u.mstance nearer home.
In the evening they had one of their wild ”scrimmage” parties, for the sake of old times, and to every one's astonishment, Lawrence arrived with the Mourne Lodge party. He had, of course, heard the news, and professed to have accepted his invitation for the express purpose of congratulating the happy pair. This certainly was open to doubt, though the genuineness of his congratulations was equally certainly not so.
Paddy fought shy of him from the first moment, and as she was naturally the ringleader of the scrimmage party, whereas he played Bridge in the study, it was perfectly easy to avoid an encounter. Only, as it happened, for that evening at least, Fortune was on Lawrence's side.
The scrimmage party were playing a game in which one of their number had to go out of the room, and it chanced to be Paddy's turn just when Lawrence, being ”dummy,” strolled into the hall for a smoke.
Before she knew of his presence, he had walked up to her and said: ”Paddy, do you know you are sitting under the mistletoe?”
Paddy gave a start, blushed in a way that made her inwardly furious, and moved to the other end of the oak chest upon which she had been seated.
”You needn't be so haughty,” he laughed. ”You know perfectly well I've kissed you lots of times, only unfortunately it was when I didn't want to. I remember once the master scolding me because I made such a point of kissing Eileen, and ignoring you. I argued that you were such an ugly little brute, and invented the fable that you hated kissing.”
”It was no fable.”
”Wasn't it?” humorously. ”Nature never gave a mouth like that to a woman who hated kissing. Some day I'll remind you of that, Paddy.”
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