CHAPTER XXXVIII

Gwen’s Views on Matrimony.

When Paddy got back to London, her mother, and Eileen, and the doctor, and even Basil thought she was changed in some way, but they did not know how. She was quieter than she used to be, or at any rate given to moods, bursting out now and then into unusual spirits which had yet a ring of not being perfectly genuine.

Curiously enough, perhaps, Gwendoline Carew was the only one who actually knew what was affecting her. She had met Lawrence in the autumn at a shooting party at a mutual friend’s, and quickly recognised some change in him too. Of course she had taken the first opportunity to tax him with it, and absolutely refused to be put off with cynicism or scoffing or anything else.

“Don’t waste time talking to me like this, Lawrie,” she had said, “as if I didn’t know you too well by this time. Just have the grace to bow your superior old head for once, and own you’ve reached a fence you can’t clear.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to make sure first? I wouldn’t for the world tell you an untruth.”

“I’ll risk it. Besides, Lawrie, who knows! I might be able to help.”

“I have rather a weakness for managing my own affairs.”

“I know you have, and on the whole they do you credit, but it seems to me there’s something on foot now, that you’re just not quite so dead certain sure about as usual.”

Lawrence was silent.

“Once before it was the same,” said Gwen. “Don’t you remember when a certain father died, and you were in doubt? Well, didn’t Gwen manage you then and help to keep you from running off the track!”

“I am not in doubt now,” he answered.

“No, but I strongly suspect that you are in love.”

He only looked steadily before him and made no sign.

“If it’s Paddy,” said candid Gwen, “I’ll just move heaven and earth to help you. If it isn’t you can ‘gang yer ain gait.’”

She waited, and presently Lawrence said quietly: “It is Paddy.”

Whereupon Gwen forgot she was a young personage of importance mentioned often in the fashionable papers, and danced a little jig all round the room.

“Lovely!” she cried, “just lovely! You must get married before me so that I can be a bridesmaid, Lawrie.”

“You are somewhat premature,” dryly. “Paddy has refused to marry me.”

Gwen came to a sudden standstill.

“Refused,” she repeated, as if she were not quite sure she had heard aright.

“Yes, plain, ungarnished, unmistakable refusal.”

“Little idiot!” said Gwen, “what’s she dreaming of!”

“I don’t know, but she was at considerable pains to impress upon me that even medicine bottles and that beastly dispensary were preferable to Mourne Lodge with me.”

Gwen made a curious whistling sound with her lips—again not in the least what one would expect from a young lady mentioned in fashionable papers, and sat down beside Lawrence looking quite subdued.

“Well, don’t look so blue,” she said presently. “Where there’s a will there’s a way. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to win.”

“That’s right. Never say die. I expect you’ve taken her rather too much by surprise. I’m quite sure when I last saw Paddy, it had never entered her head for a moment that you cared a fig about her except to tease. Give her time to come round a bit. It sounds like playing a salmon, doesn’t it? I’m sure it will be heaps more interesting than if she’d said ‘yes’ right away, and you’ll both care more in the end. That’s what I tell Bob sometimes. I was much too easily won, and I want to go back and begin again, I just dropped right off the tree into his hands like an over-ripe cherry. Disgusting to think of—isn’t it? I ought to have let him mope and pine a bit, and pretended I didn’t care. Only I’d have been so horribly afraid he thought I meant it, and gone off, or something. I guess that sort of thing is all very fine to talk about and in story books, but when it comes to pretending you don’t like a man, when you’re just dying to have him all for your own—why it isn’t human nature. Them’s my sentiments!”

Lawrence could not help smiling, but it was poor enough comfort for him, though before they separated Gwen did really cheer him a little by her determined hopefulness and sanguinity.

With Paddy, however, she did not get on in the matter quite so well as she had expected. At the very first allusion Paddy simply drew back into herself, and refused to be coaxed or cajoled into uttering a single word. Gwen tried several times and then had to give in.

“Oh, well, if you won’t, you won’t,” she said. “I always thought I took the biscuit for pure, downright obstinacy, but I hand it on to you now.”

Lawrence himself did not come to London until the end of October, having decided it was best not to be in too great a hurry, and he had better have a turn at the pheasants first. When he came he stayed with the Grant-Carews, and it was here he met Paddy through a little subterfuge of Gwen’s.

“My poppa and momma,” she wrote to Paddy, “are going to a terrible, overpowering, grand-turk, political luncheon party, to which flighty young persons like myself are not admitted, but have to remain at home alone and bear the weight of the distinction of belonging to some one who has been admitted. Do be a dear girl and come and bear the weight with me. With your company and a liberal supply of De Brei’s chocolates I anticipate getting through the afternoon all right. In case of accidents, however, I may just mention the fact of our loneliness to one of His Majesty’s Horse Guards, but you will have no occasion to be uneasy anyway—_Comprenez_?”

Paddy accepted the invitation, but as Gwen fluttered across the drawing-room to receive her, her quick eyes instantly descried in the far window the back of a well-cut masculine coat, that was somehow familiar.

“Who is here?” she asked at once.

“Only Lawrence,” said Gwen, in the most casual fashion. “He is staying with us. Didn’t I tell you?”

Paddy made no reply. The plot was too apparent, but this very fact put her on her mettle, and helped her more than anything else would have done.

“How do you do?” she said to him, trying to seem perfectly at ease. “I thought you were shooting pheasants in Suffolk.”

“So I was until both they and the shooting grew too tame.”

“That’s his way of saying his aim was either too sure, or too wide, I don’t know which,” put in Gwen. “Or possibly he got into one of his bear-like moods and no one could put up with him, so they sent him on to us. Have you ever seen Lawrence when he’s like a bear with a sore head?” running on. “He’s just lovely! I think that’s my favourite of all his hundred-and-one moods. Most people are afraid of him, which is silly. If you don’t care a fig, and do a little bear-baiting, you can get no end of fun out of it. I wish you would dispose of a few of your moods to Bob, Lawrie. I’m dreadfully afraid he’ll turn out hopelessly tame as a husband. Still he can hardly go on worshipping for a whole life-time without a break of some kind. He’s bound to turn cranky one day. Won’t it be interesting to see the first symptoms! That must be one of the most entertaining parts about getting married, I think—to find out what you each get cranky about, and how you do it.”

“I’m afraid you’ll keep poor old Bob so busy,” said Lawrence, “he’ll have no time to indulge in cranks for himself.”

“Oh, yes, he will. I like fair play, and I’ll see that, he gets his chance. It’s only cricket, you know, to let your husband have a good old round-up occasionally, and pretend you’re much impressed, and all that.”

She dashed off into another subject. “What a delicious hat, Patricia! Where did you get it? My! what a swell we are to-day. Is it all put on for me, or for Lawrence?—or have you designs on my poor darling Goliath? Doesn’t she look charming, Lawrie?”

“Don’t be silly, Gwen,” a little crossly.

“Quite charming,” said Lawrence quietly, and opened the door for them to go down to lunch.

At lunch Gwen plunged into a very sore subject without knowing it.

Paddy was treating Lawrence with polite affability, as if to imply that for the sake of what had happened on the mountain, she would, as a special concession, at any rate not be rude. Lawrence was lackadaisically entertaining, with his old callous air, when Gwen suddenly said:

“Why won’t your sister ever come here with you, Paddy? What a funny girl she is. She seldom goes to see Kathleen and Doreen either.”

Paddy looked vexed and uncomfortable, but Gwen ran heedlessly on: “Do you know I think she has one of the loveliest faces I’ve ever seen in my life. I’d like to sit and look at her. Doesn’t she like going out?”

Now it was Paddy’s most firm and invincible belief, that the reason Eileen had so persistently declined all Owen’s friendly overtures and invitations, was from nothing in the world but a dread of meeting Lawrence. Of course she no longer fretted—it was easy to see that; but, judging from her own staunch heart, Paddy argued to herself that though she did not fret, she still remembered, and could not face the pain of a single meeting that could easily be avoided. Consequently a great many delightful gaieties had been sacrificed to the old wound. And when Paddy called this to mind, her anger with Lawrence’s heartlessness received fresh fuel.

As a matter of fact, it was not Eileen’s reason at all. When Gwen first showed her unmistakable liking for Paddy, and shortly afterward included both sisters in an invitation, Eileen had made up her mind resolutely to stand aside. She foresaw that were she once to join in their outings, it must inevitably mean fewer invitations for Paddy, as one can always be so much more easily asked than two, and as she was not particularly fond of gaiety, and would as soon remain at home with her mother, she made her decision in the beginning and stood by it, without, however, entering into explanations. Paddy probed her once or twice, and then drew her own conclusions.

“She has never been to see me once,” Gwen ran on. “I think it is too bad of her.”

She seemed to expect Paddy to say something, so Paddy remarked casually: “She hates leaving mother alone. It has always been the same,” and then she shot a sidelong glance at Lawrence. The fact that he was calmly going on with his lunch without the very smallest symptoms of embarrassment, or consciousness, vexed her unreasonably, and she wished with all her heart he had not come. Her polite affability from being genuine took a sarcastic turn that was not lost on Lawrence, but he deviated in no measure from his unperturbed, lackadaisical serenity.

“He hasn’t as much heart as a plaster cast,” was Paddy’s inward comment, which, had she stopped to think of it, showed a distinct lack of discernment in herself, considering what he had endured for her on the mountain.

Very shortly after lunch they were joined by the redoubtable Guardsman, who captivated Paddy at once, with the delightful boyishness that somehow mingled so irresistibly with his splendid proportions, and his almost pathetic devotion to Gwen—who dubbed him alternately, the Babe, or the Giant, or Goliath.

“We’re all going for a walk in the park now,” she informed her assembled guests, “and then, perhaps, we’ll have tea at the ‘Hyde Park Hotel,’ and Paddy can go back to her precious bottles.”

Paddy could only acquiesce, and of course Gwen and her giant were very quickly steaming ahead, with that expression of blissful satisfaction which is to be seen in the very backs of some amorous couples.

Paddy once more commenced to converse with affable politeness to her somewhat incommunicative companion.

At last her small stock of patience gave out.

“It’s your turn now,” she said a trifle witheringly. “I’ve thought of the last half-dozen remarks.”

Lawrence gave a low laugh. “I hope you don’t want me to think they were any strain,” he said.

Of course no self-respecting daughter of an Irish Fusilier could stand that. “I wished to be polite,” she retorted, “so I tried to suit my remarks to my company.”

“Then I wonder you don’t discourse on villains, and ogres, and blood-thirsty monsters, and that sort of thing.”

“I am quite sorry I couldn’t,” with a little snort. “Only inane platitudes seemed adaptable.”

Again Lawrence laughed.

“You’re a stunner at repartee, Paddy. I never knew such a fighter in my life. First it was fists, then feet, and now it’s tongue.”

“I am Irish,” with naïve simplicity.

“So am I, but it doesn’t make me want to lay every one out in about half-an-hour.”

“Of course not,” scornfully. “You are the sort of Irishman who goes about the world getting your countrymen a bad name. You only shine when you are doing what you ought not.”

“Another injustice to Ireland,” with mock pathos—adding: “and when you shoot barbed arrows, and fiery glances broadcast, with a reckless indifference to inflicting hurt, you are shining at doing what you ought—is that it?”

“Oh, don’t be an idiot!” with impatience. “You make an effort at being polite now, and talk sense.”

“But if being polite rests in suiting one’s conversation to one’s companion?” significantly.

“Then we won’t be polite,” laughing in spite of herself. “You can be natural and talk drivel, and I’ll be warlike.” She glanced round the park with a sudden expression, half-longing, and half-humorous—“Heaven! how I wish we could go ratting!” she said.

But before they parted they had one of their old tussles. Lawrence suddenly taxed her with looking pale and tired: “Are you ill?” he asked. “Is it that beastly dispensary?”

“I was never so well in my life before,” obstinately.

“I know better. You see, I’ve known you every single bit of your life, so I’m in a position to judge.”

“You have not,” with flat contradiction. She felt instinctively he was getting lover-like, and felt she must repress him at any cost.

“How have I not? I certainly knew you when you were a month old. I was offered the supreme privilege of carrying you round the garden, but you were so like a black-beetle I funked it.”

“There were the three years when you were abroad,” with a show of indifference.

“Ah, to be sure, I didn’t know you then.” He smiled a little—that old whimsical smile. “Had I done so there would probably have been no second trip abroad, and no deadly feud, and Mourne Lodge might have had a second Boadicea rampaging through its stately rooms as mistress.”

She quickened her steps. “I must get my ’bus now, or I shall be late. It is no use attempting to attract the attention of Gwen and her giant.”

“You bring me down to earth with such thuds,” with a plaintive air. “I dream of stately halls, and modern heroines gracing ancient shrines, and you annihilate both the vision and the poetry in one merciless blow, metaphorically flinging a Shepherd’s Bush ’bus at my head. As it is quite out of the question for me to inflict myself upon the lovers, I must take you home in a taxi.”

“I am going in a ’bus,” willfully. “If you want a cab drive, go to your club,” and she turned her steps resolutely toward the road.

“I see you mean to be unmanageable—but I can wait—my time will come. If I see you getting pale and ill-looking, it will come sooner than you think.”

“I don’t think at all. I haven’t time—at least not to think of you. My bottles and prescriptions interest me far more.”

“Liar,” he murmured humorously—looking hard into her face—and her mobile mouth twitched irresistibly as she crossed the road to her ’bus.

She climbed on the top to get the air, in spite of the moist November atmosphere, and though she had been spirited to the last with Lawrence, her heart grew heavy as they trundled down Notting Hill toward the enveloping greyness of Shepherd’s Bush, and she wondered if she had been wise to go. It was not the first time that Paddy had had misgivings about the wisdom of seeing much of Gwen. She always hated the commonplace, middle-class streets so afterward, the stuffy little dispensary, with its rows of foolish, inane-looking jars, and monotonous medicine bottles; the hopeless mediocrity of her whole surroundings. At moments she longed passionately to be with Jack galloping over the grass plains of the Argentine; and her heart was sore at the fate which had condemned her of all people to mixing medicines in a dingy suburb. She even ruminated a little wistfully, if only Lawrence had not been Lawrence. If some other man had lived at Mourne Lodge, and wanted her to make her home there, what a heaven on earth she might have had! Or if even Lawrence had been different—and there had been no dividing memory. How strange it seemed that he should combine such charm with such heartlessness. She understood better now, how it was Eileen had become a victim. It was natural enough, since it had pleased him to please her. But she knew more of the other side, had known it all along, through her greater friendship with his sisters. Only that morning, in a letter from home, Doreen had written: “Lawrence has been shooting pheasants in Suffolk. Long may he stay there. Before he went, and just after you left the Parsonage he was in one of his most bearish moods. If he wasn’t sullen he was cutting. He either sulked or sneered till we were sick of him in the house. Of course Kathleen quarrelled with him about the way he spoke to mother, which is so silly of her, as mother understands him, and doesn’t really take any notice; whereas Kathleen ends in making us all miserable. However, he had the goodness to take himself off after the 12th, and it’s been peaceful ever since.”

Paddy stared into the greyness. Of course Eileen had been spared; such a nature must surely have broken her heart—but that was no excuse whatever—merely a reflection.