CHAPTER XLVI.

PATTY CHOOSES HER CAREER.

The dinner party on Christmas Eve was the first of a series of brilliant festivities, extending all through the hot last week of 1880, and over the cool new year (for which fires were lighted and furs brought out again), and into the sultry middle of January, and up to the memorable anniversary of the day on which the three Miss Kings had first arrived in Melbourne; and when they were over this was the state of the sisters' affairs:--Elizabeth a little tired with so much dissipation, but content to do all that was asked of her, since she was not asked to leave her husband's side; Eleanor, still revelling in the delights of wealth and power, and in Mr. Westmoreland's accumulating torments; and Patty worn and pale with sleepless nights and heart-sick with hope deferred, longing to set herself straight with Paul Brion before she left Australia, and seeing her chances of doing so dwindling and fading day by day. And now they were beginning to prepare for their voyage to a world yet larger and fuller than the one in which they had lived and learned so much.

One afternoon, while Mrs. Duff-Scott and Eleanor paid calls, Elizabeth and Patty went for the last time to Myrtle Street, to pack up the bureau and some of their smaller household effects in preparation for the men who were to clear the rooms on the morrow. Mr. Yelverton accompanied them, and lingered in the small sitting-room for awhile, helping here and there, or pretending to do so. For his entertainment they boiled the kettle and set out the cheap cups and saucers, and they had afternoon tea together, and Patty played the Moonlight Sonata; and then Elizabeth bade her husband go and amuse himself at his club and come back to them in an hour's time. He went, accordingly; and the two sisters pinned up their skirts and tucked up their sleeves, and worked with great diligence when he was no longer there to distract them. They worked so well that at the end of half an hour they had nothing left to do, except a little sorting of house linen and books. Elizabeth undertaking this business, Patty pulled down her sleeves and walked to the window; and she stood there for a little while, leaning her arm on the frame and her head on her arm.

"Paul Brion is at home, Elizabeth," she said, presently.

"Is he, dear?" responded the elder sister, who had begun to think (because her husband thought it) that it was a pity Paul Brion, being so hopelessly cantankerous, should be allowed to bother them any more.

"Yes. And, Elizabeth, I hope you won't mind--it is very improper, I know--but _I shall go and see him._ It is my last chance. I will go and say good-bye to Mrs. M'Intyre, and then I will run up to his room and speak to him--just for one minute. It is my last chance," she repeated; "I shall never have another."

"But, my darling--"

"Oh, don't be afraid"--drawing herself up haughtily--"I am not going to be _quite_ a fool. I shall not throw myself into his arms. I am simply going to apologise for cutting him on Cup Day. I am simply going to set myself right with him before I go away--for his father's sake."

"It is a risky experiment, my dear, whichever way you look at it. I think you had better write."

"No. I have no faith in writing. You cannot make a letter say what you mean. And he will not come to us--he will not share his father's friendship for Kingscote--he was not at home when you and Kingscote called on him--he was not even at Mrs. Aarons's on Friday. There is no way to get at him but to go and see him now. I hear him in his room, and he is alone. I will not trouble him long--I will let him see that I can do without him quite as well as he can do without me--but I must and will explain the horrible mistake that I know he has fallen into about me, before I lose the chance for the rest of my life."

"My dear, how can you? How can you tell him your true reason for cutting him? How can you do it at all, without implying more than you would like to imply? You had better leave it, Patty. Or let me go for you, my darling."

But Patty insisted upon going herself, conscientiously assuring her sister that she would do it in ten minutes, without saying anything improper about Mrs. Aarons, and without giving the young man the smallest reason to suppose that she cared for him any more than she cared for his father, or was in the least degree desirous of being cared for by him. And this was how she did it.

Paul was sitting at his table, with papers strewn before him. He had been writing since his mid-day breakfast, and was half way through a brilliant article on "Patronage in the Railway Department," when the sound of the piano next door, heard for the first time after a long interval, scattered his political ideas and set him dreaming and meditating for the rest of the afternoon. He was leaning back in his chair, with his pipe in his mouth, his hands in his pockets, and his legs stretched out rigidly under the table, when he heard a tap at the door. He said "Come in," listlessly, expecting Betsy's familiar face; and when, instead of an uninteresting housemaid, he saw the beautiful form of his beloved standing on the threshold, he was so stunned with astonishment that at first he could not speak.

"Miss--Miss Yelverton!" he exclaimed, flinging his pipe aside and struggling to his feet.

"I hope I am not disturbing you," said Patty, very stiffly. "I have only come for a moment--because we are going away, and--and--and I had something to say to you before we went. We have been so unfortunate--my sister and brother-in-law were so unfortunate--as to miss seeing you the other day. I--we have come this afternoon to do some packing, because we are giving up our old rooms, and I thought--I thought--"

She was stammering fearfully, and her face was scarlet with confusion and embarrassment. She was beginning already to realise the difficulty of her undertaking.

"Won't you sit down?" he said, wheeling his tobacco-scented arm-chair out of its corner. He, too, was very much off his balance and bewildered by the situation, and his voice, though grave, was shaken.

"No, thank you," she replied, with what she intended to be a haughty and distant bow. "I only came for a moment--as I happened to be saying good-bye to Mrs. M'Intyre. My sister is waiting for me. We are going home directly. I just wanted--I only wanted"--she lifted her eyes, full of wistful appeal, suddenly to his--"I wanted just to beg your pardon, that's all. I was very rude to you one day, and you have never forgiven me for it. I wanted to tell you that--that it was not what you thought it was--that I had a reason you did not know of for doing it, and that the moment after I was sorry--I have been sorry every hour of my life since, because I knew I had given you a wrong impression, and I have not been able to rectify it."

"I don't quite understand--" he began.

"No, I know--I know. And I can't explain. Don't ask me to explain. Only _believe_," she said earnestly, standing before him and leaning on the table, "that I have never, never been ungrateful for all the kindness you showed us when we came here a year ago--I have always been the same. It was not because I forgot that you were our best friend--the best friend we ever had--that I--that I"--her voice was breaking, and she was searching for her pocket-handkerchief--"that I behaved to you as I did."

"Can't you tell me how it was?" he asked, anxiously. "You have nothing to be grateful for, Miss Patty--Miss Yelverton, I ought to say--and I cannot feel that I have anything to forgive. But I should like to know--yes, now that you have spoken of it, I think you ought to tell me--why you did it."

"I cannot--I cannot. It was something that had been said of you. I believed it for a moment, because--because it looked as if it were true--but only for a moment. When I came to think of it I knew it was impossible."

Paul Brion's keen face, that had been pale and strained, cleared suddenly, and his dark eyes brightened. He was quite satisfied with this explanation. He knew what Patty meant as well as if there had been but one word for a spade, and she had used it--as well, and even better than she could have imagined; for she forgot that she had no right or reason to resent his shortcomings, save on the ground of a special interest in him, and he was quick to remember it.

"Oh, do sit down a moment," he said, pushing the arm-chair a few inches forward. He was trying to think what he might dare to say to her to show how thankful he was. It was impossible for her to help seeing the change in him.

"No," she replied, hastily pulling herself together. "I must go now. I had no business to come here at all--it was only because it seemed the last chance of speaking to you. I have said what I came to say, and now I must go back to my sister." She looked all round the well-remembered room--at the green rep suite, and the flowery carpet, and the cedar chiffonnier, and the Cenci over the fire-place--at Paul's bookshelves and littered writing-table, and his pipes and letters on the chimney-piece, and his newspapers on the floor; and then she looked at him with eyes that _would_ cry, though she did her very best to help it. "Good-bye," she said, turning towards the door.

He took her outstretched hand and held it "Good-bye--if it must be so," he said. "You are really going away by the next mail?"

"Yes."

"And not coming back again?"

"I don't know."

"Well," he said, "you are rich, and a great lady now. I can only wish with all my heart for your happiness--I cannot hope that I shall ever be privileged to contribute to it again. I am out of it now, Miss Patty."

She left her right hand in his, and with the other put her handkerchief to her eyes. "Why should you be out of it?" she sobbed. "Your father is not out of it. It is you who have deserted us--we should never have deserted you."

"I thought you threw me over that day on the racecourse, and I have only tried to keep my place."

"But I have told you I never meant that."

"Yes, thank God! Whatever happens, I shall have this day to remember--that you came to me voluntarily to tell me that you had never been unworthy of yourself. You have asked me to forgive you, but it is I that want to be forgiven--for insulting you by thinking that money and grandeur and fine clothes could change you."

"They will never change me," said Patty, who had broken down altogether, and was making no secret of her tears. In fact, they were past making a secret of. She had determined to have no tender sentiment when she sought this interview, but she found herself powerless to resist the pathos of the situation. To be parting from Paul Brion--and it seemed as if it were really going to be a parting--was too heartbreaking to bear as she would have liked to bear it.

"When you were poor," he said, hurried along by a very strong current of emotions of various kinds, "when you lived here on the other side of the wall--if you had come to me--if you had spoken to me, and treated me like this _then_--"

She drew her hand from his grasp, and tried to collect herself. "Hush--we must not go on talking," she said, with a flurried air; "you must not keep me here now."

"No, I will not keep you--I will not take advantage of you now," he replied, "though I am horribly tempted. But if it had been as it used to be--if we were both poor alike, as we were then--if you were Patty King instead of Miss Yelverton--I would not let you out of this room without telling me something more. Oh, why did you come at all?" he burst out, in a sudden rage of passion, quivering all over as he looked at her with the desire to seize her and kiss her and satisfy his starving heart.

"You have been hard to me always--from first to last--but this is the very cruellest thing you have ever done. To come here and drive me wild like this, and then go and leave me us if I were Mrs. M'Intyre or the landlord you were paying off next door. I wonder what you think I am made of? I have stood everything--I have stood all your snubs, and slights, and hard usage of me--I have been humble and patient as I never was to anybody who treated me so in my life before--but that doesn't mean that I am made of wood or stone. There are limits to one's powers of endurance, and though I have borne so much, I _can't_ bear _this_. I tell you fairly it is trying me too far." He stood at the table fluttering his papers with a hand as unsteady as that of a drunkard, and glaring at her, not straight into her eyes--which, indeed, were cast abjectly on the floor--but all over her pretty, forlorn figure, shrinking and cowering before him. "You are kind enough to everybody else," he went on; "you might at least show some common humanity to me. I am not a coxcomb, I hope, but I know you can't have helped knowing what I have felt for you--no woman can help knowing when a man cares for her, though he never says a word about it. A dog who loves you will get some consideration for it, but you are having no consideration for me. I hope I am not rude--I'm afraid I am forgetting my manners, Miss Patty--but a man can't think of manners when he is driven out of his senses. Forgive me, I am speaking to you too roughly. It was kind of you to come and tell me what you have told me--I am not ungrateful for that--but it was a cruel kindness. Why didn't you send me a note--a little, cold, formal note? or why did you not send Mrs. Yelverton to explain things? That would have done just as well. You have paid me a great honour, I know; but I can't look at it like that. After all, I was making up my mind to lose you, and I think I could have borne it, and got on somehow, and got something out of life in spite of it. But now how can I bear it?--how can I bear it _now?_"

Patty bowed like a reed to this unexpected storm, which, nevertheless, thrilled her with wild elation and rapture, through and through. She had no sense of either pride or shame; she never for a moment regretted that she had not written a note, or sent Mrs. Yelverton in her place. But what she said and what she did I will leave the reader to conjecture. There has been too much love-making in these pages of late. Tableau. We will ring the curtain down.

Meanwhile Elizabeth sat alone when her work was done, wondering what was happening at Mrs. M'Intyre's, until her husband came to tell her that it was past six o'clock, and time to go home to dress for dinner. "The child can't possibly be with _him_," said Mr. Yelverton, rather severely. "She must be gossiping with the landlady."

"I think I will go and fetch her," said Elizabeth. But as she was patting on her bonnet, Patty came upstairs, smiling and preening her feathers, so to speak--bringing Paul with her.