Winding Paths | Page 5

his
first decisions concerning her and most things.
It was just perhaps the difference between the book-student and the
life-student. Dudley had always had a passion for books and for his
profession. His clever brain was a well of knowledge concerning
ancient architectures and relics of antiquity. He studied them because
he loved them, and, before all things else, to him they seemed worth
while.
He loved his sister also - he loved her better than any one, but it would
never have occured to him that she should be studied, or that there was
anything in her to study. To him she was quite an ordinary girl, rather
nice-looking when she was neat, but with a most unfortunate lack of
the sedate dignity and discretion that he considered essential to the
typically admirable woman.

That there might be other traits in their place, equally admirable, did
not occur to him. They ware not at any rate the traits he most admired.
Hal, on the other hand, was different in every respect. She loated books,
and learning, and what she called "dead old bones and rubbish." But
she loved human nature, and studied in in every phase she could.
Left at a very tender age to Dudley's sole care and protection, she had
to grow up without the enfolding, sympathetic love of a mother, or the
gay companionship of brothers and sisters. Not in the least depressed,
she started off at an early age in quest of adventure to see what the
world was like outside the four walls of their home.
Brought back, sometimes by a policeman, with whom she had already
become on the friendliest terms, sometimes in a cab in which some one
else had placed her, sometimes by a kindly stranger, she would yet slip
away again on the first opportunity, into the crush of mankind.
Punishment and expostulation were alike useless; Hal was just as
fascinated with people as Dudley was with books, and where her nature
called she fearlessly followed.
Through this roving trait she picked up an amount of commonplace,
everyday knowledge that would have dumbfoundered the clever young
architect, had he been in the least able to comprehend it. But while he
dipped enthusiastically into bygone ages, and won letters and honours
in his profession, she asked questions about life in the present, and
grappled with the problem of everyday existence and the peculiarities
of human nature, in a way that made her largely his superior, despite
his letters and honours.
And best of all was her complete understanding of him. Dudley fondly
imagined he was fulfilling to the best possible endeavours his
obligations of love and guardianship to his young sister. The young
sister, with her tender, quizzical understanding, regarded him as a mere
child, with a deliciously humorous way of always taking himself very
seriously; a brilliant brain, an irritating fund of superiority, and
something altogether apart that made him dearer than heaven and earth
and all things therein to her.

Hal might be dearer than all else to Dudley, without finding herself
loved in any way out of the ordinary, seeing how little he cared much
about except his profession; but to be the beloved of all, to an eager,
passionate, intense nature like hers, meant that in her heart she had
placed him upon a pedestal, and, while fondly having her little smile
over his shortcomings, yet loved him with an all-embracing love. He
did not suspect it, and he would not have understood it if he had; being
rather of the opinion that, considering all he had tried to be to her, she
might have loved him enough in return to make a greater effort to
please him.
Her obdurate resistance during the first stage of his disapproval of
Lorraine Vivian increased this feeling considerably. He felt that if she
really cared for him she should be willing to be guided by his judgment;
and while perceiving, just as Miss Walton had done, that she meant to
have her own way, he had less perspicacity to perceive also that
nameless trait which, for want of a better word, we sometimes call grit,
and which dimly proclaimed she might be trusted to follow her own
strenght of character.
When, later, his attitude of displeasure increased a thousandfold.
He was not told of it just at first. Hal was then in the throes of
convincing him that her particular talents lay in the direction of
secretarial work and journalism, rather than governessing or idleness,
and persuading him to make arrangements at once for her to learn
shorthand and typewriting with a view to becoming the private
secretary of a well-known editor of one of the leading newspapers.
The editor in question was a distant connection, and quite willing to
take her