"Well," said the other, "ordinary, it's a dollar a day or five dollars a
week, but this bein' off season an' nobody there, 'twouldn't surprise me
if Walt'ud kind of shade the price for you--Waalderf's three an' a half
a week. Them your duds up the platform? I'll drive you over for forty
cents. What was it you said your name was?"
"Forty cents is a most disinterested offer, and I accept it heartily,"
said Madison affably. "And my name's Madison--John Garfield Madison,
from New York."
"Mine's Higgins," volunteered the other. "Hiram Higgins, an' I'm
postmaster an' town constable of Needley. An' now, Mr. Madison, I
reckon we'll just get these effects of your'n onto the wagon an' move
along--folks'll be gettin' kinder rambunctious for their mail."
Hiram Higgins backed the democrat around, roped the baggage onto the
tail-board, picked up the hungry-looking mail-bag from where the mail
clerk had slung it from the car to the platform, threw it down in front
of the dashboard, and got in after it. Madison clambered into the back
seat, and they bumped off along the road.
"Had a mite of snow night before last," observed Mr. Higgins, pointing
it out with his whip, as he settled himself comfortably. "Kinder
reckoned we'd got rid of it for good till next fall till this come
along, but you can't never tell. What was it you said brought you down
here, Mr. Madison?"
Madison smiled.
"Rest and quiet--complete change," he said. "Nervous breakdown,
according to the doctors--that's what they always call it, you know,
when they can't find any other name for it. I've been overdoing it, I
suppose."
"Be that so!" returned Mr. Higgins sympathetically. "I want to know!
Well, now, that's too bad! Lookin' for quiet, be you? Well, I reckon
mabbe folks don't scurry around here quite so lively as they do in some
of the bigger towns like Noo York, but there's a tolerable lot goin' on
most every week, church festivals, an' spellin' bees, an' such. Folks
here is right hospitable, but you ain't in no way obliged to join in if
you don't feel up to it. I'll explain matters to 'em, an'--" Hiram
Higgins stopped, excitedly gathered reins and whip into one hand, and
with the other smote his knee a resounding whack. "Well, I swan!" he
exclaimed. "An' I never thought of it until this minute! I reckon you've
come to just the right place, and just as soon as you get settled you go
right out an' see the Patriarch--you won't need no more doctor, an'
folks up your way won't know when you go back."
"The Patriarch?" inquired Madison, with a puzzled air. "Who is he?"
"Why," said Mr. Higgins, "he's--he's the Patriarch. Been curin' us folks
around here longer'n any one can remember--just does it by faith, too."
Madison shook his head slowly.
"I might just as well be frank with you, Mr. Higgins," he said. "I've
never taken much stock in faith cure and that sort of thing."
"Mabbe," suggested Mr. Higgins deeply, "you ain't had much experience."
"No," confessed Madison reflectively; "I haven't--I haven't had any."
"Well then, you just wait an' see," said Mr. Higgins, waving his
mittened hand as though the whole matter were conclusively settled. "You
just wait an' see."
"But I'm afraid I don't quite understand," prodded Madison innocently.
"What kind of cures does he perform?"
They turned a right-angled bend in the road, disclosing a straggling
hamlet in a hollow below, and, farther away in the distance, a sweep of
ocean.
"Most any kind," said Mr. Higgins. "There's Needley now. All you've got
to do is ask the first person you see about him."
"Yes," said Madison, "but take yourself, for instance. Did this
Patriarch ever do anything for you?"
"He did," said Mr. Higgins impressively. "An' 'twasn't but last week.
I'm glad you asked me. For two nights I couldn't sleep. Had the earache
powerful. Poured hot oil an' laud'num into it, an' kept a hot brick
rolled up in flannel against it, but didn't do no good. Then Mrs.
Higgins says, 'Hiram, why in the land's sake don't you go out an' see
the Patriarch?' An' I hitched right up, an' every step that horse took I
could feel it gettin' better, an' I wasn't five minutes with the
Patriarch before I was cured, an' I ain't had a twinge since."
"It certainly looks as though there were something in that," admitted
Madison cautiously.
Hiram Higgins smiled a world of tolerance.
"'Tain't worth mentionin' alongside some of the things he's done," he
said deprecatingly. "You'll hear about 'em fast enough."
"What's the local doctor say about it?" asked Madison.
"There ain't enough pickin's to keep a doctor here, though some of 'em's
tried," chuckled Mr. Higgins. "Have to have 'em for _some_ things, of
course--an' then he drives over from Barton's Mills, seven miles from
here."
"And do _all_ the people in Needley believe in the
Patriarch?"--Madison's voice was full of grave interest.
"Well," said Mr. Higgins, "to be plumb downright honest with you, they
don't. Folks as was born here an' are old inhabitants do, but the
Holmes, bein' newcomers, is kinder set in their ways. They come down
here eight years ago last August with new-fangled notions, which they
ain't got rid of yet. You can see the consequences for yourself--got a
little boy, twelve year old, walking around lame on a crutch--an' I
reckon he always will. Doctor looks at him every time he comes over from
Barton's Mills, but it don't do no good. Folks tried to get the Holmes
to take him out to the Patriarch's till they got discouraged. 'Pears old
man Holmes kinder got around to a common sense view of it, but the women
folks say Mrs. Holmes is stubborner than all git-out, an' that old man
Holmes' voice ain't loud enough to be heerd when she gets goin'. 'Tain't
but fair to mention 'em, as I dunno of any one else that's an
exception." Mr. Higgins pointed ahead with his whip. "See them woods
over there beyond the town?"
"Yes," said Madison.
"That's where the Patriarch lives," said Mr. Higgins. "On the other side
of 'em, down by the seashore. An' here we be most home. Folks'll be
glad to see you, Mr. Madison, and now you're here I hope you'll make a
real smart stay--we'll try to make you feel to home."
"Thank you," said Madison cordially. "I haven't any idea, of course, how
long I'll be here--it all depends on circumstances."
"No," said Mr. Higgins; "I don't suppose you have. Anyway, I hope you'll
take a notion to go out an' see what the Patriarch can do for you. An'
now you ain't told me yet which hotel you're goin' to."
"Oh!" said Madison gravely. "Well, since you recommend it, I guess we'd
better make it the Congress."
--IV--
THE PATRIARCH
"Bet you a cookie," shrilled Hiram Higgins, in what he meant to be a
breathless whisper, "that there's where he's goin' now--only he don't
want us to know he's give in."
"Shet your fool mouth, Hiram!" cautioned Walt Perkins, the proprietor of
the Congress Hotel. "He kin hear you."
"Get out!" retorted Mr. Higgins. "No, he can't neither. He ain't feelin'
no ways perky, any one can see that, an' I'm tickled most to pieces that
he's come 'round--I've took up with him consid'rable, I have.
Patriarch'll just make a new-born critter outer him--you watch through
the window where he goes. Bet you a quarter that's what he's up to!"
John Garfield Madison, outside on the veranda of the Congress Hotel,
smiled at the words, as he lighted his cigar and turned up his coat
collar. He stepped off the veranda, crossed the little lawn to the
village street, and began to saunter nonchalantly and indifferently
oceanwards. He did not look around--he had no desire to bring
consternation to the massed faces of the leading citizens flattened
against the window panes--but he chuckled inwardly as he pictured them.
There would be Hiram Higgins, postmaster and town constable, Walt
Perkins, hotel man and town moderator, Lem Hodges, selectman, assessor
and overseer of the poor, Nathan Elmes, likewise selectman, assessor and
overseer of the poor, and Cale Rodgers, school committee-man and
proprietor of the general store.
Madison sauntered slowly along.
"I have arrived," he said, "not at a cemetery, but at an El Dorado and a
land flowing with milk and honey."
There was a humorous pucker around the corners of Madison's eyes, as he
reviewed his two days' sojourn in Needley--spent mostly in the "office"
of the Congress Hotel beside the stove with his feet up on the wood-box.
He had never lacked company--the office stove and the spitbox filled
with sawdust was the admitted rendezvous of the chosen spirits who were
still gazing after him from the window. Morning, afternoon and evening
they congregated there, and he had been promptly admitted to membership
in the select circle. At each sitting they had discussed the spring
planting and the weather, and then inevitably, led by Hiram Higgins, had
resolved themselves into an "experience" meeting on the Patriarch--he,
Madison, as a minority leader of one, grudgingly conceding an occasional
point. The sessions had invariably ended the same way--Hiram Higgins,
with the back of his hand underneath his chin, would stroke earnestly
at his chin-whiskers, and remark:
"Well, now, Mr. Madison, 'twon't do you a mite of harm to go out there
an' see for yourself. We've kinder got to look on you as one of us, an'
there ain't no use in you sufferin' around with what ails you when there
ain't no need of it."
Madison's replies had been equally void of versatility--he would shake
his head doubtfully, while his cigar-case circulated around the group.
Madison sniffed luxuriously at his thoroughbred Havana. He had passed
out of sight of the hotel window now, and he swung into a brisk walk. It
was a mile to the Patriarch's by a wagon track through the woods, that
led off from the road to the left just across the bridge. He had not
needed to ask directions. With magnificent inadvertence Hiram Higgins
had mentioned the exact way to reach the Patriarch's a dozen times, if
he had once. Also, by now, Madison had learned all that the town knew
about the Patriarch--which after all, he reflected with some
satisfaction, wasn't much. The Patriarch was over eighty years of age,
and he had come, deaf and dumb, to Needley sixty years ago--nobody knew
from where, nor his previous history, nor his name. They had called him
the Hermit at first, for immediately on his arrival he had gone out to
the shore of the ocean, away from the village, and built a crude hut
there for himself--which, in the after years, he had made into a more
pretentious dwelling. The cures had come "kinder gradual-like an' took
the folks mabbe forty years to get around to believin' in him real
serious," as Hiram Higgins put it; and then, as the Hermit grew old, and
the local reverence for him had become more deep-seated, they had
changed his name to the Patriarch. That was about all--but it seemed to
suit Madison, for his smile broadened.
"I wonder," said he to himself, as he stepped onto the bridge to cross
the little river, "if I'm not dreaming--this is like being let loose in
the U.S. Treasury with nobody looking!"
"Hullo, mister!" piped a young voice suddenly out of the dusk.
"Hullo!" responded Madison mechanically--and turned to watch a small
figure, going in the opposite direction, thump by him on a crutch.
Madison stopped and stared after the cripple--and removed his cigar very
slowly from his lips. "That's that Holmes boy," he muttered. "I don't
know as he'd look well on the platform when the excursion trains get to
running. Wonder if I can't get a job for his father somewhere about a
thousand miles from here and have the family move!"
The cripple disappeared down the road, and Madison, with a sort of
speculative flip to the ash of his cigar, resumed his way. Just across
the bridge he found the wagon track, and turned into it. It ran through
a thick wood of fir and spruce, and here, apart from now being able to
see but little before him--he had elected to "steal" away in the
darkness after supper--he found the going far from good.
Half curiously, half whimsically, he tried to visualize the Patriarch
from the word pictures that had been painted around the stove in the
hotel office. The man would be old--of course. And to have lived alone
for sixty years, to have shunned human companionship he must have been
either mildly or violently insane to begin with, which would account for
his belief in himself as a healer--he would unquestionably, in some form
or other, "have bats in his belfry," as Pale Face Harry had put it.
Madison's brows contracted as he went along. A man living by himself
under such conditions, with no incentive for the care of his person, not
even the pride engendered by the association of others, erudite as the
standard might be in his vicinity, was apt to grow very shortly into a
somewhat sorry spectacle. Give him sixty years of this and add an
unbalanced mind, and--Madison did not like the picture that now rose up
suddenly before him--a creature, bent, vapid of face, deaf and dumb,
frowsy of dress, and a world removed from the thought of a morning bath.
It might be picturesque in a way--but it wasn't a way Madison liked.
Somehow, he'd have to jerk the old chap out of his rut and get him
rigged up a little more becomingly, before the trusting public, simple
as they were, were invited down to see the exhibit. Madison's dramatic
instinct, which was developed to a keen sense of what the public craved
for, rebelled against any _faux pas_ in the scenic effects. He fell to
designing a costume that would more appropriately expound the rôle.
"Got to give 'em something for their money," murmured John Garfield
Madison. "Some sort of long, flowing robe now, washed every day, sort of
Grecian effect with a rope girdle, bare feet and sandals--um-m--dunno
about the sandals--don't want to slop over, and besides"--Madison
grinned a little to himself--"he might kick!"
Still reflecting, but arrived at no conclusion other than first to size
up the Patriarch and see how best to handle him, Madison reached the end
of the wagon track--and halted.
It was a little lighter here, now that he had left the woods, and what
appeared to be a sweep of snow-covered lawn was before him. Around this,
forming a perfect square, was a row of full-grown, magnificent maples--a
regal hedge, as it were, bordering the four sides--planted sixty years
ago! Madison's imagination fired exhilarantly at the inspiring thought
of these in leaf--in another few weeks. He shook hands with himself
cordially.
"Behold the amphitheater!" he said. "This is where we stage the greatest
act of the century!"
Behind the row of trees, directly across the lawn in front of him,
loomed the dark shadow of a long, low, cottage-like building, and from a
window a light twinkled out between the tree trunks; while from beyond
again came the roll of surf, low, rhythmic, like the soft accompaniment
of orchestral music.
"Wonderful!" breathed Madison. "I feel," said he, "as though I had just
had a drink!"
He walked across the lawn, passed between the trees, and reached the end
of the cottage away from where the light showed in the window.
"The Patriarch being deaf," he remarked, "I might as well explore."
From the row of trees to the cottage was perhaps twenty feet. The door
of the cottage, porticoed with trellis-work, was in the center of the
cottage itself. Everywhere Madison turned were trellis-work frames for
flowers--the walls of the cottage were covered, literally covered, with
bare, slumbering shoots of Virginia creeper. In a little while now the
place would be a veritable paradise. Madison raised his hat reverently.
"Fancy this on a New York stage!" said he esthetically, invoking the
universe. "Could you beat it! I could play the Patriarch myself with
this setting, and everybody would fall for it. There's nothing to it,
nothing to it, but his make-up--and I'll guarantee to take care of that.
And now we'll have a look at Aladdin's lamp and see just what kind of
rubbing up will invoke the genii!"
Madison walked along the length of the cottage, past the door, and, as
he reached the lighted window, drew well away from the wall--and stared
inside. Surprise and incredulity swept across his features, and then his
face beamed and his gray eyes lighted with the fire of an artist who
sees the elusive imagery of the Great Picture at last transferred to
canvas, vivid, actual, transcending his wildest hopes. He was gazing
upon the sweetest and most venerable face he had ever seen.
Here and there within upon the floor were strewn old-fashioned, round
rag mats that would enrapture a connoisseur, and the floor where it
showed between the mats was scrubbed to a glistening white. The
furnishings were few and homemade, but full of simple artistry--a chair
or two, and a table, upon which burned a lamp. In a fireplace, made of
stones cemented together, the natural effect unspoiled by any attempt to
hew the stones into uniformity, a log fire glowed, sputtered, and now
and then leaped cheerily into flame.
Between the table and the fire, half turned toward Madison, sat the
Patriarch. He was reading, his head bent forward, his book held very
close to his eyes. Hair, a wealth of it, soft, silky and snow-white,
reached just below his coat collar--a silvery beard fell far below his
book. But it was the face itself, no single distinguishing feature,
neither the blue eyes, the sensitive lips, nor the broad, fine forehead,
that held Madison's gaze--it seemed to combine something that he had
never seen in a face before, and to look upon it was to be drawn
instantly to the man--there was purity of thought and act stamped upon
it with a seal ineffaceable, and there was gentleness there, and
sympathy, and trust, and a simple, unassuming dignity and
self-possession--and, too, there was a shadow there, a little of
sadness, a little of weariness, a background, a relief, as it were, a
touch such as a genius might conceive to lift the picture with his brush
into wondrous, lingering, haunting consonance.
Madison's eyes, slowly, as though loath to leave the Patriarch's face,
travelled over the gray homespun suit that clothed the man, the white
wristbands of the home-washed shirt, unstarched, but spotlessly
clean--and his fancy of flowing, Grecian robes with rope girdles seemed
to hold him up to mockery as a crude and paltry bungler before the
perfect, unostentatious harmony of reality.
"There's nothing to it!" whispered Madison softly to himself. "Nothing
to it! There isn't a thing left to do--not even a chance of making a
bluff at earning the money--it's just like _stealing_ it. Why, say, it
would get _me_ if I weren't behind the scenes--honest now, it would!"
Madison drew back from the window and walked toward the door of the
cottage.
"It should take me about fifteen minutes to establish myself on the
basis of a long-lost son with the Patriarch clinging confidingly around
my neck," he observed. "If it takes me any longer than that I'd feel
depressed every time I met myself in the looking-glass."
He reached the cottage door, and, lifting the brass knocker that shone
dimly in the darkness, knocked once, lifted it to knock again--and his
hand fell away as he smiled a little foolishly.
"I forgot the Patriarch was deaf," he muttered. "Wonder what you're
supposed to do? Walk right in, or--"
The door swung suddenly wide open, and upon Madison's face, usually so
perfectly at its owner's control, came a look of stunned surprise. The
Patriarch was standing on the threshold, and, with a gesture of welcome,
was motioning him to enter.
--V--
A STRANGE CONVERSATION
Madison, quite in command of himself again in an instant, stepped,
smiling, into the cottage. He took the Patriarch's extended hand in a
cordial grip and nodded understandingly as the other, with quick, rapid
motions, touched lips and ears to signify that he could neither hear nor
speak. But, inwardly puzzled, Madison searched the Patriarch's face--was
the other playing a part? Could he _hear_, after all--and perhaps speak
as well, if he wanted to! There was certainly no guile in the venerable,
gentle face--or was it guile of a very high order?
The Patriarch closed the door, and drawing his own armchair to the table
offered it to Madison with a courteous smile.
Madison refused by gently forcing the old man into it himself, pulled
another up to face the Patriarch, sat down--and his eyes fixed suddenly
on the ceiling above his head. Swaying slowly back and forth was a sort
of miniature punkah of waving white canvas. He studied this for a
moment, then his eyes shifted to the Patriarch, who was regarding him
humorously.
The Patriarch rose from his chair, walked to the door, opened it, moved
the knocker up and down--and pointed to the ceiling. The canvas was
waving violently now, and Madison traced the cord attachment, on little
pulleys, across the ceiling to where it ran through the door and was
affixed to the knocker without. It was very simple, even
primitive--every time the knocker was lifted the cord was pulled and the
canvas waved back and forth. Madison nodded his head and smiled
approvingly, as the Patriarch once more closed the door and resumed his
seat.
Madison leaned back in his chair and allowed his eyes to stray, not
impertinently but with pleased endorsement, around the room, to permit
an unhampered opportunity for the scrutiny of the blue eyes which he
felt upon him.
"And to think," he mused reproachfully, "that I could have doubted him
for a single instant--he certainly hung one on me that time."
The Patriarch reached into the drawer of the table beside him, took out
a slate and pencil, scratched a few words on the slate and handed both
pencil and slate to Madison.
"Your name is Madison, isn't it?" Madison read. "From New York? Hiram
told me about you."
"Hiram," said Madison to himself, "is a man of many parts, and the most
useful man I have ever known. Hiram, by reflected glory, will some day
become famous." On the slate he replied: "Yes; that is my name--John
Madison. It was good of Mr. Higgins to speak of me."
The Patriarch held the slate within a bare inch or two of his face, and
moved it back and forth before his eyes to follow the lines. As he
lowered it, Madison reached for it politely.
"I am afraid you do not see very well," he scribbled. "Shall I write
larger?"
Again the Patriarch deciphered the words laboriously; then he wrote, and
handed the slate to Madison.
"I am going blind," he had written. "Please write as large as possible."
"Blind!"--Madison's attitude and expression were eloquent enough not
only to be a perfect interpretation of his exclamation, but to convey
his shocked and pained surprise as well.
The Patriarch bowed his head affirmatively, smiling a little wistfully.
Madison impetuously drew his chair closer to the other, laid his hand
sympathetically upon the Patriarch's sleeve, and, with the slate upon
his knee, wrote with the other hand impulsively:
"I am sorry--very, very sorry. Would you care to tell me about it?"
The Patriarch's face lighted up while reading the slate, but he shook
his head slowly as he smiled again.
"By _and_ by, if you wish," he wrote. "But first about yourself. You are
sick--and you have come to me for help?"
The slate now passed from hand to hand quite rapidly.
"Yes," wrote Madison. "Can you cure me?"
"No," replied the Patriarch; "not in your present mental condition."
"What do you mean?" asked Madison.
"Your question itself implies that you are skeptical. While that state
of mind exists, I can do nothing--it depends entirely on yourself."
"And if I put skepticism aside?" Madison's pencil demanded. "Can you
cure me then?"
"Unquestionably," wrote the Patriarch, "if you really put it aside.
Faith is the simplest thing in the world and the most complex--but it is
fundamental. Without faith nothing is possible; with faith nothing is
impossible."
Madison's gray eyes rested, magnificently thoughtful and troubled, upon
the Patriarch.