them on the hearth. He seemed decidedly hazy and remote as he
brought a steamer rug from somewhere and wrapped it about her; his
voice, as he coaxed her over to the couch, apparently came from miles
away. As Patsy sank down, too weary to speak, the figure above her
took upon itself once more that suggestion of unearthliness that it
had worn when she had discovered it at dawn--hanging to the stump
fencing. For an instant the glow of the fire threw the profile into
the same shadowy outlines that the rising sun had first marked for
her; and the image lingered even after her eyes had closed.
"Sure, he's fading away like Oisiu, Gearoidh Iarla, and all of them
in the old tales," she thought, drowsily. "Like as not, when I open
my eyes again he'll be clear gone." This was where the dream ended
and complete oblivion began.
* * * * *
How long it lasted she could not have told; she only knew she was
awake at last and acutely conscious of everything about her; and that
she was warm--warm--warm! The room was dark except for the firelight;
but whether it was evening or night or midnight, she could not have
guessed. She found herself speculating in a hazy fashion where she
was, whose house they had broken into, and what the tinker had done
with himself. She had a vague, far-away feeling that she ought to be
disturbed over something--her complete isolation with a strange
companion on a night like this; but the physical contentment, the
reaction from bodily torture, drugged her sensibilities. She closed
her eyes lazily again and listened to the wind howling outside with
the never-ceasing accompaniment of beating rain. She was content to
revel in that feeling of luxury that only the snugly housed can know.
A sound in the room roused her. She opened her eyes as lazily as she
had closed them, expecting to find the tinker there replenishing the
fire; instead--She sat up with a jerk, speechless, rubbing her eyes
with two excited fists, intent on proving the unreality of what she
had seen; but when she looked again there it was--the clean-cut
figure of a man immaculate in white summer flannels.
The blood rushed to Patsy's face; mortification, dread, sank into her
very soul; the drug of physical contentment had lost its power. For
the first time in her life she was dominated by the dictates of
convention. She cursed her irresponsible love of vagabondage along
with her freedom of speech and manner and her lack of conservative
judgment. These had played her false and shamed her womanhood.
The Patsys of this world are not given to trading on their charm or
powers of attraction to win men to them--it is against their creed of
true womanhood. Moreover, a man counts no more than a woman in their
sum total of daily pleasure, and when they choose a comrade it is for
human qualities, not sexualities. And because of this, this
particular Patsy felt the more intensely the humiliation and
challenge of the moment. She hated herself; she hated the man,
whoever he might be; she hated the tinker for his share in it all.
Anger loosened her tongue at last. "Who, in the name of Saint
Bridget, are ye?" she demanded.
And the man in white flannels threw back his head and laughed.
VIII
WHEN TWO WERE NOT COMPANY
The laughter would have proved contagious to any except one in
Patsy's humor; and, as laughing alone is sorry business, the man soon
sobered and looked over at Patsy with the merriment lingering only in
his eyes.
"By Willie Shakespeare, it's the duke's daughter in truth!"
The words made little impression on her; it was the laugh and voice
that puzzled her; they were unmistakably the tinker's. But there was
nothing familiar about face, figure, or expression, although Patsy
studied them hard to find some trace of the man she had been
journeying with.
With a final bewildered shake of the head her eyes met his coldly,
mockingly. "My name is Patricia O'Connell"--her voice was crisp and
tart; "it's the Irish for a short temper and a hot one. Now maybe you
will have the grace to favor me with yours."
"Just the tinker," he complied, amiably, "and very much at your
service." This was accompanied by a sweeping bow.
Patsy had marked that bow on two previous occasions, and it testified
undeniably to the man's identity. Yet Patsy's mind balked at
accepting it; it was too galling to her pride, too slanderous of her
past judgment and perceptibilities. A sudden rush of anger brought
her to her feet, and, coming over to the opposite side of the hearth,
she faced him, flushed, determined, and very dignified. It is to be
doubted if Patsy could have sustained the latter with any degree of
conviction if she could have seen herself. Straying strands of still
damp hair curled bewitchingly about her face, bringing out the
roundness of cheek and chin and the curious, guileless expression of
her eyes. Moreover, the coquettish gown she wore was entrancing; it
was a light blue, tunic affair with wide baby collar and cuffs, and a
Roman girdle; and she had found stockings to match, with white
buckskin pumps. It had been blind chance on her part--this making of
a toilet, but the effect was none the less adorable--and condemning
to dignity.
This was evidently appreciated by the tinker, for his face was an odd
mixture of grotesque solemnity and keen enjoyment. Patsy was
altogether too flustered to diagnose his expression, but it added
considerably to the temperature of the O'Connell temper. In view of
the civilized surroundings and her state of dignity Patsy had taken
to King's English with barely a hint of her native brogue.
"If you are the tinker--and I presume you are--I should very much
appreciate an explanation. Would you mind telling me how you happened
to be hanging onto that stump, in rags, and looking half-witted when
I--when I came by?"
"Why--just because I was a tinker," he laughed.
"Then what are you now?"
"Once a tinker, always a tinker. I'm just a good-for-nothing; good to
mend other people's broken pots, and little else; knowing more about
birds than human beings, and poor company for any one saving the very
generous-hearted."
Patsy stamped her foot. "Why can't you play fair? Isn't it only
decent to tell who you are and what you were doing on the road when I
found you?"
"You know as well as I what I was doing--hanging onto the stump and
trying to gather my wits. And don't you think it would be nicer if
you talked Irish? It doesn't make a lad feel half as comfortable or
as much at home when he is addressed in such perfect English."
Patsy snorted. "In a minute I'll not be addressing you at all. Do you
think, if I had known you were what you are, I would ever have been
so--so brazen as to ask for your company and tramp along with you
for--_two_ days--or be here, now? Oh!" she finished, with a groan and
a fierce clenching of her fists.
"No, I don't think so. That's why I didn't hurry about gathering up
the wits; it seemed more sociable without them. I wouldn't have
bothered with them now, only I couldn't stay in those rags any
longer; it wouldn't have been kind to the furniture or the people who
own it. These togs were the only things that came anywhere near to
fitting me; and, somehow, a three-days' beard didn't match them.
Lucky for me, Heaven blessed the house with a good razor, and,
presto! when the beard and the rags were gone the wits came back. I'm
awfully sorry if you don't like them--the wits, I mean."
"Sure, ye must be!" Unconsciously Patsy had stepped back onto her
native sod and her tongue fairly dripped with irony. "So ye thought
ye'd have a morsel o' fun at the expense of a strange lass, while ye
laughed up your sleeve at how clever ye were."
"See here! don't be too hard, please! That foolishness was real
enough; I had just been knocked over the head by the kind gentleman
from whom I borrowed the rags. I paid him a tidy sum for the use of
them, and evidently he thought it was a shame to leave me burdened
with the balance of my money. Arguing wouldn't have done any good, so
he took the simplest way--just sandbagged me and--"
"Was it much money?"
"Mercy, no! Just a few dollars, hardly worth the anaesthesia."
"And ye were--half-witted, then?"
"Half? A bare sixteenth! It wasn't until afternoon--until we reached
the church at the cross-roads--that I really came into full
possession--" The sentence trailed off into an inexplicable grin.
"And after that, 'twas I played the fool." Patsy's eyes kindled.
The tinker grew serious; he dug his hands deep into his capacious
white flannels as if he were very much in earnest. "Can't you
understand? If I hadn't played foolish you would never have let me
wander with you--you just said so. I knew that, and I was selfish,
lonely--and I didn't want to give you up. You can't blame me. When a
man meets with genuine comradeship for the first time in his
life--the kind he has always wanted, but has grown to believe doesn't
exist--he's bound to win a crumb of it for himself, it costs no
more than a trick of foolishness. Surely you understand?"
"Oh, I understand! I'm understanding more and more every minute--'tis
the gift of your tongue, I'm thinking--and I'm wondering which of us
will be finding it the pleasantest." She flashed a look of
unutterable scorn upon him. "If ye were not half-witted, would ye
mind telling me how we came to be taking the wrong road at the
church?"
The tinker choked.
"Aye, I thought so. Ye lied to me."
"No, not exactly; you see--" he floundered helplessly.
"Faith! don't send a lie to mend a lie; 'tis poor business, I can
promise ye."
"Well,"--the tinker's tone grew dogged--"was it such a heinous sin,
after all, to want to keep you with me a little longer?"
The fire in Patsy's eyes leaped forth at last. "Sin, did ye
say? Faith! 'tis the wrong name ye've given it entirely. 'Twas
amusement, ye meant; the fun of trading on a girl's ignorance
and simple-heartedness; the trick of getting the good makings of
a tale to tell afterward to other fine gentlemen like yourself."
"So you think--"
"Aye, I think 'twas a joke with ye--from first to last. Maybe ye
made a wager with some one--or ye were dared to take to the road in
rags--or ye did it for copy; ye're not the first man who has done the
like for the sake of a new idea for a story. 'Twas a pity, though, ye
couldn't have got what ye wanted without making a girl pay with her
self-respect."
The tinker winced, reaching out a deprecatory hand. "You are wrong;
no one has paid such a price. There are some natures so clear and
fine that chance and extremity can put them anywhere--in any
company--without taking one whit from their fineness or leaving one
atom of smirch. Do you think I would have brought you here and risked
your trust and censorship of my honor if you had not been--what you
are? A decent man has as much self-respect as a decent woman, and the
same wish to keep it."
But Patsy's comprehension was strangely deaf.
"'Tis easy enough trimming up poor actions with grand words. There'd
have been no need of risking anything if ye had set me on the right
road this morning; I would have been in Arden now, where I belong.
But that wasn't your way. 'Twas a grand scheme ye had--whatever it
might be; and ye fetch me away afore the town is up and I can ask the
road of any one; and ye coax me across pastures and woods, a far cry
from passing folk and reliable information; and ye hold me,
loitering the day through, till ye have me forgetting entirely why I
came, along with the promise laid on me, and the other poor
lad--Heaven help him!"
"Oho!" The tinker whistled unconsciously.
"Oho!" mimicked Patsy; "and is there anything so wonderfully strange
in a lass looking after a lad? Sure, I'm hating myself for not
minding his need better; and, Holy Saint Michael, how I'm hating ye!"
She ran out of the room and up the stairway.
The tinker was after her in a twinkling. He reached the foot of the
stairs before she was at the top. "Please--please wait a minute," he
pleaded. "If there's another--lad, a lad you--love, that I have kept
you from--then I hate myself as much as you do. All I can say is that
I didn't think--didn't guess; and I'm no end sorry."
Patsy leaned over the banisters and looked down at him through eyes
unmistakably wet. "What does it matter to ye if he's the lad I love
or not? And can't a body do a kindness for a lad without loving him?"
"Thank Heaven! she can. You have taught me that miracle--and I don't
believe the other lad will grudge me these few hours, even if you do.
Who knows? My need may have been as great as his."
Patsy frowned. "All ye needed was something soft to dull your wits
on; what he's needing is a father--and mother--and sweetheart--and
some good 1915 bonds of human trust."
The tinker folded his arms over the newel-post and smiled. "And do
you expect to be able to supply them all?"
"God forbid!" Patsy laughed in spite of herself.
And the tinker, scoring a point, took courage and went on: "Don't you
suppose I realize that you have given me the finest gift a stranger
can have--the gift of honest, unconditional friendship, asking no
questions, demanding no returns? It is a rare gift for any man--and I
want to keep it as rare and beautiful as when it was given. So please
don't mar it for me--now. Please--!" His hands went out in earnest
appeal.
The anger was leaving Patsy's face; already the look of comradeship
was coming back in her eyes; her lips were beginning to curve in the
old, whimsical smile. And the tinker, seeing, doubled his courage.
"Now, won't you please forgive me and come down and get some supper?"
She hesitated and, seeing that her decision was hanging in the
balance, he recklessly tried his hand at tipping the scales in his
favor. "I'm no end of a good forager, and I've rooted out lots of
things in tins and jars. You must be awfully hungry; remember, it's
hours since our magical breakfast with the lady's-slippers."
Patsy's fist banged the railing with a startling thud. "I'll never
break fast with ye again--never--never--never! Ye've blighted the
greenest memory I ever had!" And with that she was gone, slamming the
door after her by way of dramatic emphasis.
* * * * *
It was a forlorn and dejected tinker that returned alone to the empty
hearthside. The bright cheer of the fire had gone; the room had
become a place of shadows and haunting memories. For a long time he
stood, brutally kicking one of the fire-dogs and snapping his fingers
at his feelings; and then, being a man and requiring food, he went
out into the pantry where he had been busily preparing to set forth
the hospitality of the house when Patsy had wakened.
But before he ate he found a tray and covered it with the best the
pantry afforded. He mounted the stairs with it in rather a lagging
fashion, being wholly at sea concerning the temperature of his
reception. His conscience finally compromised with his courage, and
he put the tray down outside Patsy's door.
It was not until he was half-way down the stairs again that he called
out, bravely, "Oh--I say--Miss--O'Connell; you'd better change your
mind and eat something."
He waited a good many minutes for an answer, but it came at last; the
voice sounded broken and wistful as a crying child's. "Thank--you!"
and then, "Could ye be after telling me how far it is from here to
Arden?"
"Let me see--about--seven miles;" and the tinker laughed; he could
not help it.
The next instant Patsy's door opened with a jerk and the tray was
precipitated down the stairs upon him. It was the conclusive evidence
of the O'Connell temper.
But the tinker never knew that Patsy wept herself remorsefully to
sleep; and Patsy never knew that the last thing the tinker did that
night was to cut a bedraggled brown coat and skirt and hat into
strips and burn them, bit by bit. It was not altogether a pleasant
ceremony--the smell of burning wool is not incense to one's nostrils;
and the tinker heaved a deep sigh of relief as the last flare died
down into a heap of black, smudgy embers.
"That Green County sheriff will have a long way to go now if he's
still looking for a girl in a brown suit," he chuckled.
Sleep laid the O'Connell temper. When Patsy awoke her eyes were as
serene as the patches of June sky framed by her windows, and she felt
at peace with the world and all the tinkers in it.
"'Twould be flattering the lad too much entirely to make up with him
before breakfast; but I'll be letting him tramp the road to Arden
with me, and we'll part there good friends. Troth, maybe he was a bit
lonesome," she added by way of concession.
She sprang out of bed with a glad little laugh; the day had a grand
beginning, spilling sunshine and bird-song into every corner of her
room, and to Patsy's optimistic soul a good beginning insured a
better ending. As she dressed she planned that ending to her own
liking and according to the most approved rules of dramatic
construction: The tinker should turn out a wandering genius, for in
her heart she could not believe the accusations she had hurled
against him the night past; when they reached Arden they would come
upon the younger Burgeman, contemplating immediate suicide; this
would give her her cue, and she would administer trust and a general
bracer with one hand as she removed the revolver with the other; in
gratitude he would divulge the truth about the forgery--he did it to
save the honor of some lady--after which the tinker would sponsor
him, tramping him off on the road to take the taste of gold out of
his mouth and teach him the real meaning of life.
Patsy had no difficulty with her construction until she came to the
final curtain; here she hesitated. She might trail off to find King
Midas and square Billy with him, or--the curtain might drop leaving
her right center, wishing both lads "God-speed." Neither ending was
entirely satisfactory, however; the mental effect of the tinker going
off with some one else--albeit it was another lad--was anything but
satisfying.
The house was strangely quiet. Patsy stopped frequently in her
playmaking to listen for some sounds of human occupancy other than
her own, but there was none.
"Poor lad! Maybe I killed him last night when I kicked the tea-things
down the stairs after him; or, most likely, the O'Connell temper has
him stiffened out with fear so he daren't move hand or foot."
A moment later she came down the stairs humming, "Blow, blow, thou
winter wind," her eyes dancing riotously.
Now, by all rights, dramatic or otherwise, the tinker should have
been on hand, waiting her entrance. But tinker there was none;
nothing but emptiness--and a breakfast-tray, spread and ready for
her in the pantry.
Curiosity, uneasiness mastered her pride and she
called--once--twice--several times. But there came no answering sound
save the quickening of her own heart-beats under the pressure of her
held breath.
She was alone in the house.
A feeling of unutterable loneliness swept over Patsy. She came back
to the stairs and stood with her hands clasping the newel-post--for
all the world like a shipwrecked maiden clinging to the last spar of
the ship. No, she did not believe a shipwrecked person could feel
more deserted--more left behind than she did; moreover, it was an
easier task to face the inevitable when it took the form of blind,
impersonal disaster. When it was a matter of deliberate, intentional
human motives--it became well-nigh unbearable. Had the tinker gone to
be rid of her company and her temper? Had he decided that the road
was a better place without her? Maybe he had taken the matter of the
other lad too seriously--and, thinking them sweethearts, had counted
himself an undesired third, and betaken himself out of their ways.
Or--maybe--he was fearsome of constables--and had hurried away to
cover his trail and leave her safe.
"Maybe a hundred things," moaned Patsy, disconsolately; "maybe 'tis
all a dream and there's no road and no quest and no Rich Man's son
and no tinker, and no anything. Maybe--I'll be waking up in another
minute and finding myself back in the hospital with the delirium
still on me."
She closed her eyes, rubbed them hard with two mandatory fists, then
opened them to test the truth of her last remark; and it happened
that the first object they fell on was a photograph in a carved
wooden frame on the mantel-shelf in the room across the hall. It was
plainly visible from where Patsy stood by the stairs--it was also
plainly familiar. With a run Patsy was over there in an instant, the
photograph in her hands.
"Holy Saint Patrick, 'tis witchcraft!" she cried under her breath.
"How in the name of devils--or saints--did he ever get this taken,
developed, printed, and framed--between the middle of last night and
the beginning of this morning!"
For Patsy was looking down at a picture of the tinker, in white
flannels, with head thrown back and laughing.
IX
PATSY ACQUIRES SOME INFORMATION
With the realization that the tinker was gone, the empty house
suddenly became oppressive. Patsy put down the photograph with a
quick little sigh, and hunted up the breakfast-tray he had left
spread and ready for her, carrying it out to the back porch. There in
the open and the sunshine she ate, according to her own tabulation,
three meals--a left-over supper, a breakfast, and the lunch which she
was more than likely to miss later, She was in the midst of the lunch
when an idea scuttled out of her inner consciousness and pulled at
her immediate attention. She rose hurriedly and went inside. Room
after room she searched, closet after closet.
In one she came upon a suit of familiar white flannels; and she
passed them slowly--so slowly that her hands brushed them with a
friendly little greeting. But the search was a barren one, and she
returned to the porch as empty-handed and as mystified as she had
left it; the heap of ashes on the hearth held no meaning for her, and
consequently told no tales.
"'Tis plain enough what's happened," she said, soberly, to the
sparrows who were skirmishing for crumbs. "Just as I said, he was
fearsome of those constables, after all, and he's escaped in my
clothes!"
The picture of the tinker's bulk trying to disguise itself behind
anything so scanty as her shrunken garments proved too irresistible
for her sense of humor; she burst into peal after peal of laughter
which left her weak and wet-eyed and dispelled her loneliness like
fog before a clearing wind.
"Anyhow, if he hasn't worn them he's fetched them away as a wee
souvenir of an O'Connell; and if I'm to reach Arden in any degree of
decency 'twill have to be in stolen clothes."
But she did not go in the blue frock; the realization came to her
promptly that that was no attire for the road and an unprotected
state; she must go with dull plumage and no beguiling feathers. So
she searched again, and came upon a blue-and-white "middy" suit and a
dark-blue "Norfolk." The exchange brought forth the veriest wisp of a
sigh, for a woman's a woman, on the road or off it; and what one has
not a marked preference for the more becoming frock?
Patsy proved herself a most lawful housebreaker. She tidied up and
put away everything; and the shutter having already been replaced
over the broken window by the runaway tinker, she turned the knob of
the Yale lock on the front door and put one foot over the threshold.
It was back again in an instant, however; and this time it was no
lawful Patsy that flew back through the hall to the mantel-shelf.
With the deftness and celerity of a true housebreaker she de-framed
the tinker and stuffed the photograph in the pocket of her stolen
Norfolk.
"Sure, he promised his company to Arden," she said, by way of
stilling her conscience. Then she crossed the threshold again; and
this time she closed the door behind her.
The sun was inconsiderately overhead. There was nothing to indicate
where it had risen or whither it intended to set; therefore there was
no way of Patsy's telling from what direction she had come or where
Arden was most likely to be found. She shook her fist at the sun
wrathfully. "I'll be bound you're in league with the tinker; 'tis all
a conspiracy to keep me from ever making Arden, or else to keep me
just seven miles from it. That's a grand number--seven."
A glint of white on the grass caught her eye; she stooped and found
it to be a diminutive quill feather dropped by some passing pigeon.
It lay across her palm for a second, and then--the whim taking
her--she shot it exultantly into the air. Where it fell she marked
the way it pointed, and that was the road she took.