Schuyler's den listening to Billy Burgeman's confession of a crime
for which he had not sounded in the least responsible. That was on
Tuesday. It was now Friday--three days--seventy-two hours later. She
preferred to think of it in terms of hours--it measured the time
proportionally nearer to the actual feeling of it. Strangely enough,
it seemed half a lifetime instead of half a week, and Patsy could not
fathom the why of it. But what puzzled her more was the present
condition of Billy Burgeman, himself. As far as she was concerned he
had suddenly ceased to exist, and she was pursuing a Balmacaan coat
and plush hat that were quite tenantless; or--at most--they were
supported by the very haziest suggestion of a personality. The harder
she struggled to make a flesh-and-blood man therefrom the more
persistently did it elude her--slipping through her mental grasp like
so much quicksilver. She tried her best to picture him doing
something, feeling something--the simplest human emotion--and the
result was an absolute blank.
And all the while the shadow of a very real man followed her down the
road--a shadow in grotesquely flapping rags, with head flung back. A
dozen times she caught herself listening for the tramp of his feet
beside hers, and flushed hotly at the nagging consciousness that
pointed out each time only the mocking echo of her own tread. Like
the left-behind cottage, the road became unexpectedly lonely and
discouraging.
"The devil take them both!" she sputtered at last. "When one man
refuses to be real at all, and the other pesters ye with being too
real--'tis time to quit their company and let them fetch up where and
how they like."
But an O'Connell is never a quitter; and deep down in Patsy's heart
was the determination to see the end of the road for all three of
them--if fate only granted the chance.
She came to a cross-roads at length. She had spied it from afar and
hailed it as the end of her troubles; now she would learn the right
way to Arden. But Patsy reckoned without chance--or some one else.
The sign-boards had all been ripped from their respective places on a
central post and lay propped up against its base. There was little
information in them for Patsy as she read: "Petersham, five miles;
Lebanon, twelve miles; Arden, seven miles--"
The last sign went spinning across the road, and Patsy dropped on a
near-by stone with the anguish of a great tragedian. "Seven
miles--seven miles! I'm as near to it and I know as much about it as
when I started three days ago. Sure, I feel like a mule, just, on a
treadmill, with Billy Burgeman in the hopper."
A feeling of utter helplessness took possession of her; it was as if
her experiences, her actions, her very words and emotions, were
controlled by an unseen power. Impulse might have precipitated her
into the adventure, but since her feet had trod the first stretch of
the road to Arden chance had sat somewhere, chuckling at his own
comedy--making, while he pulled her hither and yon, like a marionette
on a wire. Verily chance was still chuckling at the incongruity of
his stage setting: A girl pursuing a strange man, and a strange
sheriff pursuing the girl, and neither having an inkling of the
pursuit or the reason for it.
On one thing her mind clinched fast, however: she would at least sit
where she was until some one came by who could put her right, once
and for all; rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief--she would stop
whoever came first.
The arpeggio of an automobile horn brought her to her feet; the next
moment the machine careened into sight and Patsy flagged it from the
middle of the road, the lines of her face set in grim determination.
"Would you kindly tell me--" she was beginning when a girl in the
tonneau cut her short:
"Why, it's Patsy O'Connell! How in the name of your blessed Saint
Patrick did you ever get so far from home?"
The car was full of young people, but the girl who had spoken was the
only one who looked at all familiar. Patsy's mind groped out of the
present into the past; it was all a blind alley, however, and led
nowhere.
The girl, seeing her bewilderment, helped her out. "Don't you
remember, I was with Marjorie Schuyler in Dublin when you were all so
jolly kind to us? I'm Janet Payne--those awful 'Spitsburger
Paynes'"--and the girl's laugh rang out contagiously.
The laugh swept Patsy's mind out into the open. She reached out and
gripped the girl's hand. "Sure, I remember. But it's a long way from
Dublin, and my memory is slower at hearkening back than my heart. A
brave day to all of you." And her smile greeted the carful
indiscriminately.
"Oh!"--the girl was apologetic--"how beastly rude I am! I'm
forgetting that you don't know everybody as well as everybody knows
you. Jean Lewis, Mrs. Dempsy Carter, Dempsy Carter, Gregory Jessup,
and Jay Clinton--Miss Patricia O'Connell, of the Irish National
Players. We are all very much at your service--including the car,
which is not mine, but the Dempsy Carters'."
"Shall we kidnap Miss O'Connell?" suggested the owner. "She appears
an easy victim."
Janet Payne clapped her hands, but Patsy shook a decided negative.
"That's the genius of the Irish," she laughed; "they look easy till
you hold them up. I'm bound for Arden, and must make it by the
quickest road if you'll point it out to me."
"Why, of course--Arden; that accounts for you perfectly. Stupid that
I didn't think of it at once. What part are you playing?" Janet Payne
accompanied the question with unmistakable eagerness.
Patsy shot a shrewd glance at the girl. Was she indulging in
good-natured banter, or had she learned through Marjorie Schuyler of
Patsy's self-imposed quest, and was seeking information in figurative
speech? Patsy decided in favor of the former and answered it in kind:
"Faith! I'm not sure whether I've been cast for the duke's
daughter--or the fool. I can tell ye better after I reach Arden." And
she turned abruptly as if she would be gone.
But the girl held her back. "No, you don't. We are not going to lose
you like that. We'll kidnap you, as Dempsy suggested, till after
lunch; then we'll motor you back to Arden. You'll get there just
about as soon."
Patsy had not the slightest intention of yielding; her mind and her
feet were braced against any divergence from the straight road now;
but the man Janet Payne had called Gregory Jessup said something that
scattered her resolutions like so much chaff.
"You've simply got to come, Miss O'Connell." And he leaned over the
side of the car in boyish enthusiasm. "Last summer Billy Burgeman
used to read to me the parts of Marjorie's letters that told about
you, and they were great! We were making up our minds to go to
Ireland and see if you were real when your company came to America.
After that Marjorie would never introduce us after the plays, just to
be contrary. You wouldn't have the heart to grudge us a little
acquaintanceship now, would you?"
"Billy Burgeman," repeated Patsy. "Do you know him?"
Dempsy Carter interposed. "They're chums, Miss O'Connell. I'll wager
there isn't a soul on earth that knows Billy as well as Greg does."
"That's hard on Marjorie, isn't it?" asked Janet Payne.
"Oh, hang Marjorie!" The sincerity of Gregory Jessup's emotion
somewhat excused his outburst.
"Why, I thought they were betrothed!" Patsy looked innocent.
"They were. What they are now--Heaven only knows! Marjorie Schuyler
has gone to China, and Billy has dropped off the face of the earth."
A sudden silence fell on the cross-roads. It was Patsy who broke it
at last. "Well?" A composite, interrogative stare came from the
carful. Patsy laughed bewitchingly. "For a crowd of rascally
kidnappers, you are the slowest I ever saw. Troth, in Ireland they'd
have it done in half the time."
The next instant Patsy was lifted bodily inside, and, amid a general
burst of merriment, the car swung down the road.
* * * * *
It was a picnic lunch--an elaborate affair put up in a hamper, a
fireless cooker, and a thermos basket; and it was spread on a tiny,
fir-covered peninsula jutting out into a diminutive lake. It was an
enchanting spot and a delicious lunch, with good company to boot;
but, to her annoyance, Patsy found herself continually comparing it
unfavorably with a certain vagabond breakfast garnished with yellow
lady's-slippers, musicianed by throstles, and served by a tinker.
"Something is on your mind, or do you find our American manners and
food too hard to digest comfortably?" Gregory Jessup had curled up
unceremoniously at her feet, balancing a caviar sandwich, a Camembert
cheese, and a bottle of ale with extraordinary dexterity.
"I was thinking about--Billy Burgeman."
He cast a furtive look toward the others beyond them. They seemed
engrossed for the moment in some hectic discussion over fashions, and
he dropped his voice to a confidential pitch: "I can't talk Billy
with the others; I'm too much cut up over the whole thing to stand
hearing them hold an autopsy over Billy's character and motives." He
stopped abruptly and scanned Patsy's face. "I believe a chap could
turn his mind inside out with you, though, and you'd keep the
contents as faithfully as a safe-deposit vault."
Patsy smiled appreciatively. "Faith! you make me feel like Saint
Martin's chest that Satan himself couldn't be opening."
"What did he have in it?"
"Some good Christian souls."
"Contents don't tally--mine are some very un-Christian thoughts." He
abandoned the sandwich and cheese, and settled himself to the more
serious business of balancing his remarks. "Billy and I work for the
same engineering firm; he walked out for lunch Tuesday and no one has
seen him since--unless it's Marjorie Schuyler. Couldn't get anything
out of the old man when I first went to see him, and now he's too ill
to see any one. Marjorie said she really didn't know where he was,
and quit town the next day. Now maybe they don't either of them know
what's happened any more than I do; but I think it's infernally queer
for a man to disappear and say nothing to his father, the girl he's
engaged to, or his best friend. Don't you?"
Patsy's past training stood stanchly by her. She played the part of
the politely interested listener--nothing more--and merely nodded her
head.
"You see," the man went on, "Billy has a confoundedly queer sense of
honor; he can stretch it at times to cover nearly everybody's
calamities and the fool shortcomings of all his acquaintances. Why,
it wasn't a month ago a crowd of us from the works were lunching
together, and the talk came around to speculating. Billy's hard
against it on principle, but he happened to say that if he was going
in for it at all he'd take cotton. What was in Billy's mind was not
the money in it, but the chance to give the South a boost. Well, one
of the fellows took it as a straight tip to get rich from the old
man's son and put in all he had saved up to be married on; lost it
and squealed. And Billy--the big chump--claimed he was responsible
for it--that, being the son of his father, he ought to know enough to
hold his tongue on some subjects. He made it good to the fellow. I
happen to know, for it took every cent of his own money and his next
month's salary into the bargain--and that he borrowed from me."
"Wouldn't his father have helped him out?"
Gregory Jessup gave a bitter little laugh. "You don't know the old
man or you wouldn't ask. He is just about as soft-hearted and human
as a Labrador winter. I've known Billy since we were both little
shavers--and, talk about the curse of poverty! It's a saintly
benediction compared to a fortune like that and life with the man who
made it."
"And--himself, Billy--what does he think of money?"
"I'll tell you what he said once. He had dropped in late after a big
dinner where he had been introduced to some one as the fellow who was
going to inherit sixty millions some day. Phew! but he was sore! He
walked miles--in ten-foot laps--about my den, while he cursed his
father's money from Baffin Bay to Cape Horn. 'I tell you, Greg,' he
finished up with, 'I want enough to keep the cramps out of life,
that's all; enough to help the next fellow who's down on his luck;
enough to give the woman I marry a home and not a residence to live
in, and to provide the father of my kiddies with enough leisure for
them to know what real fatherhood means. I bet you I can make enough
myself to cover every one of those necessities; as for the millions,
I'd like to chuck them for quoits off the Battery.'"
For a moment Patsy's eyes danced; but the next, something tumbled out
of her memory and quieted them. "Then why in the name of Saint
Anthony did he choose to marry Marjorie Schuyler?"
"That does seem funny, I know, but that's a totally different side of
Billy. You see, all his life he's been falling in with people who
made up to him just for his money, and his father had a confounded
way of reminding him that he was bound to be plucked unless he kept
his wits sharp and distrusted every one. It made Billy sick, and yet
it had its effect. He's always been mighty shy with girls--reckon his
father brought him up on tales of rich chaps and modern Circes.
Anyway, when he met Marjorie Schuyler it was different--she had too
much money of her own to make his any particular attraction, and he
finally gave in that she liked him just for himself. That was a proud
day for him, poor old Bill!"
"And did she--could she really love him?" Patsy asked the question of
herself rather than the man beside her.
But he answered it promptly: "I don't believe Marjorie Schuyler has
anything to love with; it was overlooked when she was made. That's
what's worrying me. If he's got into a scrape he'd tell Marjorie the
first thing; and she's not the understanding, forgiving kind. He
hasn't any money; he wouldn't go to his father; and because he's
borrowed from me once, he's that idiotic he wouldn't do it again. If
Marjorie has given him his papers he's in a jolly blue funk and
perfectly capable of going off where he'll never be heard of again.
Hang it all! I don't see why he couldn't have come to me?"
Patsy said nothing while he replenished her plate and helped himself
to another sandwich. At last she asked, casually, "Did the two of you
ever have a disagreement over Marjorie Schuyler?"
"He asked me once just what I thought of her, and I told him. We
never discussed her again."
"No?" Inwardly Patsy was tabulating why Billy Burgeman had not gone
to his friend when Marjorie Schuyler failed him. He would hardly have
cared to criticize the shortcomings of the girl he loved with the man
who had already discovered them.
"What are you two jabbering about?" Janet Payne had left her group
and the hectic argument over fashions.
"Sure, we're threshing out whether it's the Irish or the suffragettes
will rule England when the war is over."
"Well, which is it?"
"Faith! the answer's so simple I'm ashamed to give it. The women will
rule England--that's an easy matter; but the Irish will rule the
women."
"Then you are one of the old-fashioned kind who approves of a lord
and master?" Gregory Jessup looked up at her quizzically.
"'Tis the new fashion you're meaning; having gone out so long since,
'tis barely coming in yet. I'd not give a farthing for the man who
couldn't lead me; only, God help him! if he ever leaves his hands off
the halter."
The laugh that followed gave Patsy time to think. There was one more
question she must be asking before the others joined them and the
conversation became general. She turned to Janet Payne with a little
air of anxious inquiry.
"Maybe you'd ask the rascally villain who kidnapped me, when he has
it in his mind to keep his promise and fetch me to Arden?"
As the girl left them Patsy turned toward Gregory Jessup again and
asked, softly: "Supposing Billy Burgeman has fallen among strangers?
If they saw he was in need of friendliness, would it be so hard to do
him a kindness?"
The man shook his head. "The hardest thing in the world. Billy
Burgeman has been proud and lonely all his life, and it's an infernal
combination. You may know he's out and out aching for a bit of
sympathy, but you never offer it; you don't dare. We could never get
him to own up as a little shaver how neglected and lonely he was and
how he hated to stay in that horrible, gloomy Fifth Avenue house. It
wasn't until he had grown up that he told me he used to come and play
as often as they would let him--just because mother used to kiss him
good-by as she did her own boys."
Gregory Jessup looked beyond the firs to the little lake, and there
was that in his face which showed that he was wrestling with a
treasured memory. When he spoke again his voice sounded as if he had
had to grip it hard against a sign of possible emotion.
"You know Billy's father never gave him an allowance; he didn't
believe in it--wouldn't trust Billy with a cent. Poor little
shaver--never had anything to treat with at school, the way the rest
of the boys did; and never even had car-fare--always walked, rain or
shine, unless his father took him along with him in the machine.
Billy used to say even in those days he liked walking better. Mother
died in the winter--snowy time--when Billy was about twelve; and he
borrowed a shovel from a corner grocer and cleared stoops all
afternoon until he'd made enough to buy two white roses. Father
hadn't broken down all day--wouldn't let us children show a tear; but
when Billy came in with those roses--well, it was the children who
finally had to cheer father up."
Patsy sprang to her feet with a little cry. "I must be going." She
turned to the others, a ring of appeal in her voice. "Can't we hurry
a bit? There's a deal of work at Arden to be done, and no one but
myself to be doing it."
"Rehearsals?" asked Janet Payne.
And Patsy, unheeding, nodded her head.
There was a babel of nonsense in the returning car. Patsy contributed
her share the while her mind was busy building over again into a
Balmacaan coat and plush hat the semblance of a man.
"Sure, I'm not saying I can make out his looks or the color of his
eyes and hair, but he's real, for all that. Holy Saint Patrick, but
he's a real man at last, and I'm liking him!" She smiled with deep
contentment.
X
JOSEPH JOURNEYS TO A FAR COUNTRY
Having established the permanent reality of Billy Burgeman to her own
satisfaction, Patsy's mind went racing off to conjure up all the
possible things Billy and the tinker might think of each other as
soon as chance should bring them together. Whereas it was perfectly
consistent that Billy should shun the consolation and companionship
of his own world, he might follow after vagabond company as a thirsty
dog trails water; and who could slake that thirst better than the
tinker? For a second time that day she pictured the two swinging down
the open road together; and for the second time she pulled a wry
little smile.
The car was nearing the cross-roads from which Patsy had been
originally kidnapped. She looked up to identify it, and saw a second
car speeding toward them from the opposite direction, while between
the two plodded a solitary little figure, coming toward them,
supported by a mammoth pilgrim staff. It was a boy, apparently
conscious of but the one car--theirs; and he swerved to their
left--straight into the path of the car behind--to let them pass.
They sounded their horns, waved their hands, and shouted warnings. It
seemed wholly unbelievable that he should not understand or that the
other car would not stop. But the unbelievable happened; it does
sometimes.
Before Gregory Jessup could jump from their machine the other car had
struck and the boy was tossed like a bundle of empty clothing to the
roadside beyond. The nightmarish suddenness of it all held them
speechless while they gaped at the car's driver, who gave one
backward glance and redoubled his speed. Patsy was the first out of
the tonneau, and she reached the boy almost as soon as Gregory
Jessup.
"Damn them! That's the second time in my life I've seen a machine run
some one down and sneak--"
He broke off at Patsy's sharp cry: "Holy Mary keep him! 'Tis the wee
lad from Lebanon!"
By this time the rest of the carful had gathered about them; and
Dempsy Carter--being a good Catholic--bared his head and crossed
himself.
"'Tis wee Joseph of Lebanon," Patsy repeated, dully; and then to
Dempsy Carter, "Aye, make a prayer for him; but ye'd best do it
driving like the devil for the doctor."
They left at once with her instructions to get the nearest doctor
first, and then to go after the boy's parents. Gregory Jessup stayed
behind with her, and together they tried to lift the still, little
figure onto some rugs and pillows. Then Patsy crept closer and wound
her arms about him, chafing his cheeks and hands and watching for
some sign of returning life.
The man stood silently beside them, holding the pilgrim staff, while
his eyes wandered from Patsy to the child and back to Patsy again,
her face full of harboring tenderness and a great suffering as she
gathered the little boy into her arms and pressed her warm cheek
against the cold one.
Only once during their long wait was the silence broken. "'Tis almost
as if he'd slipped over the border," Patsy whispered. "Maybe he's
there in the gray dusk--a wee shadow soul waiting for death to loosen
its wings and send it lilting into the blue of the Far Country."
"How did you happen to know him?"
"Chance, just. I stopped to tell him a tale of a wandering hero and
he--" She broke off with a little moan. "_Ochone!_ poor wee Joseph!
did I send ye forth on a brave adventure only to bring ye to this?"
Her fingers brushed the damp curls from his forehead. "Laddy, laddy,
why didn't ye mind the promise I laid on ye?"
The doctor was kindly and efficient, but professionally
non-committal. The boy was badly injured, and he must be moved at
once to the nearest house. Somehow they lifted Joseph and held him so
as to break the jar of stone and rut as the doctor drove his car as
carefully as he could down the road leading to the nearest
farm-house.
There they were met with a generous warmth of sympathy and
hospitality; the spare chamber was opened, and the farm wife bustled
about, turning down the bed and bringing what comforts the house
possessed. The doctor stayed as long as he could; but the stork was
flying at the other end of the township, and he was forced to leave
Patsy in charge, with abundant instructions.
Soon after his leaving the Dempsy Carters returned without Joseph's
parents; they had gone to town and were not expected home until
"chore time."
"All right," Patsy sighed. "Now ye had best all go your ways and I'll
bide till morning."
"But can you?" Janet Payne asked it, wonderingly. "I thought you said
you had to be in Arden to-day?"
A smile, whimsical and baffling, crept to the corners of Patsy's
mouth. "Sure, life is crammed with things ye think have to be done
to-day till they're matched against a sudden greater need. Chance and
I started the wee lad on his journey, and 'twas meant I should see
him safe to the end, I'm thinking. Good-by."
Gregory Jessup lingered a moment behind the others; his eyes were
suspiciously red, and the hands that gripped Patsy's shook the least
bit. "I wanted to say something: If--if you should ever happen to run
up against Billy Burgeman--anywhere--don't be afraid to do him a
kindness. He--he wouldn't mind it from you."
Patsy leaned against the door and watched him go. "There's another
good lad. I'd like to be finding him again, too, some day." She
pressed her hands over her eyes with a fierce little groan, as if she
would blot out the enveloping tragedy along with her surroundings.
"Faith! what is the meaning of life, anyway? Until to-day it has
seemed such a simple, straight road; I could have drawn a fair map of
it myself, marking well the starting-point and tracing it reasonably
true to the finish. But to-night--to-night--'tis all a tangle of
lanes and byways. There's no sign-post ahead--and God alone knows
where it's leading."
She went back to the spare chamber and took up her watching by the
bedside; and for the rest of that waning day she sat as motionless
as everything else in the room. The farm wife came and went softly,
in between her preparations for supper. When it was ready she tried
her best to urge Patsy down-stairs for a mouthful.
But the girl refused to stir. "I couldn't. The wee lad might come
back while I was gone and find no one to reach him a hand or smile
him a welcome."