stood them on the stand beside the bed. Something in her movements or
the flickering light must have pierced his stupor, for Joseph moaned
slightly and in a moment opened his eyes.
Patsy leaned over him tenderly; could she only keep him content until
the mother came and guard the mysterious borderland against all fear
or pain, "Laddy, laddy," she coaxed, "do ye mind me--now?"
The veriest wisp of a smile answered her.
"And were ye for playing Jack yourself, tramping off to find the
castle with a window in it for every day in the year?" Her voice was
full of gentle, teasing laughter, the voice of a mother playing with
a very little child. "I'm hoping ye didn't forget the promise--ye
didn't forget to ask for the blessing before ye went, now?"
No sound came; but the boy's lips framed a silent "No." In another
moment his eyes were drooping sleepily.
* * * * *
Night had come, and with it the insistent chorus of tree-toad and
katydid, interspersed with the song of the vesper sparrow. From the
kitchen came the occasional rattle of dish or pan and the far-away
murmur of voices. Patsy strained her ears for some sound of car or
team upon the road; but there was none.
Again the lids fluttered and opened; this time Joseph smiled
triumphantly. "I thought--p'r'aps--I hadn't found you--after
all--there was--so many ways--you might ha' went." He moistened his
lips. "At the cross-roads--I wasn't quite--sure which to be takin',
but I took--the right one, I did--didn't I?"
There was a ring of pride in the words, and Patsy moistened her lips.
Something clutched at her throat that seemed to force the words back.
"Aye," she managed to say at last.
"An' I've--found you now--you'll have to--promise me not to go
back--not where they can get you. Si Perkins said--as how they'd soon
forget--if you just stayed away long enough." The boy looked at her
happily. "Let's--let's keep on--an' see what lies over the next
hill."
To Patsy this was all an unintelligible wandering of mind; she must
humor it. "All right, laddy, let's keep on. Maybe we'll be finding a
wood full of wild creatures, or an ocean full of ships."
"P'r'aps. But I'd rather--have it a big--big city. I never--saw a
city."
"Aye, 'tis a city then"--Patsy's tone carried conviction--"the
grandest city ever built; and the towers will be touching the clouds,
and the streets will be white as sea-foam; and there will be a great
stretch of green meadow for fairs--"
"An' circuses?"
"What else but circuses! And at the entrance there will be a gate
with tall white columns--"
The sound Patsy had been listening for came at last through the open
windows: the pad-pad-pad of horses' hoofs coming fast.
Joseph looked past Patsy and saw for the first time the candles by
his bed. His eyes sparkled. "They _are_--woppin' big columns--an' at
night--they have lighted lamps on top--all shinin'. Don't they?"
"Aye, to point the way in the dark."
"It's dark--now." The boy's voice lagged in a tired fashion.
"Maybe we'd best hurry--then."
A door slammed below, and there was a rustle of tongues.
"Who'll be 'tendin' the city gates?" asked Joseph.
"Who but the gatekeeper?"
Muffled feet crept up the stairs.
"Will he let us in?"
"He'll let ye in, laddy; I might be too much of a stranger."
"But I could speak for you. I--I wouldn't like--goin' in alone in the
dark."
"Bless ye! ye'd not be alone." Patsy's voice rang vibrant with
gladness. "Now, who do you think will be watching for ye, close to
the gate? Look yonder!"
Joseph's eyes went back to the candles, splendid, tall columns they
were, with beacon lamps capping each. "Who?"
Dim faces looked at him through the flickering light; but there was
only one he saw, and it brought the merriest smile to his lips.
"Why--'course it's mother--sure's shootin'!"
* * * * *
Early the next morning Patsy waited on the braided rug outside the
spare chamber for Joseph's mother to come out.
"I've been praying ye'd not hate me for the tale I told the little
lad that day, the tale that brought him--yonder. And if it isn't
overlate, I'd like to be thanking ye for taking me in that night."
The woman looked at her searchingly through swollen lids. "I cal'ate
there's no thanks due; your man paid for your keep; he sawed and
split nigh a cord o' wood that night--must ha' taken him 'most till
mornin'." She paused an instant. "Didn't--he"--she nodded her head
toward the closed door behind her--"never tell you what brought him?"
"Naught but that he wanted to find me."
"He believed in you," the woman said, simply, adding in a toneless
voice: "I cal'ate I couldn't hate you. I never saw any one make death
so--sweet like--as you done for--him."
Patsy spread her hands deprecatingly. "Why shouldn't it be sweet
like? Faith! is it anything but a bit of the very road we've been
traveling since we were born, the bit that lies over the hill and out
of sight?" She took the woman's work-worn hands in hers. "'Tis
terrible, losing a little lad; but 'tis more terrible never having
one. God and Mary be with ye!"
When Patsy left the house a few minutes later Joseph's pilgrim staff
was in her hands, and she stopped on the threshold an instant to ask
the way of Joseph's father.
The good man was dazed with his grief and he directed Patsy in terms
of his own home-going: "Keep on, and take the first turn to your
right."
So Patsy kept on instead of returning to the cross-roads; and chance
scored another point in his comedy and continued chuckling.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Joseph's father went back to the spare chamber.
"'S she gone?" inquired Joseph's mother.
"Yep."
"You know, the boy believed in her."
"Yep, I know."
"Well, I cal'ate we've got to, too."
"Sure thing!"
"Ye'll never say a word, then--about seein' her; nuthin' to give the
sheriff a hint where she might be?"
"Why, mother!" The man laid a hand on her shoulder, looking down at
her with accusing eyes. "Hain't you known me long enough to know I
couldn't tell on any one who'd been good to--" He broke off with a
cough. "And what's more, do you think any one who could take our
little boy's hand and lead him, as you might say, straight to
heaven--would be a thief? No, siree!"
* * * * *
It was a sober, thoughtful Patsy that followed the road, the pilgrim
staff gripped tightly in her hand. She clung to it as the one
tangible thing left to her out of all the happenings and memories of
her quest. The tinker had disappeared as completely as if the earth
had swallowed him, leaving behind no reason for his going, no hope of
his coming again; Billy Burgeman was still but a flimsy promise; and
Joseph had outstripped them both, passing beyond her farthest vision.
Small wonder, then, that the road was lonely and haunted for Patsy,
and that she plodded along shorn of all buoyancy.
Her imagination began playing tricks with her. Twice it seemed as if
she could feel a little lad's hand, warm and eager, curled under hers
about the staff; another time she found herself gazing through
half-shut eyes at a strange lad--a lad of twelve--who walked ahead
for a space, carrying two great white roses; and once she glanced up
quickly and saw the tinker coming toward her, head thrown back and
laughing. Her wits had barely time to check her answering laugh and
hands outstretching, when he faded into empty winding road.
The morning was uneventful. Patsy stopped but once--to trundle a
perambulator laden with washing and twins for its small conductor, a
mite of a girl who looked almost too frail to breast the weight of a
doll's carriage.
Even Patsy puffed under the strain of the burden. "How do you do it?"
she gasped.
"Well, I started when them babies was tiny and the washin' was small;
an' they both growed so gradual I didn't notice--much. An' ma don't
make me hurry none."
"How many children are there?"
"Nine. Last's just come. Pa says he didn't look on him as no
blessin', but ma says the Lord must provide--an' if it's babies, then
it's babies." She stopped and clasped her hands after the fashion of
an ancient grandmother tottering in the nineties: "Land o' goodness,
I do think an empty cradle's an awful dismal thing to have round.
Don't you?"
Patsy agreed, and a moment later unloaded the twins and the washing
for the child at her doorstep.
Soon after this she caught her first glimpse of the town she was
making. "If luck will only turn stage-manager," she thought, "and put
Billy Burgeman in the center of the scene--handy, why, I'll promise
not to murder my lines or play under."
It was not luck, however, but chance, still pulling the wires; and
accordingly he managed Patsy's entrance as he wished.
The town had one main street, like Lebanon, and in front of the
post-office in a two-seated car sat a familiar figure. There was the
Balmacaan coat and the round plush hat; and to Patsy, impulsive and
heart-strong, it sufficed. She ran nearly the length of the street in
her eagerness to reach him.
XI
AND CHANCE STAGES MELODRAMA INSTEAD OF COMEDY
"A brave day to ye!" A little bit of everything that made Patsy was
wrapped in the smile she gave the man in the Balmacaan coat standing
by the wheel-guard of the car before the town post-office, a hand on
the front seat. "Maybe ye're not knowing it, but it's a rare good day
for us both. If you'll only take me for a spin in your car I'll tell
you what brings me--and who I am--if you haven't that guessed
already."
Plainly the occupant of the coat and the car was too much taken by
surprise to guess. He simply stared; and by that stare conveyed a
heart-sinking impression to Patsy. She looked at the puffed eyes and
the grim, unyielding line of the mouth, and she wanted to run. It
took all the O'Connell stubbornness, coupled with the things Gregory
Jessup had told her about his friend, to keep her feet firm to the
sidewalk and her resolution.
"Maybe," she thought, "he's just taken on the look of a rascal
because he thinks the world has written him down one. That's often
the way with a man; and often it takes but a bit of kindness to
change it. If I could make him smile--now--"
Her next remark accomplished this, but it did not mend matters a
whit. Patsy's heart turned over disconsolately; and she was
safety-locking her wits to keep them from scattering when she made
her final plea.
"I'm not staying long, and I want to know you; there's something I
have to be saying before I go on my way. 'Twould be easiest if you'd
take me for a ride in your car; we could talk quieter there."
She tried to finish with a reasonably cheerful look, but it was a
tragic failure. The man was looking past her to the post-office
beyond, and the things Patsy had seemed to feel in his face suddenly
rose to the surface and revealed themselves with an instant's
intensity. Patsy followed the look over her shoulder and shrank away
perceptibly.
In the doorway of the office stood another man, younger and
more--pronounced. It could mean but one thing: Billy Burgeman had
lost his self-respect along with Marjorie Schuyler and had fallen in
with foul company.
There were natures that crumbled and went to pieces under distrust
and failure--natures that allowed themselves to be blown by passion
and self-pity until they burned down into charred heaps of humanity.
She had met a few of them in her life; but--thank God!--there were
only a few.
She found herself praying that she might not have come too late. Just
what she would do or say she could not tell; but she must make him
understand that he was not the arbiter of his own life, that in spite
of what he had found, there were love and trust and disinterested
kindness in the world, lots of it. Money might be a curse, but it was
a curse that a man could raise for himself; and a little lad who
could shovel snow for half a day to earn two white roses for a dead
friend was too fine to be lost out of life's credit-sheet.
She did not wait for any invitation; silently, with a white face, she
climbed into the car and sat with hands folded about the pilgrim
staff. It was as if she had taken him for granted and was waiting for
his compliance to her will. And he understood. He moved the starter,
and, as the motor began its chugging, he called out to the man in the
doorway:
"Better not wait for me. I seem to have a date with--a lady." There
was an unpleasant intonation on the last word.
"Please take a quiet road--where there will not be much passing,"
commanded Patsy.
She did not speak again until the town lay far behind and they were
well on that quiet road. Then she turned partly toward him, her hands
still clasped, and when she spoke it was still in the best of the
king's English--she had neither feeling nor desire for the intimacy
of her own tongue.
"I know it must seem a bit odd to have me, a stranger, come to you
this way. But when a man's family and betrothed fail him--why, some
one must--make it up--"
He turned fiercely. "How did you know that?"
"I--she--Never mind; I know, that's all. And I came, thinking maybe
you'd be glad--"
"Of another?" he laughed coarsely, looking her over with an
appraising scrutiny. "Well, a fellow might have a worse--substitute."
Patsy crimsoned. It seemed incredible that the man she had listened
to that day in Marjorie Schuyler's den, who had then gripped her
sympathies and thereby pulled her after him in spite of past illness
and all common sense, should be the man speaking now. And yet--what
was it Gregory Jessup had said about him? Had he not implied that old
King Midas had long ago warped his son's trust in women until he had
come to look upon them all as modern Circes? And gradually shame for
herself changed into pity for him. What a shabby performance life
must seem to such as he!
She had an irresistible desire to take him with her behind the scenes
and show him what it really was; to point out how with a change of
line here, a new cue there, and a different drop behind; with a
choice of fellow-players, and better lights, and the right spirit
back of it all--what a good thing he could make of his particular
part. But would he see--could she make him understand? It was worth
trying.
"You are every bit wrong," she said, evenly. "Look at me. Do I look
like an adventuress? And haven't you ever had anybody kind to you
simply because they had a preference for kindness?"
The two looked at each other steadily while the machine crawled at
minimum speed down the deserted road. Her eyes never flinched under
the blighting weight of his, although her heart seemed to stop a
hundred times and the soul of her shrivel into nothing.
"Well," she heard herself saying at last, "don't you think you can
believe in me?"
The man laughed again, coarsely. "Believe in you? That's precisely
what I'm doing this minute--believing in your cleverness and a deuced
pretty way with you. Now don't get mad, my dear. You are all
daughters of Eve, and your intentions are very innocent--of course."
Pity and sympathy left Patsy like starved pensioners. The eyes
looking into his blazed with righteous anger and a hating distrust;
they carried to him a stronger, more direct message than words could
have done. His answer was to double the speed of the car.
"Stop the car!" she demanded.
"Oh, ho! we're getting scared, are we? Repenting of our haste?" The
grim line of his mouth became more sinister. "No man relishes a
woman's contempt, and he generally makes her pay when he can. Now I
came for pleasure, and I'm going to get it." An arm shot around Patsy
and held her tight; the man was strong enough to keep her where he
wished her and steer the car down a straight, empty road. "Remember,
I can prove you asked me to take you--and it was your choice--this
nice, quiet spin!"
She sat so still, so relaxed under his grip that unconsciously he
relaxed too; she could feel the gradual loosening of joint and
muscle.
"Why didn't you scream?" he sneered at length.
"I'm keeping my breath--till there's need of it."
Silence followed. The car raced on down the persistently empty road;
the few houses they passed might have been tenantless for any signs
of human life about them. In the far distance Patsy could see a
suspension-bridge, and she wished and wished it might be closed for
repairs--something, anything to bring to an end this hideous,
nightmarish ride. She groaned inwardly at the thought of it all.
She--Patricia O'Connell--who would have starved rather than play
cheap, sordid melodrama--had been tricked by chance into becoming an
actual, living part of one. She wondered a little why she felt no
fear--she certainly had nothing but distrust and loathing for the man
beside her--and these are breeders of fear. Perhaps her anger had
crowded out all other possible emotion; perhaps--back of
everything--she still hoped for the ultimate spark of decency and
good in him.
Her silence and apparent apathy puzzled the man. "Well, what's in
your mind?" he snapped.
"Two things: I was thinking what a pity it was you let your father
throw so much filth in your eyes, that you grew up to see everything
about you smirched and ugly; and I was wondering how you ever came to
have a friend like Gregory Jessup and a fancy for white roses."
"What in thunder are you talking--"
But he never finished. The scream he had looked for came when he had
given up expecting it. Patsy had wrenched herself free from his hold
and was leaning over the wind-shield, beckoning frantically to a
figure mounted on one of the girders of the bridge. It was a
grotesque, vagabond figure in rags, a battered cap on the back of its
head.
"Good God!" muttered the man in the car, stiffening.
Luckily for the tinker the car was running again at a moderate speed;
the man had slowed up when he saw the rough planking over the bridge,
and his hand had not time enough to reach the lever when the tinker
was upon him. The car came to an abrupt stop.
Patsy sank back on the seat, white and trembling, as she watched the
instant's grappling of the two, followed by a lurching tumble over
the side of the car to the planking. The fall knocked them apart, and
for the space of a few quick breaths they half rose and faced each
other--the one almost crazed with fury, the other steady, calm, but
terrifyingly determined.
Before Patsy could move they were upon each other again--rolling
about in the dust, clutching at each other's throat--now half under
the car, now almost through the girders of the bridge, with Patsy's
voice crying a warning. Again they were on their feet, grappling and
hitting blindly; then down in the dust, rolling and clutching.
It was plain melodrama of the most banal form; and the most
convincing part of it all was the evident personal enmity that
directed each blow. Somehow it was borne in upon Patsy that her share
in the quarrel was an infinitesimal part; it was the old, old scene
in the fourth act: the hero paying up the villain for all past
scores.
Like the scene in the fourth act, it came to an end at last. The time
came when no answering blow met the tinker's, when the hand that
gripped his throat relaxed and the body back of it went down under
him--breathless and inert. Patsy climbed out of the car to make room
for the stowing away of its owner. He was conscious, but past
articulate speech and thoroughly beaten; and the tinker kindly turned
the car about for him and started him slowly off, so as to rid the
road of him, as Patsy said. It looked possible, with a careful
harboring of strength and persistence, for him to reach eventually
the starting-point and his friend of the post-office. As his trail of
dust lengthened between them Patsy gave a sigh of relieved content
and turned to the tinker.
"Faith, ye are a sight for a sore heart." Her hand slid into his
outstretched one. "I'll make a bargain with ye: if ye'll forgive and
forget the unfair things I said to ye that night I'll not stay hurt
over your leaving without notice the next morning."
"It's a bargain," but he winced as he said it. "It seems as if our
meetings were dependent on a certain amount of--of physical
disablement." He smiled reassuringly. "I don't really mind in the
least. I'd stand for knockout blows down miles of road, if they would
bring you back--every time."
"Don't joke!" Patsy covered her face. "If--if ye only knew--what it
means to have ye standing there this minute!" She drew in her breath
quickly; it sounded dangerously like a sob. "If ye only knew what ye
have saved me from--and what I am owing ye--" Her hands fell, and she
looked at him with a sudden shy concern. "Poor lad! Here ye are--a
fit subject for a hospital, and I'm wasting time talking instead of
trying to mend ye up. Do ye think there might be water hereabouts
where we could wash off some of that--grease paint?"
But the tinker was contemplating his right foot; he was standing on
the other. "Don't bother about those scratches; they go rather well
with the clothes, don't you think? It's this ankle that's bothering
me; I must have turned it when I jumped."
"Can't ye walk on it? Ye can lean on this"--she passed him the
pilgrim staff--"and we can go slowly. Bad luck to the man! If I had
known ye were hurt I'd have made ye leave him in the road and we'd
have driven his machine back to Arden for him." She looked longingly
after the trail of dust.
"Your ethics are questionable, but your geography is worse. Arden
isn't back there."
"What do ye mean? Why, I saw Arden, back yonder, with my own
eyes--not an hour ago."
"No, you didn't. You saw Dansville; Arden is over there," and the
tinker's hand pointed over his shoulder at right angles to the road.
"Holy Saint Branden!" gasped Patsy. "Maybe ye'll have the boldness,
then, to tell me I'm still seven miles from it?"
"You are." But this time he did not laugh--a smile was the utmost he
could manage with the pain in his ankle.
Patsy looked as if she might have laughed or cried with equal ease.
"Seven miles--seven miles! Tramp the road for four days and be just
as near the end as I was at the start--" An expression of
enlightenment shot into her face. "Faith, I must have been going in a
circle, then."
The tinker nodded an affirmative.
"And who in the name of reason was the man in the car?"
"That's what I'd like to know; the unmitigated nerve of him!" he
finished to himself. His chin set itself squarely; his face had grown
as white as Patsy's had been and his eyes became doggedly determined.
"If it isn't a piece of impertinence, I'd like to ask how you
happened to be with him, that way?"
Patsy flushed. "I'm thinking ye've earned the right to an answer. I
took him for the lad I was looking for. I thought the place was
Arden, and--and the clothes were the same."
"The clothes!" the tinker repeated it in the same bewildered way that
had been his when Patsy first found him; then he turned and grasped
Patsy's shoulders with a sudden, inexplicable intensity. "What's the
name of the lad--the lad you're after?"
"I'll tell you," said Patsy, slowly, "if you'll tell me what you did
with my brown clothes that morning before you left."
And the answer to both questions was a blank, baffling stare.
XII
A CHANGE OF NATIONALITY
The railroad ran under the suspension-bridge. Patsy could see the
station not an eighth of a mile down the track, and she made for it
as being the nearest possible point where water might be procured.
The station-master gave her a tin can and filled it for her; and ten
minutes later she set about scrubbing the tinker free of all the
telltale make-up of melodrama. It was accomplished--after a fashion,
and with persistent rebelling on the tinker's part and scolding on
Patsy's. And, finally, to prove his own supreme indifference to
physical disablement, he tore the can from her administering hands,
threw it over the bridge, and started down the road at his old,
swinging stride.
"Is it after more lady's-slippers ye're dandering?" called Patsy.
"More likely it's after a pair of those winged shoes of Perseus; I'll
need them." But his stride soon broke to a walk and then to a
lagging limp. "It's no use," he said at last; "I might keep on for
another half-mile, a mile at the most; but that's about all I'd be
good for. You'll have to go on to Arden alone, and you can't miss it
this time."
Patsy stopped abruptly. "Why don't ye curse me for the trouble I have
brought?" She considered both hands carefully for a minute, as if she
expected to find in them the solution to the difficulty, then she
looked up and away toward the rising woodland that marked Arden.