answered, slowly: "You have told me, haven't you? You are the master
of the place, and you look a mortal lonely one."
"I--am." The words seemed to slip from his lips without his being at
all conscious of having spoken.
"And the money couldn't keep it from you." There was no mockery in
her tone. "'Tis pitifully few comforts you can buy in life, when
all's said and done."
"Comforts!" The sick man's eyes grew sharp, attacking, with a force
that had not been his for days. "You are talking now like a fool.
Money is the only thing that can buy comforts. What comforts have the
poor?"
"Are you meaning butlers and limousines, electric vibrators and
mud-baths? Those are only cures for the bodily necessities and ills
that money brings on a man: the over-feeding and the over-drinking
and the--under-living. But what comforts would they bring to a
troubled mind and a pinched heart? Tell me that!"
"So! You would prefer to be poor--more pastorally poetic?" Burgeman
sneered.
"More comfortable," corrected Patsy. "Mind you, I'm not meaning
starved, ground-under-the-heel poverty, the kind that breeds
anarchists and criminals. God pity them, too! I mean the man who is
still too poor to reckon his worth to a community in mere money, who,
instead, doles kindness and service to his neighbors. Did you ever
see a man richer than the one who comes home at day's end, after
eight hours of good, clean work, and finds the wife and children
watching for him, happy-eyed and laughing?"
The sick man stirred uneasily. "Well--can't a rich man find the same
happiness?"
"Aye, he can; but does he? Does he even want it? Count up the rich
men you know, and how many are there--like that?" No answer being
given, Patsy continued: "Take the richest man--the very richest man
in all this country--do you suppose in all his life he ever saw his
own lad watching for him to come home?"
"What do you know about the richest man--and his son?" The sick man
had for a moment become again a fiercely bitter, fighting force, a
power given to sweeping what it willed before it. He sat with hands
clenched, his eyes burning into the girl's on the ground beside him.
"I know what the world says."
"The world lies; it has always lied."
"You are wrong. It is a tongue here and a tongue there that bears
false witness; but the world passes on the truth; it has to."
"You forget"--Burgeman senior spoke with difficulty--"it is the rich
who bear the burdens of the world's cares and troubles, and what do
they get for it? The hatred of every one else, even their sons! Every
one hates and envies the man richer and more powerful than himself;
the more he has the more he is feared. He lives friendless; he
dies--lonely."
Patsy rose to her knees and knelt there, shaking her fist--a
composite picture of supplicating Justice and accusing Truth. She had
forgotten that the man before her was sick--dying; that he must have
suffered terribly in spirit as well as body; and that her words were
so many barbed shafts striking at his soul. She remembered nothing
save the thing against which she was fighting: the hard, merciless
possession of money and the arrogant boast of it.
"And you forget that the burden of trouble which the brave rich bear
so nobly are troubles they've put into the world themselves. They
hoard their money to buy power; and then they use that power to get
more money. And so the chain grows--money and power, money and power!
I heard of a rich man once who turned a terrible fever loose all over
the land because he bribed the health inspectors not to close down
his factories. And after death had swept his books clean he gave
large sums of money to stamp out the epidemic in the near-by towns.
Faith! that was grand--the bearing of that trouble! And why are the
rich hated? Why do they live friendless and die lonely? Not because
they hold money, not because they give it away or help others with
it. No! But because they use it to crush others, to rob those who
have less than they have, to turn their power into a curse. That's
the why!"
Patsy, the fanatic, turned suddenly into Patsy, the human, again. The
fist that had been beating the air under his nose dropped and spread
itself tenderly on the sick man's knee. "But I'm sorry you're lonely.
If there was anything you wanted--that you couldn't buy and I could
earn for you--I would get it gladly."
"I believe you would," and the confession surprised the man himself
more than it did Patsy. "Who are you?" he asked at last.
"No one at all, just; a laggard by the roadside--a lass with no home,
no kin, and that for a fortune," and she flung out her two empty
hands, palm uppermost, and laughed.
"And you are audacious enough to think you are richer than I." This
time there was no sneer in his voice, only an amused toleration.
"I am," said Patsy, simply.
"You have youth and health," he conceded, grudgingly.
"Aye, and trust in other folks; that's a fearfully rich possession."
"It is. I might exchange with you--all this," and his hand swept
encompassingly over his great estate, "for that last--trust in other
folks--in one's own folks!"
"Maybe I'd give it to you for nothing--a little of it at any rate.
See, you trust me; and here's--trust in your son." Patsy's voice
dropped to a whisper; she leaned forward and opened one of the sick
man's hands, then folded the fingers tightly over something that
appeared to be invisible--and precious. "Now, you believe in him, no
matter what he's done; you believe he wouldn't wrong you or himself
by doing anything base; you believe that he is coming back to you--to
break the loneliness, and that he'll find a poor, plain man for a
father, waiting him. Don't you remember the prodigal lad--how his
father saw him a long way off and went to meet him? Well, you can
meet him with a long-distance trust--understanding. And there's one
thing more; don't you be so blind or so foolish as to crush him with
the weight of 'all this.' Mind, he has the right to the making of his
own life--for a bit at least; and it's your privilege to give him
that right--somehow. You've still a chance to keep him from wanting
to pitch your money for quoits off the Battery."
Patsy sprang to her feet; but Burgeman senior had reached forward
quickly and caught her skirt, holding it in a marvelously firm grip.
"Then you do know who I am; you've known it all along."
"I know you're the master of all this, and your lad is the Rich Man's
Son; that's all."
"And you think--you think I have no right to leave my son the
inheritance I have worked and saved for him."
"I think you have no right to leave him your--greed. 'Tis a mortal
poor inheritance for any lad."
"Your vocabulary is rather blunt." Burgeman smiled faintly. "But it
is very refreshing. It is a long time since naked truth and I met
face to face."
"But will it do you any good--or is it too late?" Patsy eyed him
contemplatively.
"Too late for what?"
"Too late for the inheritance--too late to give it away somewhere
else--or loan it for a few years till the lad had a chance to find
out if he could make some decent use of it himself. There's many ways
of doing it; I have thought of a few this last half-hour. You might
loan it to the President to buy up some of the railroads for the
government--or to purchase the coal or oil supply; or you might offer
it as a prize to the country that will stop fighting first; or it
might buy clean politics into some of the cities--or endow a
university." She laughed. "It's odd, isn't it, how a body without a
cent to her name can dispose of a few score millions--in less
minutes?"
"If you please, sir." A motionless, impersonal figure in livery stood
at a respectful distance behind the wheel-chair. Neither of them had
been conscious of his presence.
"Well, Parsons?"
"Mr. Billy, sir, has come back, sir. He and Mr. Fitzpatrick came
together. Shall I bring them out here or wheel you inside, sir?"
"Inside!" Burgeman senior almost shouted it. Then he turned to Patsy
and there was more than mere curiosity in his voice: "Who are you?"
"No one at all, just; a laggard by the roadside," she repeated,
wistfully. And then she added in her own Donegal: "But don't ye let
the lagging count for naught. Promise me that!"
The sick man turned his head for a last look at her. "Such a simple
promise--to throw away the fruits of a lifetime!" Bitterness was in
his voice again, but Patsy caught the muttering under his breath. "I
might think about the boy, though, if the Lord granted me time."
"Amen!" whispered Patsy.
She scrambled down the bank the way she had come. For a moment she
stopped by the lake and skimmed a handful of white pebbles across its
mirrored surface. She watched the ripples she had made spread and
spread until they lost themselves in the lake itself, leaving behind
no mark where they had been.
"Yonder's the way with the going and coming of most of us, a little
ripple and naught else--unless it is one more stone at the bottom."
She heaved a sigh. "Well, the quest is over, and I've never laid eyes
on the lad once. But it's ended well, I'm thinking; aye, it's ended
right for him."
XV
ARDEN
Summer must have made one day in June purposely as a setting
for a pastoral comedy; and chance stole it, like a kindly knave,
and gave it to the Sylvan Players. Never did a gathering of people
look down from the rise of a natural amphitheater upon a fairer scene;
a Forest of Arden, built by the greatest scenic artist since the
world began. Birds flew about the trees and sang--whenever the
orchestra permitted; a rabbit or two scuttled out from under
rhododendron-bushes and skipped in shy ingenue fashion across the
stage; while overhead a blue, windless sky spread radiance about
players and audience alike.
Shorn of so much of the theatricalism of ordinary stage performances,
there was reality and charm about this that warmed the spectators
into frequent bursts of spontaneous enthusiasm which were as draughts
of elixir to the players. Those who were playing creditably played
well; those who were playing well excelled themselves, and Patsy
outplayed them all.
She lived every minute of the three hours that spanned the throwing
of Charles, the wrestler, and her promise "to make all this matter
even." There was no touch of coarseness in her rollicking laughter,
no hoydenish swagger in her masquerading; it was all subtly,
irresistibly feminine. And George Travis, watching from the obscurity
of a back seat, pounded his knee with triumph and swore he would make
her the greatest Shakespearean actress of the day.
As Hymen sang her parting song, Patsy scanned the sea of faces beyond
the bank of juniper which served instead of footlights. Already she
had picked out Travis, Janet Payne and her party, the people from
Quality House, who still gaped at her, unbelieving, and young
Peterson-Jones, looking more melancholy, myopic, and poetical than
before. But the one face she hoped to find was missing, even among
the stragglers at the back; and it took all her self-control to keep
disappointment and an odd, hurt feeling out of her voice as she gave
the epilogue.
On the way to her tent--a half-score of them were used as
dressing-rooms behind the stage--George Travis overtook her. "It's
all right, girl. You've made a bigger hit than even I expected. I'm
going to try you out in--"
Patsy cut him short. "You sat at the back. Did you see a vagabond lad
hanging around anywhere--with a limp to him?"
The manager looked at her with amused toleration. "Does a mere man
happen to be of more consequence this minute than your success? Oh, I
say, that's not like you, Irish Patsy!"
She crimsoned, and the manager teased no more. "We play Greyfriars
to-morrow and back to Brambleside the day after; and I've made up my
mind to try you out there in Juliet. If you can handle tragedy as you
can comedy, I'll star you next winter on Broadway. Oh, your future's
very nearly made, you lucky girl!"
But Patsy, slipping into her tent, hardly heard the last. If they
played Greyfriars the next day, that meant they would leave Arden on
the first train after they were packed; and that meant she was
passing once and for all beyond tramping reach of the tinker. There
was a dull ache at her heart which she attempted neither to explain
nor to analyze; it was there--that was enough. With impatient fingers
she tore off Rosalind's wedding finery and attacked her make-up. Then
she lingered over her dressing, hoping to avoid the rest of the
company and any congratulatory friends who might happen to be
browsing around. She wanted to be alone with her memories--to have
and to hold them a little longer before they should grow too dim and
far away.
A hand scratched at the flap of her tent and Janet Payne's voice
broke into her reverie: "Can't we see you, please, for just a moment?
We'll solemnly promise not to stay long."
Patsy hooked back the flap and forced the semblance of a welcome into
her greeting.
"It was simply ripping!" chorused the Dempsy Carters, each gripping a
hand.
Janet Payne looked down upon her with adoring eyes. "It was the best,
the very best I've ever seen you or any one else play it. For the
first time Rosalind seemed a real girl."
But it was the voice of Gregory Jessup that carried above the others:
"Have you heard, Miss O'Connell? Burgeman died last night, and Billy
was with him. He's come home."
"Faith! then there's some virtue in signs, after all."
A hush fell on the group. Patsy suddenly put out her hand. "I'm glad
for you--I'm glad for him; and I hope it ended right. Did you see
him?"
"For a few minutes. There wasn't time to say much; but he looked like
a man who had won out. He said he and the old man had had a good
talk together for the first time in their lives--said it had given
him a father whose memory could never shame him or make him bitter. I
wanted to tell you, so you wouldn't have him on your mind any
longer."
She smiled retrospectively. "Thank you; but I heaved him off nearly
twenty-four hours ago."
Left to herself again, she finished her packing; then tying under her
chin a silly little poke-bonnet of white chiffon and corn-flowers,
still somewhat crushed from its long imprisonment in a trunk, she
went back for a last glimpse of the Forest and her Greenwood tree.
The place was deserted except for the teamsters who had come for the
tents and the property trunks. A flash of white against the green of
the tree caught her eye; for an instant she thought it one of
Orlando's poetic effusions, overlooked in the play and since
forgotten. Idly curious, she pulled it down and read it--once, twice,
three times:
Where twin oaks rustle in the wind,
There waits a lad for Rosalind.
If still she be so wond'rous kind,
Perchance she'll ease the fretted mind
That naught can cure--but Rosalind.
With a glad little cry she crumpled the paper in her hand and fled,
straight as a throstle to its mate, to the giant twin oaks which
were landmarks in the forest. Her eyes were a-search for a vagabond
figure in rags; it was small wonder, therefore, that they refused to
acknowledge the man in his well-cut suit of gray who was leaning
partly against the hole of a tree and partly on a pilgrim staff. She
stood and stared and gave no sign of greeting.
"Well, so the Duke's daughter found her rhyme?"
"I'm not knowing whether I'll own ye or not. Sure, ye've no longer
the look of an honest tinker; and maybe we'd best part company
now--before we meet at all."
But the tinker had her firmly by both hands. "That's too late now. I
would have come in rags if there'd been anything left of them, but
they are the only things I intend to part company with. And do you
know"--he gripped her hands tighter--"I met an acquaintance as I came
this way who told me, with eyes nearly popping out of his head, that
the wonderful little person who had played herself straight into
hundreds of hearts had actually been his cook for three days. Oh,
lass! lass! how could you do it!"
"Troth! God made me a better cook than actress. Ye wouldn't want me
to be slighting His handiwork entirely, would ye?"
The tinker shook his head at her. "Do you know what I wanted to say
to every one of those people who had been watching you? I wanted to
say: 'You think she is a wonderful actress; she is more than that.
She is a rare, sweet, true woman, better and finer than any play she
may act in or any part she may play in it. I, the tinker, have
discovered this; and I know her better than does any one else in the
whole world.'"
"Is that so?" A teasing touch of irony crept into Patsy's voice.
"'Tis a pity, now, the manager couldn't be hearing ye; he might give
ye a chance to understudy Orlando."
"And you think I'd be content to understudy any one! Why, I'm going
to pitch Orlando straight out of the Forest of Arden; I'm going to
pull Willie Shakespeare out of his grave and make him rewrite the
whole play--putting a tinker in the leading role."
"And is it a tragedy ye would have him make it?"
"Would it be a tragedy to take a tinker 'for better--for worse'?"
"Faith! that would depend on the tinker."
"Oh-ho, so it's up to the tinker, is it? Well, the tinker will prove
it otherwise; he will guarantee to keep the play running pure comedy
to the end. So that settles it, Miss Patricia O'Connell--alias
Rosalind, alias the cook--alias Patsy--the best little comrade a
lonely man ever found. I am going to marry you the day after
to-morrow, right here in Arden."
Patsy looked at him long and thoughtfully from under the beguiling
shadow of the white chiffon, corn-flower sunbonnet. "'Tis a shame,
just, to discourage anything so brave as a self-made--tinker. But
I'll not be here the day after to-morrow. And what's more, a man is a
fool to marry any woman because he's lonely and she can cook."
The tinker's eyes twinkled. "I don't know. A man might marry for
worse reasons." Then he grew suddenly sober and his eyes looked deep
into hers. "But you know and I know that that is not my reason for
wanting you, or yours for taking me."
"I didn't say I would take ye." This time it was Patsy's eyes that
twinkled. "Do ye think it would be so easy to give up my career--the
big success I've hoped and worked and waited for--just--just for a
tinker? I'd be a fool to think of it." She was smiling inwardly at
her own power of speech, which made what she held as naught sound of
such immeasurable consequence.
But the tinker smiled outwardly. "Where did you say you were going to
be the day after to-morrow?"
"That's another thing I did not say. If ye are going to marry me 'tis
your business to find me." She freed her hands and started off
without a backward glance at him.
"Patsy, Patsy!" he called after her, "wouldn't you like to know the
name of the man you're going to marry?"
She turned and faced him. Framed in the soft, green fringe of the
trees, she seemed to him the very embodiment of young summer--the
free, untrammeled spirit of Arden. Ever since the first he had been
growing more and more conscious of what she was: a nature vital,
beautiful, tender, untouched by the searing things of life--trusting
and worthy of trust; but it was not until this moment that he
realized the future promise of her. And the realization swept all his
smoldering love aflame into his eyes and lips. His arms went out to
her in a sudden, passionate appeal.
"Patsy--Patsy! Would the name make any difference?"
"Why should it?" she cried, with saucy coquetry. "I'm marrying the
man and not his name. If I can stand the one, I can put up with the
other, I'm thinking. Anyhow, 'twill be on the marriage license the
day after to-morrow, and that's time enough."
"Do you really mean you would marry a man, not knowing his name or
anything about his family--or his income--or--"
"That's the civilized way, isn't it?--to find out about those things
first; and afterward it's time enough when you're married to get
acquainted with your man. But that's not the way that leads off the
road to Arden--and it's not my way. I know my man now--God bless
him." And away she ran through the trees and out of sight.
The tinker watched the trees and underbrush swing into place,
covering her exit. So tense and motionless he stood, one might have
suspected him of trying to conjure her back again by the simple magic
of heart and will. It turned out a disappointing piece of conjuring,
however; the green parted again, but not to redisclose Patsy. A man,
instead, walked into the open, toward the giant oaks, and one glimpse
of him swept the tinker's memory back to a certain afternoon and a
cross-roads. He could see himself sitting propped up by the
sign-post, watching the door of a little white church, while down the
road clattered a sorrel mare and a runabout. And the man that
drove--the man who was trailing Patsy--was the man that came toward
him now, looking for--some one.
"You haven't seen--" he began, but the tinker interrupted him:
"Guess not. I've been watching the company break up. Rather
interesting to any one not used to that sort of thing--don't you
think?"
The man eyed him narrowly; then cautiously he dropped into an
attitude of exaggerated indifference. "It sure is--young feller. Now
you hain't been watchin' that there leadin' lady more particularly,
have you? I sort o' cal'ate she might have a takin' way with the
fellers," and he prodded the tinker with a jocular thumb.
The tinker responded promptly with a foolish grin. "Maybe I
have; but the luck was dead against me. Guess she had a lot of
friends with her. I saw them carry her off in triumph in a big
touring-car--probably they'll dine her at the country club."
The man did not wait for further exchange of pleasantries. He took
the direction the tinker indicated, and the tinker watched him go
with a suppressed chuckle.
"History positively stutters sometimes. Now if that property-man knew
what he was talking about the company will be safe out of Arden
before a runabout could make the country club and back." But the
tinker's mirth was of short duration. With a shout of derision, he
slapped the pocket of his trousers viciously.
"What a confounded fool I am! Why in the name of reason didn't I
give them to him and stop this sleuth business before it really gets
her into trouble? Of all the idiotic--senseless--" and, leaning on
the pilgrim staff, he slowly hobbled in the same direction he had
given the man.
* * * * *
One last piece of news concerning Billy Burgeman came to Patsy before
she left Arden that afternoon. Gregory Jessup was at the station to
see her off, and he took her aside for the few minutes before the
train arrived.
"I tried to get Billy to join me--knew it would do him good to meet
you; but he wouldn't budge. I rather think he's still a trifle sore
on girls. Nothing personal, you understand?"
Patsy certainly did--far better than his friend knew. In her heart
she was trying her best to be interested and grateful to the Rich
Man's Son for his unconscious part in her happiness. Had it not been
for him there would have been no quest, no road; and without the road
there would have been no tinker; and without the tinker, no
happiness. It was none the less hard to be interested, however, now
that her mind had given over the lonely occupation of contemplating
memories for that most magical of all mental crafts--future-building.
She jerked up her attention sharply as Gregory Jessup began speaking
again.
"Billy told me just before I came down why he had gone away; and I
wanted to tell you. I don't know how much you know about the old
man's reputation, but he was credited with being the hardest master
with his men that you could find either side of the water. In the
beginning he made his money by screwing down the wages and unscrewing
the labor--and no sentiment. That was his slogan. Whether he kept it
up from habit or pure cussedness I can't tell, but that's the real
reason Billy would never go into his father's business--he couldn't
stand his meanness. The old man's secretary forged a check for ten
thousand; Billy caught him and cashed it himself--to save the man. He
shouldered the guilt so his father wouldn't suspect the man and hound
him."
"I know," said Patsy, forgetting that she was supposed to know
nothing. "But why in the name of all the saints did the secretary
want to forge a check?"