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diff --git a/28271.txt b/28271.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a275045 --- /dev/null +++ b/28271.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6662 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of Seven Miles to Arden, by Ruth Sawyer + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Seven Miles to Arden + + +Author: Ruth Sawyer + + + +Release Date: March 7, 2009 [eBook #28271] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN*** + + +E-text prepared by Janet Keller, D. Alexander, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 28271-h.htm or 28271-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/2/7/28271/28271-h/28271-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/2/7/28271/28271-h.zip) + + + + + +SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN + +by + +RUTH SAWYER + +Author of +_The Primrose Ring_ + +Illustrated + + + + + + + +Harper & Brothers Publishers +New York & London + +SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN + +Copyright, 1915, 1916, by The Curtis Publishing Company +Copyright, 1915, 1916, by Harper & Brothers +Printed in the United States of America +Published April, 1916 + + + * * * * * + + +BOOKS BY +RUTH SAWYER + + SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN. Illustrated. Post 8vo + THE PRIMROSE RING. Illustrated. Post 8vo + + HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK + + * * * * * + + + + [Illustration: (See page 220) + "Where twin oaks rustle in the wind + There waits a lad for Rosalind"] + + + + + _TO + HIMSELF_ + + _It leads away, at the ring o' day, + On to the beckoning hills; + And the throstles sing by the holy spring + Which the Blessed Virgin fills. + + White is the road and light is the load, + For the burden we bear together. + Our feet beat time on the upward climb + That ends in the purpling heather. + + There is spring in the air and everywhere + The throb of a life new-born, + In mating thrush and blossoming brush, + In the hush o' the glowing morn. + + Our hearts bound free as the open sea; + Where now is our dole o' sorrow? + The winds have swept the tears we've wept-- + And promise a braver morrow. + + But this I pray as we go our way: + To find the Hills o' Heather, + And, at hush o' night, in peace to light + Our roadside fire together._ + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAP. PAGE + + I. THE WAY OF IT 1 + + II. A SIGN-POST POINTS TO AN ADVENTURE 12 + + III. PATSY PLAYS A PART 25 + + IV. THE OCCUPANT OF A BALMACAAN COAT 39 + + V. A TINKER POINTS THE ROAD 48 + + VI. AT DAY'S END 64 + + VII. THE TINKER PLAYS A PART 85 + + VIII. WHEN TWO WERE NOT COMPANY 106 + + IX. PATSY ACQUIRES SOME INFORMATION 121 + + X. JOSEPH JOURNEYS TO A FAR COUNTRY 139 + + XI. AND CHANCE STAGES MELODRAMA INSTEAD OF + COMEDY 153 + + XII. A CHANGE OF NATIONALITY 165 + + XIII. A MESSAGE AND A MAP 191 + + XIV. ENTER KING MIDAS 202 + + XV. ARDEN 216 + + XVI. THE ROAD BEGINS ALL OVER AGAIN 231 + + + + +SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN + + + + +I + +THE WAY OF IT + + +Patsy O'Connell sat on the edge of her cot in the women's free ward +of the City Hospital. She was pulling on a vagabond pair of gloves +while she mentally gathered up a somewhat doubtful, ragged lot of +prospects and stood them in a row before her for contemplation, +comparison, and a final choice. They strongly resembled the contents +of her steamer trunk, held at a respectable boarding-house in +University Square by a certain Miss Gibb for unpaid board, for these +were made up of a jumble of priceless and worthless belongings, +unmarketable because of their extremes. + +She had time a-plenty for contemplation; the staff wished to see her +before she left, and the staff at that moment was consulting at the +other end of the hospital. + +Properly speaking, Patsy was Patricia O'Connell, but no one had ever +been known to refer to her in that cold-blooded manner, save on the +programs of the Irish National Plays--and in the City Hospital's +register. What the City Hospital knew of Patsy was precisely what the +American public and press knew, what the National Players knew, what +the world at large knew--precisely what Patricia O'Connell had chosen +to tell--nothing more, nothing less. They had accepted her on her own +scanty terms and believed in her implicitly. There was one thing +undeniably true about her--her reality. Having established this fact +beyond a doubt, it was a simple matter to like her and trust her. + +No one had ever thought it necessary to question Patsy about her +nationality; it was too obvious. Concerning her past and her family +she answered every one alike: "Sure, I was born without either. I was +found by accident, just, one morning hanging on to the thorn of a +Killarney rose-bush that happened to be growing by the Brittany +coast. They say I was found by the Physician to the King, who was +traveling past, and that's how it comes I can speak French and King's +English equally pure; although I'm not denying I prefer them both +with a bit of brogue." She always thought in Irish--straight, Donegal +Irish--with a dropping of final g's, a bur to the r's, and a "ye" +for a "you." Invariably this was her manner of speech with those she +loved, or toward whom she felt the kinship of sympathetic +understanding. + +To those who pushed their inquisitiveness about ancestry to the +breaking-point Patsy blinked a pair of steely-blue eyes while she +wrinkled her forehead into a speculative frown: "Faith! I can hearken +back to Adam the same as yourselves; but if it's some one more modern +you're asking for--there's that rascal, Dan O'Connell. He's too long +dead to deny any claim I might put on him, so devil a word will I be +saying. Only--if ye should find by chance, any time, that I'd rather +fight with my wits than my fists, ye can lay that to Dan's door; +along with the stubbornness of a tinker's ass." + +People had been known to pry into her religion; and on these Patsy +smiled indulgently as one does sometimes on overcurious children. +"Sure, I believe in every one--and as for a church, there's not a +place that goes by the name--synagogue, meeting-house, or +cathedral--that I can't be finding a wee bit of God waiting inside +for me. But I'll own to it, honestly, that when I'm out seeking Him, +I find Him easiest on some hilltop, with the wind blowing hard from +the sea and never a human soul in sight." + +This was approximately all the world and the press knew of Patsy +O'Connell, barring the fact that she was neighboring in the twenties, +was fresh, unspoiled, and charming, and that she had played the +ingenue parts with the National Players, revealing an art that +promised a good future, should luck bring the chance. Unfortunately +this chance was not numbered among the prospects Patsy reviewed from +the edge of her hospital cot that day. + +The interest of the press and the public approval of the National +Irish Players had not proved sufficient to propitiate that +iron-hearted monster, Financial Success. The company went into +bankruptcy before they had played half their bookings. Their final +curtain went down on a bit of serio-comic drama staged, impromptu, on +a North River dock, with barely enough cash in hand to pay the +company's home passage. On this occasion Patsy had missed her cue for +the first time. She had been left in the wings, so to speak; and that +night she filled the only vacant bed in the women's free ward of the +City Hospital. + +It was pneumonia. Patsy had tossed about and moaned with the racking +pain of it, raving deliriously through her score or more of roles. +She had gone dancing off with the Faery Child to the Land of Heart's +Desire; she had sat beside the bier in "The Riders to the Sea"; she +had laughed through "The Full o' Moon," and played the Fool while the +Wise Man died. The nurses and doctors had listened with open-eyed +wonder and secret enjoyment; she had allowed them to peep into a new +world too full of charm and lure to be denied; and then of a sudden +she had settled down to a silent, grim tussle with the "Gray +Brother." + +This was all weeks past. It was early June now; the theatrical season +was closed for two months, with no prospects in the booking agencies +until August. In the mean time she had eight dollars, seventy-six +cents, and a crooked sixpence as available collateral; and an unpaid +board bill. + +Patsy felt sorry for Miss Gibb, but she felt no shame. Boarding-house +keepers, dressmakers, bootmakers, and the like must take the risk +along with the players themselves in the matter of getting paid for +their services. If the public--who paid two dollars a seat for a +performance--failed to appear, and box-office receipts failed to +margin their salaries, it was their misfortune, not their fault; and +others had to suffer along with them. But these debts of circumstance +never troubled Patsy. She paid them when she could, and when she +could not--there was always her trunk. + +The City Hospital happened to know the extent of Patsy's property; it +is their business to find out these little private matters +concerning their free patients. They had also drawn certain +conclusions from the facts that no one had come to see Patsy and that +no communications had reached her from anywhere. It looked to them as +if Patsy were down and out, to state it baldly. Now the Patsys that +come to free wards of city hospitals are very rare; and the +superintendent and staff and nurses were interested beyond the usual +limits set by their time and work and the professional hardening of +their cardiac region. + +"She's not to leave here until we find out just who she's got to look +after her until she gets on her feet again, understand"--and the old +doctor tapped the palm of his left hand with his right forefinger, a +sign of important emphasis. + +Therefore the day nurse had gone to summon the staff while Patsy +still sat obediently on the edge of her cot, pulling on her vagabond +gloves, reviewing her prospects, and waiting. + +"My! but we'll miss you!" came the voice from the woman in the next +bed, who had been watching her regretfully for some time. + +"It's my noise ye'll be missing." And Patsy smiled back at her a +winning, comrade sort of smile. + +"You kind o' got us all acquainted with one another and thinkin' +about somethin' else but pains and troubles. It'll seem awful +lonesome with you gone," and the woman beyond heaved a prodigious +sigh. + +"Don't ye believe it," said Patsy, with conviction. "They'll be +fetching in some one a good bit better to fill my place--ye see, +just." + +"No, they won't; 'twill be another dago, likely--" + +"Whist!" Patsy raised a silencing finger and looked fearsomely over +her shoulder to the bed back of her. + +Its inmate lay covered to the cheek, but one could catch a glimpse of +tangled black hair and a swarthy skin. Patsy rose and went softly +over to the bed; her movement disturbed the woman, who opened dumb, +reproachful eyes. + +"I'll be gone in a minute, dear; I want just to tell you how sorry I +am. But--sure--Mother Mary has it safe--and she's keeping it for ye." +She stooped and brushed the forehead with her lips, as the staff and +two of the nurses appeared. + +"Faith! is it a delegation or a constabulary?" And Patsy laughed the +laugh that had made her famous from Dublin to Duluth, where the +bankruptcy had occurred. + +"It's a self-appointed committee to find out just where you're going +after you leave here," said the young doctor. + +Patsy eyed him quizzically. "That's not manners to ask personal +questions. But I don't mind telling ye all, confidentially, that I +haven't my mind made yet between--a reception at the Vincent +Wanderlusts'--or a musicale at the Ritz-Carlton." + +"Look here, lassie"--the old doctor ruffled his beard and threw out +his chest like a mammoth pouter pigeon--"you'll have to give us a +sensible answer before we let you go one step. You know you can't +expect to get very far with that--in this city," and he tapped the +bag on her wrist significantly. + +Patsy flushed crimson. For the first time in her life, to her +knowledge, the world had discovered more about her than she had +intended. Those humiliating eight dollars, seventy-six cents, and the +crooked sixpence seemed to be scorching their way through the leather +that held them. But she met the eyes looking into hers with a flinty +resistance. + +"Sure, 'twould carry me a long way, I'm thinking, if I spent it by +the ha'penny bit." Then she laughed in spite of herself. "If ye don't +look for all the world like a parcel of old mother hens that have +just hatched out a brood o' wild turkeys!" She suddenly checked her +Irish--it was apt to lead her into compromising situations with +Anglo-Saxon folk, if she did not leash her tongue--and slid into +English. "You see, I really know quite a number of people +here--rather well--too." + +"Why haven't they come to see you, then?" asked the day nurse, +bluntly. + +Patsy eyed her with admiration. "You'd never make a press agent--or a +doctor, I'm afraid; you're too truthful." + +"You see," explained the old doctor, "these friends of yours are what +we professional people term hypothetical cases. We'd like to be sure +of something real." + +One of Patsy's vagabond gloves closed over the doctor's hand. "Bless +you all for your goodness! but the people are more real than you +think. Everybody believes I went back with the company and I never +bothered them with the truth, you see. I've more than one good friend +among the theatrical crowd right here; but--well, you know how it is; +if you are a bit down on your luck you keep away from your own world, +if you can. There is a girl--just about my own age--in society here. +We did a lot for her in the way of giving her a good time when she +was in Dublin, and I've seen her quite a bit over here. I'm going to +her to get something to do before the season begins. She may need a +secretary or a governess--or a--cook. Holy Saint Martin! but I can +cook!" And Patsy clasped her hands in an ecstatic appreciation of her +culinary art; it was the only one of which she was boastful. + +"I'll tell you what," said the old doctor, gruffly, "we will let you +go if you will promise to come back if--if no one's at home. It's +against rules, but I'll see the superintendent keeps your bed for you +to-night." + +"Thank you," said Patsy. She waved a farewell to the staff and the +ward as she went through the door. "I don't know where I'm going or +what I shall be finding, but if it's anything worth sharing I'll send +some back to you all." + +The staff watched her down the corridor to the elevator. + +"Gee!" exclaimed the youngest doctor, his admiration working out to +the surface. "When she's made her name I'm going to marry her." + +"Oh, are you?" The voice of the old doctor took on its habitual +tartness. "Acute touch of philanthropy, what--eh?" + +Patricia O'Connell swung the hospital door behind her and stepped out +into a blaze of June sunshine. "Holy Saint Patrick! but it feels +good. Now if I could be an alley cat for two months I could get along +fine." + +She cast a backward look toward the granite front of the City +Hospital and her eyes grew as blue and soft as the waters of +Killarney. "Sure, cat or human, the world's a grand place to be alive +in." + + + + +II + +A SIGN-POST POINTS TO AN ADVENTURE + + +Marjorie Schuyler sat in her own snug little den, her toy ruby +spaniel on a cushion at her feet, her lap full of samples of white, +shimmering crepes and satins. She fingered them absent-mindedly, her +mind caught in a maze of wedding intricacies and dates, and whirled +between an ultimate choice between October and June of the following +year. + +The world knew all there was to know about Marjorie Schuyler. It +could tell to a nicety who her paternal and maternal grandparents +were, back to old Peter Schuyler's time and the settling of the +Virginian Berkeleys. It could figure her income down to a paltry +hundred of the actual amount. It knew her age to the month and day. +In fact, it had kept her calendar faithfully, from her coming-out +party, through the periods of mourning for her parents and her +subsequent returns to society, through the rumors of her engagements +to half a dozen young leaders at home and abroad, down to her latest +conquest. + +The last date on her calendar was the authorized announcement of her +engagement to young Burgeman. Hence the shimmering samples and the +relative values of October and June for a wedding journey. + +And the world knew more than these things concerning Marjorie +Schuyler. It knew that she was beautiful, of regal bearing and +distinguished manner. An aunt lived with her, to lend dignity and +chaperonage to her position; but she managed her own affairs, social +and financial, for herself. If the world had been asked to choose a +modern prototype for the young, independent American girl of the +leisure class, it is reasonably safe to assume it would have named +Marjorie Schuyler. + +As for young Burgeman, the world knew him as the Rich Man's Son. That +was the best and worst it could say of him. + +"I think, Toto," said Marjorie Schuyler to her toy ruby spaniel, "it +will be June. There is only one thing you can do with October--a +church wedding, chrysanthemums, and oak leaves. But June offers so +many possible variations. Besides, that gives us both one last, +untrammeled season in town. Yes, June it is; and we'll not have to +think about these yet awhile." Whereupon she dropped the shimmering +samples into the waste-basket. + +A maid pushed aside the hangings that curtained her den from the +great Schuyler library. "There's a young person giving the name of +O'Connell, asking to see you. Shall I say you are out?" + +"O'Connell?" Marjorie Schuyler raised a pair of interrogatory +eyebrows. "Why--it can't be. The entire company went back weeks ago. +What is she like--small and brown, with very pink cheeks and very +blue eyes?" + +The maid nodded ambiguously. + +"Bring her up. I know it can't be, but--" + +But it was. The next moment Marjorie Schuyler was taking a firm grip +of Patsy's shoulders while she looked down with mock disapproval at +the girl who reached barely to her shoulder. + +"Patsy O'Connell! Why didn't you go home with the others--and what +have you done to your cheeks?" + +Patsy attacked them with two merciless fists. "Sure, they're after +needing a pinch of north-of-Ireland wind, that's all. How's +yourself?" + +Marjorie Schuyler pushed her gently into a great chair, while she +herself took a carved baronial seat opposite. The nearness of +anything so exquisitely perfect as Marjorie Schuyler, and the +comparison it was bound to suggest, would have been a conscious +ordeal for almost any other girl. But Patsy was oblivious of the +comparison--oblivious of the fact that she looked like a wood-thrush +neighboring with a bird of paradise. Her brown Norfolk suit was a +shabby affair--positively clamoring for a successor; the boyish brown +beaver--lacking feather or flower--was pulled down rakishly over her +mass of brown curls, and the vagabond gloves gave a consistent finish +to the picture. And yet there was that about Patsy which defied +comparison even with Marjorie Schuyler; moreover--a thrush sings. + +"Now tell me," said Marjorie Schuyler, "where have you been all these +weeks?" + +Patsy considered. "Well--I've been taking up hospital training." + +"Oh, how splendid! Are you going over with the new Red Cross supply?" + +Patsy shook her head. "You see, they only kept me until they had +demonstrated all they knew about lung disorders--and fresh-air +treatment, and then they dismissed me. I'm fearsome they were after +finding out I hadn't the making of a nurse." + +"That's too bad! What are you going to do now?" + +An amused little smile twitched at the corners of Patsy's mouth; it +acted as if it wanted to run loose all over her face. "Sure, I +haven't my mind made--quite. And yourself?" + +"Oh--I?" Marjorie Schuyler leaned forward a trifle. "Did you know I +was engaged?" + +"Betrothed? Holy Saint Bridget bless ye!" And the vagabond gloves +clasped the slender hands of the American prototype and gave them a +hard little squeeze. "Who's himself?" + +"It's Billy Burgeman, son of _the_ Burgeman." + +"Old King Midas?" + +"That's a new name for him." + +"It has fitted him years enough." Patsy's face sobered. "Oh, why does +money always have to mate with money? Why couldn't you have married a +poor great man--a poet, a painter, a thinker, a dreamer--some one who +ought not to be bound down by his heels to the earth for +bread-gathering or shelter-building? You could have cut the thongs +and sent him soaring--given the world another 'Prometheus Unbound.' +As for Billy Burgeman--he could have married--me," and Patsy spread +her hands in mock petition. + +Marjorie Schuyler laughed. "You! That is too beautifully delicious! +Why, Patsy O'Connell, William Burgeman is the most conventional young +gentleman I have ever met in my life. You would shock him into a +semi-comatose condition in an afternoon--and, pray, what would you +do with him?" + +"Sure, I'd make a man of him, that's what. His father's son might +need it, I'm thinking." + +Marjorie Schuyler's face became perfectly blank for a second, then +she leaned against the baronial arms on the back of her seat, tilted +her head, and mused aloud: "I wonder just what Billy Burgeman does +lack? Sometimes I've wondered if it was not having a mother, or +growing up without brothers or sisters, or living all alone with his +father in that great, gloomy, walled-in, half-closed house. It is not +a lack of manhood--I'm sure of that; and it's not lack of caring, for +he can care a lot about some things. But what is it? I would give a +great deal to know." + +"If the tales about old King Midas have a thruppence worth of truth +in them, it might be his father's meanness that's ailing him." + +Marjorie Schuyler shook her head. "No; Billy's almost a prodigal. His +father says he hasn't the slightest idea of the value of money; it's +just so much beans or shells or knives or trading pelf with him; +something to exchange for what he calls the real things of life. Why, +when he was a boy--in fact, until he was almost grown--his father +couldn't trust Billy with a cent." + +"Who said that--Billy or the king?" + +"His father, of course. That's why he has never taken Billy into +business with him. He is making Billy win his spurs--on his own +merits; and he's not going to let him into the firm until he's worth +at least five thousand a year to some other firm. Oh, Mr. Burgeman +has excellent ideas about bringing up a son! Billy ought to amount to +a great deal." + +"Meaning money or character?" inquired Patsy. + +Marjorie Schuyler looked at her sharply. "Are you laughing?" + +"Faith, I'm closer to weeping; 'twould be a lonesome, hard rearing +that would come to a son of King Midas, I'm thinking. I'd far rather +be the son of his gooseherd, if I had the choosing." + +She leaned forward impulsively and gathered up the hands of the girl +opposite in the warm, friendly compass of those vagabond gloves. "Do +ye really love him, _cailin a'sthore_?" And this time it was her look +that was sharp. + +"Why, of course I love him! What a foolish question! Why should I be +marrying him if I didn't love him? Why do you ask?" + +"Because--the son of King Midas with no mother, with no one at all +but the king, growing up all alone in a gloomy old castle, with no +one trusting him, would need a great deal of love--a great, great +deal--" + +"That's all right, Ellen. I'll find her for myself." It was a man's +voice, pitched overhigh; it came from somewhere beyond and below the +inclosing curtains and cut off the last of Patsy's speech. + +"That's funny," said Marjorie Schuyler, rising. "There's Billy now. +I'll bring him in and let you see for yourself that he's not at all +an object of sympathy--or pity." + +She disappeared into the library, leaving Patsy speculating +recklessly. They must have met just the other side of the closed +hangings, for to Patsy their voices sounded very near and close +together. + +"Hello, Billy!" + +"Listen, Marjorie; if a girl loves a man she ought to be willing to +trust him over a dreadful bungle until he could straighten things out +and make good again--that's true, isn't it?" + +"Billy Burgeman! What do you mean?" + +"Just answer my question. If a girl loves a man she'll trust him, +won't she?" + +"I suppose so." + +"You know she would, dear. What would the man do if she didn't?" + +The voice sounded strained and unnatural in its intensity and appeal. +Patsy rose, troubled in mind, and tiptoed to the only other door in +the den. + +"'Tis a grand situation for a play," she remarked, dryly, "but 'tis +a mortial poor one in real life, and I'm best out of it." She turned +the knob with eager fingers and pulled the door toward her. It opened +on a dumbwaiter shaft, empty and impressive. Patsy's expression would +have scored a hit in farce comedy. Unfortunately there was no +audience present to appreciate it here, and the prompter forgot to +ring down the curtain just then, so that Patsy stood helpless, forced +to go on hearing all that Marjorie and her leading man wished to +improvise in the way of lines. + +"... I told you, _forged_--" + +Patsy was tempted to put her fingers in her ears to shut out the +sound of his voice and what he was saying, but she knew even then she +would go on hearing; his voice was too vibrant, too insistent, to be +shut out. + +"... my father's name for ten thousand. I took the check to the bank +myself, and cashed it; father's vice-president.... Of course the +cashier knew me.... I tell you I can't explain--not now. I've got to +get away and stay away until I've squared the thing and paid father +back." + +"Billy Burgeman, did you forge that check yourself?" + +"What does that matter--whether I forged it or had it forged or saw +it forged? I tell you I cashed it, knowing it was forged. Don't you +understand?" + +"Yes; but if you didn't forge it, you could easily prove it; people +wouldn't have to know the rest--they are hushing up things of that +kind every day." + +A silence dropped on the three like a choking, blinding fog. The two +outside the hangings must have been staring at each other, too +bewildered or shocked to speak. The one inside clutched her throat, +muttering, "If my heart keeps up this thumping, faith, he'll think +it's the police and run." + +At last the voice of the man came, hushed but strained almost to +breaking. To Patsy it sounded as if he were staking his very soul in +the words, uncertain of the balance. "Marjorie, you don't understand! +I cashed that check because--because I want to take the +responsibility of it and whatever penalty comes along with it. I +don't believe father will ever tell. He's too proud; it would strike +back at him too hard. But you would have to know; he'd tell you; and +I wanted to tell you first myself. I want to go away knowing you +believe and trust me, no matter what father says about me, no matter +what every one thinks about me. I want to hear you say it--that you +will be waiting--just like this--for me to come back to when I've +squared it all off and can explain.... Why, Marjorie--Marjorie!" + +Patsy waited in an agony of dread, hope, prayer--waited for the +answer she, the girl he loved, would make. It came at last, slowly, +deliberately, as if spoken, impersonally, by the foreman of a jury: + +"I don't believe in you, Billy. I'm sorry, but I don't believe I +could ever trust you again. Your father has always said you couldn't +take care of money; this simply means you have got yourself into some +wretched hole, and forging your father's name was the only way out of +it. I suppose you think the circumstances, whatever they may be, have +warranted the act; but that act puts a stigma on your name which +makes it unfit for any woman to bear; and if you have any spark of +manhood left, you'll unwish the wish--you will unthink the +thought--that I would wait--or even want you--ever--to come back." + +A cry--a startled, frightened cry--rang through the rooms. It did not +come from either Marjorie or her leading man. Patsy stood with a +vagabond glove pressed hard over her mouth--quite unconscious that +the cry had escaped and that there was no longer need of +muzzling--then plunged headlong through the hangings into the +library. Marjorie Schuyler was standing alone. + +"Where is he--your man?" + +"He's gone--and please don't call him--that!" + +"Go after him--hurry--don't let him go! Don't ye understand? He +mustn't go away with no one believing in him. Tell him it's a +mistake; tell him anything--only go!" + +While Patsy's tongue burred out its Irish brogue she pushed at the +tall figure in front of her--pushed with all her might. "Are ye +nailed to the floor? What's happened to your feet? For Heaven's sake, +lift them and let them take ye after him. Don't ye hear? There's the +front door slamming behind him. He'll be gone past your calling in +another minute. Dear heart alive, ye can't be meaning to let him +go--this way!" + +But Marjorie Schuyler stood immovable and deaf to her pleading. +Incredulity, bewilderment, pity, and despair swept over Patsy's face +like clouds scudding over the surface of a clear lake. Then scorn +settled in her eyes. + +"I'm sorry for ye, sorry for any woman that fails the man who loves +her. I don't know this son of old King Midas; I never saw him in my +life, and all I know about him is what ye told me this day and scraps +of what he had to say for himself; but I believe in him. I know he +never forged that check--or used the money for any mean use of his +own. I'd wager he's shielding some one, some one weaker than he, too +afeared to step up and say so. Why, I'd trust him across the world +and back again; and, holy Saint Patrick! I'm going after him to tell +him so." + +For the second time within a few seconds Marjorie Schuyler listened +and heard the front door slam; then the goddess came to life. She +walked slowly, regally, across the library and passed between the +hangings which curtained her den. Her eyes, probably by pure chance, +glanced over the shimmering contents of the waste-basket. A little +cold smile crept to the corners of her mouth, while her chin +stiffened. + +"I think, Toto," she said, addressing the toy ruby spaniel, "that it +will not be even a June wedding," and she laughed a crisp, dry little +laugh. + + + + +III + +PATSY PLAYS A PART + + +Patsy ran down the steps of the Schuyler house, jumping the last +four. As her feet struck the pavement she looked up and down the +street for what she sought. There it was--the back of a +fast-retreating man in a Balmacaan coat of Scotch tweed and a round, +plush hat, turning the corner to Madison Avenue. Patsy groaned +inwardly when she saw the outlines of the figure; they were so +conventional, so disappointing; they lacked simplicity and +directness--two salient life principles with Patsy. + +"Pshaw! What's in a back?" muttered Patsy. "He may be a man, for all +his clothes;" and she took to her heels after him. + +As she reached the corner he jumped on a passing car going south. +"Tracking for the railroad station," was her mental comment, and she +looked north for the next car following; there was none. As far as +eye could see there was an unbroken stretch of track--fate seemed +strangely averse to aiding and abetting her deed. + +"When in doubt, take a taxi," suggested Patsy's inner consciousness, +and she accepted the advice without argument. + +She raced down two blocks and found one. "Grand Central--and +drive--like the devil!" + +As the door clicked behind her her eye caught the jumping indicator, +and she smiled a grim smile. "Faith, in two-shilling jumps like that +I'll be bankrupt afore I've my hand on the tails of that coat." And +with a tired little sigh she leaned back in the corner, closed her +eyes, and relaxed her grip on mind and will and body. + +A series of jerks and a final stop shook her into a thinking, acting +consciousness again; she was out of the taxi in a twinkling--with the +man paid and her eyes on the back of a Balmacaan coat and plush hat +disappearing through a doorway. She could not follow it as fast as +she had reckoned. She balanced corners with a stout, indeterminate +old gentleman who blocked her way and insisted on wavering in her +direction each time she tried to dodge him. In her haste to make up +for those precious lost seconds she upset a pair of twins belonging +to an already overburdened mother. These she righted and went dashing +on her way. Groups waylaid her; people with time to kill sauntered +in front of her; wandering, indecisive people tried to stop her for +information; and she reached the gate just as it was closing. Through +it she could see--down a discouraging length of platform--a +Balmacaaned figure disappearing into a car. + +"Too late, lady; train's leaving." + +It was well for Patsy that she was ignorant of the law governing +closing gates and departing trains, for the foolish and the ignorant +can sometimes achieve the impossible. She confronted the guard with a +look of unconquerable determination. "No, 'tisn't; the train guard is +still on the platform. You've got to let me through." + +She emphasized the importance of it with two tight fists placed not +overgently in the center of the guard's rotundity, and accompanied by +a shove. In some miraculous fashion this accomplished it. The gate +clanged at Patsy's back instead of in her face, as she had expected. +A bell rang, a whistle tooted, and Patsy's feet clattered like mad +down the platform. + +A good-natured brakeman picked her up and lifted her to the rear +platform of the last car as it drew out. That saved the day for +Patsy, for her strength and breath had gone past summoning. + +"Thank you," she said, feebly, with a vagabond glove held out in +proffered fellowship. "That's the kindest thing any one has done for +me since I came over." + +"Are ye--" + +"Irish--same as yourself." + +"How did ye know?" + +"Sure, who but an Irishman would have had his wits and his heart +working at the same time?" And with a laugh Patsy left him and went +inside. + +Her eye ran systematically down the rows of seats. Billy Burgeman was +not there. She passed through to the next car, and a second, and a +third. Still there was no back she could identify as belonging to the +man she was pursuing. + +She was crossing a fourth platform when she ran into the conductor, +who barred her way. "Smoking-car ahead, lady; this is the last of the +passenger-coaches." + +Patsy had it on the end of her tongue to say she preferred +smoking-cars, intending to duck simultaneously under the conductor's +arm and enter, willy-nilly. But the words rolled no farther than the +tongue's edge. She turned obediently back, re-entering the car and +taking the first seat by the door. For this her memory was +responsible. It had spun the day's events before her like a roulette +wheel, stopping precisely at the remark of Marjorie Schuyler's +concerning William Burgeman: "He's the most conventional young +gentleman I ever saw in my life. Why, you would shock--" + +A strange young woman doling out consolation to him in a smoking-car +would be anything but a dramatic success; Patsy felt this all too +keenly. He was decidedly not of her world or the men and women she +knew, who gave help when the need came regardless of time, place, +acquaintanceship, or sex. + +"Faith, he's the kind that will expect an introduction first, and a +month or two of tangoing, tea-drinking, and tennis-playing; after +which, if I ask his permission, he might consider it proper--" Patsy +groaned. "Oh, I hate the man already!" + +"Ticket!" + +"Ticket? What for?" + +"What for? Do you think this is a joy ride?" The conductor radiated +sarcasm. + +Patsy crimsoned. "I haven't mine. I--I was to--meet my--aunt--who had +the ticket--and--she must have missed the train." + +"Where are you going?" + +"I--I--Why, I was telling--My aunt had the tickets. How would I know +where I was going without the tickets?" + +The conductor snorted. + +Patsy looked hard at him and knew the time had come for wits--good, +sharp O'Connell wits. She smiled coaxingly. "It sounds so stupid, +but, you see, I haven't an idea where I am going. I was to meet my +aunt and go down with her to her summer place. I--I can't remember +the name." Her mouth drooped for the fraction of a second, then she +brightened all over. "I know what I can do--very probably she missed +the train because she expects to be at the station to meet me--I can +look out each time the train stops, and when I see her I can get off. +That makes it all right, doesn't it?" And she smiled in open +confidence as a sacrificial maiden might have propitiated the dragon. + +But it was not reciprocated. He eyed her scornfully. "And who pays +for the ticket?" + +"Oh!" Patsy caught her breath; then she sent it bubbling forth in a +contagious laugh. "I do--of course. I'll take a ticket to--just name +over the stations, please?" + +The conductor growled them forth: "Hampden, Forestview, Hainsville, +Dartmouth, Hudson, Arden, Brambleside, Mayberry, Greyfriars--" + +"What's that last--Greyfriars? I'll take a ticket to Greyfriars." She +said it after the same fashion she might have used in ordering a +mutton chop at a restaurant, and handed the conductor a bill. + +When he had given her the change and passed on, still disgruntled, +Patsy allowed herself what she called a "temporary attack of private +prostration." + +"Idiot!" she groaned in self-address. "Ye are the biggest fool in two +continents; and the Lord knows what Dan would be thinking of ye if he +were topside o' green earth to hear." Whereupon she gripped one +vagabond glove with the other--in fellow misery; and for the second +time that afternoon her eyes closed with sheer exhaustion. + + * * * * * + +The train rumbled on. Each time it stopped Patsy watched the doorway +and the window beside her for sight of her quarry; each time it +started again she sighed inwardly with relief, glad of another +furlough from a mission which was fast growing appalling. She had +long since ceased to be interested in Billy Burgeman as an +individual. He had shrunk into an abstract sense of duty, and as such +failed to appeal or convince. But as her interest waned, her +determination waxed; she would get him and tell him what she had come +for, if it took a year and a day and shocked him into complete +oblivion. + +She was saying this to herself for the hundredth time, adding for +spice--and artistic finish--"After that--the devil take him!" when +the train pulled away from another station. She had already satisfied +herself that he was not among the leaving passengers. But suddenly +something familiar in a solitary figure standing at the far end of +the gravel embankment caught her eye; it was back toward her, and in +the quick passing and the gathering dusk she could make out dim +outlines only. But those outlines were unmistakable, unforgetable. + +"A million curses on the house of Burgeman!" quoth Patsy. "Well, +there's naught for it but to get off at the next station and go +back." + +The conductor watched her get off with a distinct feeling of relief. +He had very much feared she was not a responsible person and in no +mental position to be traveling alone. Her departure cleared him of +all uneasiness and obligation and he settled down to his business +with an unburdened mind. Not so Patsy. She blinked at the vanishing +train and then at her empty hands, with the nearest she had ever come +in her life to utter, abject despair. She had left her bag in the +car! + +When articulate thinking was possible she remarked, acridly, "Ye need +a baby nurse to mind ye, Patricia O'Connell; and I'm not sure but ye +need a perambulator as well." She gave a tired little stretch to her +body and rubbed her eyes. "I feel as if this was all a silly play and +I was cast for the part of an Irish simpleton; a low-comedy +burlesque--that ye'd swear never happened in real life outside of +the county asylums." + +A headlight raced down the track toward her and the city, and she +gathered up what was left of her scattered wits. As the train slowed +up she stepped into the shadows, and her eye fell on the open +baggage-car. She smiled grimly. "Faith! I have a notion I like +brakemen and baggagemen better than conductors." + +And so it came to pass as the train started that the baggageman, who +happened to be standing in the doorway, was somewhat startled to see +a small figure come racing toward it out of the dusk and land +sprawling on the floor beside him. + +"A girl tramp!" he ejaculated in amazement and disgust, and then, as +he helped her to her feet, "Don't you know you're breaking the law?" + +She laughed. "From the feelings, I thought it was something else." +She sobered and turned on him fiercely. "I want ye to understand I've +paid my fare on the train out, which entitled me to one continuous +passage--_with my trunk_. Well, I'm returning--_as my trunk_, I'll +take up no more room and I'll ask no more privileges." + +"That may sound sensible, but it's not law," and the man grinned +broadly. "I'm sorry, miss, but off you go at the next station." + +"All right," agreed Patsy; "only please don't argue. Sure, I'm sick +entirely of arguing." + +She dropped down on a trunk and buried her face in her hands. The +baggageman watched her, hypnotized with curiosity and wonder. At the +next station he helped her to drop through the opening she had +entered, and called a shamefaced "good-by" after her in the dusk. + +She hunted up the station-agent and received scanty encouragement: +Very likely he had seen such a man; there were many of that +description getting off every day. They generally went to the +Inn--Brambleside Inn. The season was just open and society people +were beginning to come. No, there was no conveyance. The Inn's 'buses +did not meet any train after the six-thirty from town, unless ordered +especially by guests. Was she expected? + +Patsy was about to shake her head when a roadster swung around the +corner of the station and came to a dead stop in front of where she +and the station-master were standing. + +The driver peered at her through his goggles in a questioning, +hesitating manner. "Is this--are you Miss St. Regis?" he finally +asked. + +"Miriam St. Regis?" Patsy intended it for a question, realizing even +as she spoke the absurdity of inquiring the name of an English +actress at such a place. + +But the driver took it for a statement of identity. "Yes, of course, +Miss Miriam St. Regis. Mr. Blake made a mistake and thought because +your box came from town you'd be coming that way. It wasn't until +your manager, Mr. Travis, telephoned half an hour ago that he +realized you'd be on that southbound train. Awfully sorry to have +kept you waiting. Step right in, please." + +Whereupon the driver removed himself from the roadster, assisted her +to a seat, covered her with a rug--for early June evenings can be +rather sharp--and the next moment Patsy found herself tearing down a +stretch of country road with the purr of a motor as music to her +ears. + +"Sure, I don't know who wrote the play and starred me in it," she +mused, dreamily, "but he certainly knows how to handle situations." + +For the space of a few breaths she gave herself over completely to +the luxury of bodily comfort and mental inertia. It seemed as if she +would have been content to keep on whirling into an eternity of +darkness--with a destination so remote, and a mission so obscure, as +not to be of the slightest disturbance to her immediate +consciousness. All she asked of fate that moment was the blessedness +of nothing; and for answer--her mind was jerked back ruthlessly to +the curse of more complexities. + +The lights of a large building in the distance reminded her there was +more work for her wits before her and no time to lose. "I must +think--think--think, and it grows harder every minute. If Miriam St. +Regis is coming here, it means, like as not, she's filling in between +seasons, entertaining. Well, until she comes, they're all hearty +welcome to the mistake they've made. And afterward--troth! there'll +be a corner in her room for me the night, or Saint Michael's a +sinner; either way, 'tis all right." + +The driver unbundled her and helped her out as courteously as he had +helped her in. He led the way across a broad veranda to the main +entrance, and there she fell behind him as he pushed open the great +swinging door. + +"Oh, that you, Masters? Did Miss St. Regis come?" + +"Sure thing, sir; she's right here." + +The next moment Patsy stood in a blaze of lights between a personally +conducting chauffeur and a pompous hotel manager, who looked down +upon her with distrustful scrutiny. She was wholly aware of every +inch of her appearance--the shabbiness of her brown Norfolk suit, +the rakishness of her boyish brown beaver hat, and the vagabond +gloves. But of what value is the precedent of having been found +hanging on the thorn of a Killarney rose-bush by the Physician to +the King, of what value is the knowledge of past kinship with a +certain Dan O'Connell, if one allows a little matter of clothes to +spoil one's entrance and murder one's lines? + +The blood came flushing back into Patsy's cheeks, turning them the +color of thorn bloom, and her eyes deepened to the blue of Killarney, +sparkling as when the sun goes a-dancing. She smiled--a fresh, +radiant, witching smile upon that clay lump of commercialism--until +she saw his appraisement of her treble its original figure. + +Then she said, sweetly: "I have had rather a hard time getting here, +Mr. Blake; making connections in your country is not always as simple +as one might expect. My room, please." And with an air of a grand +duchess Patsy O'Connell, late of the Irish National Players, Dublin, +and later of the women's free ward of the City Hospital, led the way +across one of the most brilliant summer hotel foyers in America. + +As she entered the elevator a young man stepped out--a young man with +a small, blond, persevering mustache, a rather thin, esthetic, +melancholy face, and a myopic squint. He wore a Balmacaan of Scotch +tweed and carried a round, plush hat. + +Patsy turned to the bell-boy. "Did that man arrive to-night?" + +"Yes, miss; I took him up." + +"What is his name--do you know?" + +"Can't say, miss. I'll find out, if you like." + +"There is no need. I rather think I know it myself." And under her +breath she ejaculated, "Saint Peter deliver us!" + + + + +IV + +THE OCCUPANT OF A BALMACAAN COAT + + +Safe in her room, with the door closed and locked, Patsy stood +transfixed before a trunk--likewise closed and locked. + +"Thank Heaven for many blessings!" she said, fervently. "Thank Heaven +Miriam St. Regis has worn wigs of every conceivable color and style +on the stage, so there is small chance of any one here knowing the +real color of her hair. Thank Heaven she's given to missing her +engagements and not wiring about it until the next day. Thank Heaven +I've played with her long enough to imitate her mannerisms, and know +her well enough to explain away the night, if the need ever comes. +Thank Heaven that George Travis is an old friend and can help out, if +I fail. Thank Heaven for all of these! But, holy Saint Patrick! how +will I ever be getting inside that box?" + +On the heels of her fervor came an inspiration. Off came her gloves +and hat, off came coat and skirt, blouse and shoes, and into the +closet they all went. For, whereas Patsy could carry off her +shabbiness before masculine eyes, she had neither the desire nor the +fortitude to brave the keener, more critical gaze of her own sex. It +was always for the women that Patsy dressed, and above all else did +she stand in awe of the opinion of the hotel chambermaid, going down +in tottering submission before it. Unlocking her door, she rang the +bell; then crept in between the covers of her bed, drawing them up +about her. + +The chambermaid came and Patsy ordered the housekeeper. The +housekeeper came and Patsy explained to her the loss of her bag--the +loss of the keys was only implied; it was a part of Patsy's creed of +life never to lie unless cornered. She further implied that she was +entertaining no worry, as a well-appointed hotel always carried a +bunch of skeleton trunk keys for the convenience of their guests. + +Patsy's inspiration worked to perfection. In a few minutes the Inn +had proved itself a well-appointed hostelry, and the trunk stood open +before her. Alone again, she slipped out of bed--to lock the door and +investigate. A wistaria lounging-robe was on in a twinkling, with +quilted slippers to match. Then Patsy's eager fingers drew forth a +dark emerald velvet, with bodice and panniers of gold lace, and she +clasped it ecstatically in her arms. + +"Miriam always had divine taste, but the faeries must have guided her +hand for the choosing of this. Sure, I'd be feeling like a king's +daughter if I wasn't so weak and heartsick. I feel more like a young +gosling that some one has coaxed out of its shell a day too soon. Is +it the effect of Billy Burgeman, I wonder, or the left-overs from the +City Hospital, or an overdose of foolishness--or hunger, just?" + +"Miss St. Regis" dined in her own room, and she dined like a king's +daughter, with an appetite whetted by weeks of convalescing, charity +fare. Even the possible appearance at any minute of her original self +offered no terrors for her in the presence of such a soul-satisfying, +hunger-appeasing feast. + + * * * * * + +At nine-thirty that evening, when the manager sent the hall-boy to +call her, she looked every inch the king's daughter she had dined. +The hall-boy, accustomed to "creations," gave her a frank stare of +admiration, which Patsy noted out of the tail of her eye. + +She was ravishing. The green and gold brought out the tawny red glint +of her hair, which was bound with two gold bands about the head, +ending in tiny emerald clasps over the barely discoverable tips of +her ears; little gold shoes twinkled in and out of the clinging green +as she walked. + +"Faith! I feel like a whiff of Old Ireland herself," was Patsy +O'Connell's subconscious comment as "Miss St. Regis" crossed the +stage; and something of the feeling must have been wafted across the +footlights to the audience, for it drew in its breath with a little +gasp of genuine appreciation. + +She heard it and was grateful for the few seconds it gave her to look +at the program the manager had handed her as she was entering. It had +never occurred to her that Miss St. Regis might arrange her program +beforehand, that the audience might be expecting something definite +and desired in the form of entertainment. It took all the control of +a well-ordered Irish head to keep her from bolting for the little +stage door after one glance at the paper. Her eye had caught the +impersonation of two American actresses she had never seen, the +reading of a Hawaiian love poem she had never heard of, and scenes +from two plays she had never read. It was all too deliciously, +absurdly horrible for words; and then Patsy O'Connell geared up her +wits, as any true kinswoman of Dan's should. + +In a flash there came back to her what the company had done once +when they were playing one-night stands and the wrong scenery had +come for the play advertised. It was worth trying here. + +"Dear people," said Patsy O'Connell-St. Regis, smiling at the +audience as one friend to another, "I have had so many requests from +among you--since I made out my program--to give instead an evening of +old Irish tales, that I have--capitulated; you shall have your wish." + +The almost unbelievable applause that greeted her tempted her to +further wickedness. "Very few people seem ever to remember that I had +an Irish grandfather, Denis St. Regis, and that I like once in a +while to be getting back to the sod." + +There was something so hypnotic in her intimacy--this taking of every +one into her confidence--that one budding youth forgot himself +entirely and naively remarked, "It's a long way to Tipperary." + +That clinched her success. She might have chanted "Old King Cole" and +reaped a houseful of applause. As it was, she turned faery child and +led them all forth to the Land of Faery--a world that neighbored so +close to the real with her that long ago she had acquired the habit +of carrying a good bit of it about with her wherever she went. It was +small wonder, therefore, that, at the end of the evening, when she +fixed upon a certain young man in the audience--a man with a +persevering mustache, an esthetic face, and a melancholy, myopic +squint--and told the last tale to him direct, that he felt called +upon to go to her as she came down the steps into the ball-room and +express his abject, worshipful admiration. + +"That's all right," Patsy cut him short, "but--but--it would sound so +much nicer outside, somewhere in the moonlight--away from everybody. +Wouldn't it, now?" + +This sudden amending of matter-of-factness with arch coquetry would +have sounded highly amusing to ears less self-atuned than the +erstwhile wearer of the Balmacaan. But he heard in it only the +flattering tribute to a man chosen of men; and the hand that reached +for Patsy's was almost masterful. + +"Oh, would you really?" he asked, and he almost broke his melancholy +with a smile. + +"It must be my clothes," was her mental comment as he led her away; +"they've gone to my own head; it's not altogether strange they've +touched his a bit. But for a man who's forged his father's name and +lost the girl he loved and then plunged into mortal despair, he's +convalescing terribly fast." + +They had reached a quiet corner of the veranda. Patsy dropped into a +chair, while her companion leaned against a near-by railing and +looked down at her with something very like a soulful expression. + +"I might have known all along," Patsy was thinking, "that a back like +that would have a front like this. Sure, ye couldn't get a real man +to dress in knee-length petticoats." And then, to settle all doubts, +she faced him with grim determination. "I let you bring me here +because I had something to say to you. But first of all, did you come +down here to-night on that five-something train from New York?" + +The man nodded. + +"Did you get to the train by a Madison Avenue car, taken from the +corner of Seventy-seventh Street, maybe?" + +"Why, how did you know?" The melancholy was giving place to rather +pleased curiosity. + +"How do I know!" Patsy glared at him. "I know because I've followed +you every inch of the way--followed you to tell you I believed in +you--you--you!" and her voice broke with a groan. + +"Oh, I say, that was awfully good of you." This time the smile had +right of way, and such a flattered, self-conscious smile as it was! +"You know everybody takes me rather as a joke." + +"Joke!" Patsy's eyes blazed. "Well, you're the most serious, +impossible joke I ever met this side of London. Why, a person would +have to dynamite his sense of humor to appreciate you." + +"I don't think I understand." He felt about in his waistcoat pocket +and drew forth a monocle, which he adjusted carefully. "Would you +mind saying that again?" + +Patsy's hands dropped helplessly to her lap. "I couldn't--only, after +a woman has trailed a man she doesn't know across a country she +doesn't know to a place she doesn't know--and without a wardrobe +trunk, a letter of credit, or a maid, just to tell him she believes +in him, he becomes the most tragically serious thing that ever +happened to her in all her life." + +"Oh, I say, I always thought they were pretty good; but I never +thought any one would appreciate my poetry like that." + +"Poetry! Do you--do that, too?" + +"That's all I do. I am devoting my life to it; that's why my family +take me a little--flippantly." + +A faint streak of hope shot through Patsy's mind. "Would you mind +telling me your name?" + +"Why, I thought you knew. I thought you said that was why you +wanted to--to--Hang it all! my name's Peterson-Jones--Wilfred +Peterson-Jones." + +Patsy was on her feet, clasping her hands in a shameless burst of +emotion while she dropped into her own tongue. "Oh, that's a +beautiful name--a grand name! Don't ye ever be changing it! And don't +ye ever give up writing poetry; it's a beautiful pastime for any man +by that name. But what--what, in the name of Saint Columkill, ever +happened to Billy Burgeman!" + +"Billy Burgeman? Why, he came down on the train with me and went back +to Arden." + +Patsy threw back her head and laughed--laughed until she almost +feared she could not stop laughing. And then she suddenly became +conscious of the pompous manager standing beside her, a yellow sheet +of paper in his hand. + +"Will you kindly explain what this means?" and he slapped the paper +viciously. + +"I'll try to," said Patsy; "but will you tell me just one thing +first? How far is it to Arden?" + +"Arden? It's seven miles to Arden. But what's that got to do with +this? This is a wire from Miss St. Regis, saying she is ill and will +be unable to fill her engagement here to-night! Now, who are you?" + +"I? Why, I'm her understudy, of course--and--I'm--so happy--" +Whereupon Patricia O'Connell, late of the Irish National Players and +later of the women's free ward of the City Hospital, crumpled up on +the veranda floor in a dead faint. + + + + +V + +A TINKER POINTS THE ROAD + + +The Brambleside Inn lost one of its guests at an inconceivably early +hour the morning after Patsy O'Connell unexpectedly filled Miss St. +Regis's engagement there. The guest departed by way of the +second-floor piazza and a fire-escape, and not even the night +watchman saw her go. But it was not until she had put a mile or more +of open country between herself and the Inn that Patsy indulged in +the freedom of a long breath. + +"After this I'll keep away from inns and such like; 'tis too +wit-racking to make it anyways comfortable. I feel now as if I'd been +caught lifting the crown jewels, instead of giving a hundred-guinea +performance for the price of a night's bed and board and coming away +as poor as a tinker's ass." + +A smile caught at the corners of her mouth--a twitching, memory +smile. She was thinking of the note she had left folded in with the +green-and-gold gown in Miriam St. Regis's trunk. In it she had +stated her payment of one Irish grandfather by the name of Denis--in +return for the loan of the dress--and had hoped that Miriam would +find him handy on future public occasions. Patsy could not forbear +chuckling outright--the picture of anything so unmitigatedly British +as Miriam St. Regis with an Irish ancestor trailing after her for the +rest of her career was too entrancing. + +An early morning wind was blowing fresh from the clover-fields, +rose-gardens, and new-leafed black birch and sassafras. Such a +well-kept, clean world of open country it looked to Patsy as her eye +followed the road before her, on to the greening meadows and wooded +slopes, that her heart joined the chorus of song-sparrow and +meadow-lark, who sang from the sheer gladness of being a live part of +it all. + +She sighed, not knowing it. "Faith! I'm wishing 'twas more nor seven +miles to Arden. I'd like to be following the road for days and days, +and keeping the length of it between Billy Burgeman and myself." + +Starting before the country was astir, she had met no one of whom she +could inquire the way. A less adventuresome soul than Patsy might +have sat herself down and waited for direction; but that would have +meant wasting minutes--precious minutes before the dawn should break +and she should be no longer sole possessor of the road and the world +that bounded it. So Patsy chose the way for herself--content that it +would lead her to her destination in the end. The joy of true +vagabondage was rampant within her: there was the road, urging her +like an impatient comrade to be gone; there was her errand of +good-will giving purpose to her journey; and the facts that she was +homeless, penniless, breakfastless, a stranger in a strange country, +mattered not a whit. So thoroughly had she always believed in good +fortune that somehow she always managed to find it; and out of this +she had evolved her philosophy of life. + +"Ye see, 'tis this way," she would say; "the world is much like a +great cat--with claws to hide or use, as the notion takes it. If ye +kick and slap at it, 'twill hump its back and scratch at ye--sure as +fate; but if ye are wise and a bit patient ye can have it coaxed and +smoothed down till it's purring to make room for ye at any +hearthside. And there's another thing it's well to remember--that +folks are folks the world over, whether they are wearing your dress +and speaking your tongue or another's." + +And as Patsy was blessed in the matter of philosophy--so was she +blessed in the matter of possessions. She did not have to own things +to possess them. + +There was no doubt but that Patsy had a larger share of the world +than many who could reckon their estates in acreage or who owned so +many miles of fenced-off property. She held a mortgage on every inch +of free roadway, rugged hilltop, or virgin forest her feet crossed. +She claimed squatters' rights on every bit of shaded pasture, or +sunlit glade, or singing brook her heart rejoiced in. In other words, +everything outside of walls and fences belonged to her by virtue of +her vagabondage; and she had often found herself pitying the narrow +folk who possessed only what their deeds or titles allotted to them. + +And yet never in Patsy's life had she felt quite so sure about it as +she did this morning, probably because she had never before set forth +on a self-appointed adventure so heedless of means and consequences. + +"Sure, there are enough wise people in the world," she mused as she +tramped along; "it needs a few foolish ones to keep things happening. +And could a foolish adventuring body be bound for a better place than +Arden!" + +She rounded a bend in the road and came upon a stretch of old stump +fencing. From one of the stumps appeared to be hanging a grotesque +figure of some remarkable cut; it looked both ancient and romantic, +sharply silhouetted against the iridescence of the dawn. + +Patsy eyed it curiously. "It comes natural for me to be partial to +anything hanging to a thorn, or a stump; but--barring that--it still +looks interesting." + +As she came abreast it she saw it was not hanging, however. It was +perched on a lower prong of a root and it was a man, clothed in the +most absolute garment of rags Patsy had ever seen off the legitimate +stage. + +"From an artistic standpoint they are perfect," was Patsy's mental +tribute. "Wouldn't Willie Fay give his Sunday dinner if he could +gather him in as he is, just--to play the tinker! Faith! those rags +are so real I wager he keeps them together only by the grace of God." + +As she stopped in front of the figure he turned his head slowly and +gazed at her with an expression as far away and bewildered as a lost +baby's. + +In the half-light of the coming day he looked supernatural--a strange +spirit from under the earth or above the earth, but not of the earth. +This was borne in upon Patsy's consciousness, and it set her Celtic +blood tingling and her eyes a-sparkling. + +"He looks as half-witted as those back in the Old Country who have +the second sight and see the faeries. Aye, and he's as young and +handsome as a king's son. Poor lad!" And then she called aloud, "'Tis +a brave day, this." + +"Hmm!" was the response, rendered impartially. + +Patsy's alert eyes spied a nondescript kit flung down in the grass at +the man's feet and they set a-dancing. "Then ye _are_ a tinker?" + +"Hmm!" was again the answer. It conveyed an impression of hesitant +doubt, as if the speaker would have avoided, if he could, the +responsibility of being anything at all, even a tinker. + +"That's grand," encouraged Patsy. "I like tinkers, and, what's more, +I'm a bit of a vagabond myself. I'll grant ye that of late years the +tinkers are treated none too hearty about Ireland; but there was a +time--" Patsy's mind trailed off into the far past, into a maze of +legend and folk-tale wherein tinkers were figures of romance and +mystery. It was good luck then to fall in with such company; and +Patsy, being more a product of past romance than present +civilization, was pleased to read into this meeting the promise of a +fair road and success to her quest. + +Moreover, there was another appeal--the apparent helpless +bewilderment of the man himself and his unreality. He was certainly +not in possession of all his senses, from whatever world he might +have dropped; and helplessness in man or beast was a blood bond with +Patsy, making instant claim on her own abundant sympathies and wits. + +She held the tinker with a smile of open comradeship while her voice +took on an alluring hint of suggestion. "Ye can't be thinking of +hanging onto that stump all day--now what road might ye be +taking--the one to Arden?" + +For some minutes the tinker considered her and her question with an +exaggerated gravity; then he nodded his head in a final agreement. + +"Grand! I'm bound that way myself; maybe ye know Arden?" + +"Maybe." + +"And how far might it be?" + +"Seven miles." + +Patsy wrinkled her forehead. "That's strange; 'twas seven miles last +night, and I've tramped half the distance already, I'm thinking. +Never mind! What's behind won't trouble me, and the rest of the way +will soon pass in good company. Come on," and she beckoned her head +in indisputable command. + +Once again he considered her slowly. Then, as if satisfied, he swung +himself down from his perch on the stump fence, gathered up his kit, +and in another minute had fallen into step with her; and the two +were contentedly tramping along the road. + +"The man who's writing this play," mused Patsy, "is trying to match +wits with Willie Shakespeare. If any one finds him out they'll have +him up for plagiarizing." + +She chuckled aloud, which caused the tinker to cast an uneasy glance +in her direction. + +"Poor lad! The half-wits are always suspicious of others' wits. He +thinks I'm fey." And then aloud: "Maybe ye are not knowing it, but +anything at all is likely to happen to ye to-day--on the road to +Arden. According to Willie Shakespeare--whom ye are not likely to be +acquainted with--it's a place where philosophers and banished dukes +and peasants and love-sick youths and lions and serpents all live +happily together under the 'Greenwood Tree.' Now, I'm the banished +duke's own daughter--only no one knows it; and ye--sure, ye can take +your choice between playing the younger brother--or the fool." + +"The fool," said the tinker, solemnly; and then of a sudden he threw +back his head and laughed. + +Patsy stopped still on the road and considered him narrowly. +"Couldn't ye laugh again?" she suggested when the laugh was ended. +"It improves ye wonderfully." An afterthought flashed in her mind. +"After all's said and done, the fool is the best part in the whole +play." + +After this they tramped along in silence. The tinker kept a little in +advance, his head erect, his hands swinging loosely at his sides, his +eyes on nothing at all. He seemed oblivious of what lay back of him +or before him--and only half conscious of the companion at his side. +But Patsy's fancy was busy with a hundred things, while her eyes went +afield for every scrap of prettiness the country held. There were +meadows of brilliant daisies, broken by clumps of silver poplars, +white birches, and a solitary sentinel pine; and there was the +roadside tangle with its constant surprises of meadowsweet and +columbine, white violets--in the swampy places--and once in a while +an early wild rose. + +"In Ireland," she mused, "the gorse would be out, fringing the +pastures, and on the roadside would be heartsease and faery thimbles, +and perhaps a few late primroses; and the meadow would be green with +corn." A faint wisp of a sigh escaped her at the thought, and the +tinker looked across at her questioningly. "Sure, it's my heart +hungering a bit for the bogland and a whiff of the turf smoke. This +exile idea is a grand one for a play, but it gets lonesome at times +in real life. Maybe ye are Irish yourself?" + +"Maybe." + +It was Patsy's turn to glance across at the tinker, but all she saw +was the far-away, wondering look that she had seen first in his face. +"Poor lad! Like as not he finds it hard remembering where he's from; +they all do. I'll not pester him again." + +He looked up and caught her eyes upon him and smiled foolishly. + +Patsy smiled back. "Do ye know, lad, I've not had a morsel of +breakfast this day. Have ye any money with ye, by chance?" + +The tinker stopped, put down his kit, and hunted about in his rags +where the pocket places might be; but all he drew forth were his two +empty hands. He looked down the stretch of road they had come with an +odd twist to his mouth, then he burst forth into another laugh. + +"Have ye been playing the pigeon, and some one plucked ye?" she +asked, and went on without waiting for his answer. "Never mind! We'll +sharpen up our wits afresh and earn a breakfast. Are ye handy at +tinkering, now?" + +"You bet I am!" said the tinker. It was the longest speech he had +made. + + * * * * * + +At the next farm Patsy turned in, with a warning to the tinker to do +as he was told and to hold his tongue. It was a thoroughly +well-kept-looking farm, and she picked out what she decided must be +the side door, and knocked. A kindly-faced, middle-aged woman opened +it, and Patsy smiled with the good promise of her looks. + +"We are two--down on our luck, and strangers hereabouts. Have ye got +any tinkering jobs for my man there? He's a bit odd and says little; +but he can solder a broken pot or mend a machine with the best. And +we'll take out our pay in a good, hearty meal." + +"There be a pile of dishes in the pantry I've put by till we was +goin' to town--handles off and holes in the bottom. He can mend them +out on the stoop, if he likes. I've got to help with berry-pickin'; +we're short-handed this season." + +"Are ye, just? Then I'm thinking I'll come in handy." Patsy smiled +her smile of winning comradeship as she stooped and picked up a tray +of empty berry-boxes that stood by the door; while the woman's smile +deepened with honest appreciation. + +"My! but you are willing folks; they're sometimes scarce 'round +here." + +"Faith, we're hungry folks--so ye best set us quickly to work." + +They left the tinker on the stoop, surrounded by a heterogeneous +collection of household goods. Patsy cast an anxious backward glance +at him, but saw that he was rolling up the rags that served for +sleeves, thereby baring a pair of brawny, capable-looking arms, while +he spread his tools before him after the manner of a man who knows +his business. + +"Fine!" commented Patsy, with an inner satisfaction. "He may be +foolish, but I bet he can tinker." + +They picked berries for an hour or more, and then Patsy turned too +and helped the woman get dinner. They bustled about in silence to the +accompanying pounding and scraping of the tinker, who worked +unceasingly. When they sat down to dinner at last there was a +tableful--the woman and her husband, Patsy, the tinker, and the +"hands," and before them was spread the very best the farm could +give. It was as if the woman wished to pay their free-will gift of +service with her unstinted bounty. + +"We always ask a blessin'," said the farmer, simply, folding his +hands on the table, about to begin. Then he looked at Patsy, and, +with that natural courtesy that is common to the true man of the +soil, he added, "We'd be pleased if you'd ask it." + +Patsy bowed her head. A little whimsical smile crept to her lips, but +her voice rang deep with feeling: "For food and fellowship, good +Lord, we thank Thee. Amen!" And she added under her breath, "And +take a good grip of the Rich Man's son till we get him." + + * * * * * + +The late afternoon found them back on the road once more. They parted +from the farmer and his wife as friend parts with friend. The woman +slipped a bundle of food--bread, cheese, and meat left from the +dinner, with a box of berries--into Patsy's hand, while the man gave +the tinker a half-dollar and wished him luck. + +Patsy thanked them for both; but it was not until they were well out +of earshot that she spoke to the tinker: "They are good folk, but +they'd never understand in a thousand years how we came to be +traveling along together. What folks don't know can't hurt them, and +'tis often easier holding your tongue than trying to explain what +will never get through another's brain. Now put that lunch into your +kit; it may come in handy--who knows? And God's blessing on all kind +hearts!" + +Whereupon the tinker nodded solemnly. + +They had tramped for a mile or more when they came to a cross-roads +marked by a little white church. From the moment they sighted it +Patsy's feet began to lag; and by the time they reached the crossing +of the ways she had stopped altogether and was gazing up at the +little gold cross with an odd expression of whimsical earnestness. + +"Do ye know," she said, slowly, clasping the hands long shorn of the +vagabond gloves--"do ye know I've told so many lies these last two +days I think I'll bide yonder for a bit, and see can Saint Anthony +lift the sins from me. 'Twould make the rest o' the road less +burdensome--don't ye think?" + +The tinker looked uncomfortably confused, as though this sudden +question of ethics or religion was too much for his scattered wits. +He dug the toe of his boot in the gravel of the church path and +removed his cap to aid the labor of his thinking. "Maybe--" he agreed +at last. "An' will I be waitin' for you--or keepin' on?" + +"Ye'll wait, of course," commanded Patsy. + +She had barely disappeared through the little white door, and the +tinker thrown himself down with his back to the sign-post which +marked the roads, when a sorrel mare and a runabout came racing down +the road over which they had just come. There were two men in the +runabout, both of them tense and alert, their heads craned far in +advance of the rest of them, their eyes scanning the diverging roads. + +"I cal'ate she's gone that way." The driver swung the whip, +indicating the road that ran south. + +"Wall--I cal'ate so, too," agreed the other. "But then again--she +mightn't." + +They reined in and discovered the tinker. "Some one passed this way +sence you been settin' there?" they inquired almost in unison. + +"I don't know"--the tinker's fingers passed hurriedly across his eyes +and forehead, by way of seeking misplaced wits--"some one might be +almost any one," he smiled, cheerfully. + +"Look here, young feller, if you're tryin' to be smart--" the driver +began, angrily; but his companion silenced him with a nudge and a +finger tapped significantly on the crown of his hat. He moderated his +tone: + +"We're after a girl in a brown suit and hat--undersized girl. She was +asking the way to Arden. Seen any one of that description?" + +"What do you want with her?" + +"Never mind," growled the first man. + +But the second volunteered meager information, "She's a suspect. +Stayed last night in the Inn and this morning a couple of thousand +dollars' worth of diamonds is missin'; that's what we want her for." + +The tinker brightened perceptibly. "Guess she went by in a wagon half +an hour ago--that way. I think I saw her," and as the men turned +southward down the road marked Arden he called after them, "Better +hurry, if you want to catch her; the wagon was going at a right smart +pace." + +He waited for their backs to be turned and for the crack of the whip +that lifted the heels of the sorrel above the dashboard before she +plunged, then, with amazing speed, of mind as well as of body, he +wrenched every sign from the post and pitched them out of sight +behind a neighboring stone wall. + +The dust from departing wheels still filled the air when Patsy +stepped out of the cross-roads church, peacefully radiant, and found +the tinker sitting quietly with his back against the post. + +"So ye are still here. I thought ye might have grown tired of my +company, after all, and gone on." Patsy laughed happily. "Now do ye +know which road goes to Arden?" + +"Sure," and the tinker joined in her laugh, while he pointed to the +straight road ahead, the road that ran west, at right angles to the +one the runabout had taken. + +"Come on, then," said Patsy; "we ought to be there by sundown." She +stopped and looked him over for the space of a second. "Ye are +improving wonderfully. Mind! ye mustn't be getting too keen-witted or +we'll have to be parting company." + +"Why?" + +"That's the why!" And with this satisfactory explanation she led the +way down the road the tinker had pointed. + + + + +VI + +AT DAY'S END + + +Their road went the way of the setting sun, and Patsy and the tinker +traveled it leisurely--after the fashion of those born to the road, +who find their joy in the wandering, not in the making of a distance +or the reaching of a destination. Since they had left the cross-roads +church behind Patsy had marked the tinker casting furtive glances +along the way they had come; and each time she marked, as well, the +flash of a smile that lightened his face for an instant when he saw +that the road still remained empty of aught but themselves. + +"It's odd," she mused; "he hasn't the look of a knave who might fear +a trailing of constables at his heels; and yet--and yet his wits have +him pestered about something that lies back of him." + +Once it was otherwise. There was a rising of dust showing on one of +the hills they had climbed a good half-hour before. When the tinker +saw it he reached of a sudden for Patsy's hand while he pointed +excitedly beyond pasture bars ahead to a brownish field that lay some +distance from the road. + +"See, lass, that's sorrel. If you'll break the road along with me +I'll show you where wild strawberries grow, lots of 'em!" + +Her answer was to take the pasture bars at a run as easily as any +country-bred urchin. The tinker swung himself after her, an odd wisp +of a smile twisting the corners of his mouth, just such a smile as +the fool might wear on the road to Arden. The two raced for the +sorrel-tops--the tinker winning. + +When Patsy caught up he was on his knees, his head bare, his eyes +sparkling riotously, running his fingers exultantly through the green +leaves that carpeted the ground. "See," he chuckled, "the tinker +knows somethin' more 'n solder and pots." + +Patsy's eyes danced. There they were--millions of the tiny red +berries, as thick and luscious as if they had been planted in Elysian +fields for Arcadian folk to gather. "The wee, bonnie things!" she +laughed. "Now, how were ye afther knowing they were here?" + +The tinker cocked his head wisely. "I know more 'n that; I know where +to find yellow lady's-slippers 'n' the yewberries 'n' hummin'-bird +nests." + +She looked at him joyfully; he was turning out more and more to her +liking. "Could ye be showing them to me, lad?" she asked. + +The tinker eyed her bashfully. "Would you--care, then?" + +"Sure, and I would;" and with that she was flat on the ground beside +him, her fingers flying in search of strawberries. + +So close they lay to the earth, so hidden by the waving sorrel and +neighboring timothy, that had a whole county full of constables been +abroad they could have passed within earshot and never seen them +there. + +With silence between them they ate until their lips were red and the +cloud of dust on the hill back of them had whirled past, attendant on +a sorrel mare and runabout. They ate until the road was quite empty +once more; and then the tinker pulled Patsy to her feet by way of +reminding her that Arden still lay beyond them. + +"Do ye know," said Patsy, after another silence and they were once +more afoot, "I'm a bit doubtful if the banished duke's daughter ever +tasted anything half as sweet as those berries on her road to Arden; +or, for that matter, if she found her fool half as wise. I'm mortial +glad ye didn't fall off that stump this morning afore I came by to +fetch ye off." + +The tinker doffed his battered cap unexpectedly and swept her an +astounding bow. + +"Holy Saint Christopher!" ejaculated Patsy. "Ye'll be telling me ye +know Willie Shakespeare next." + +But the tinker answered with a blank stare, while the far-away, +bewildered look of fear came back to his eyes. "Who's he? Does he +live 'round here?" he asked, dully. + +Patsy wrinkled a perplexed forehead. "Lad, lad, ye have me bursting +with wonderment! Ye are a rare combination, even for an Irish tinker; +but if ye are a fair sample of what they are over here, sure the +States have the Old Country beaten entirely." + +And the tinker laughed as he had laughed once before that day--the +free, untrammeled laugh of youth, while he saucily mimicked her Irish +brogue. "Sure, 'tis the road to Arden, ye were sayin', and anythin' +at all can happen on the way." + +The girl laughed with him. "And ye'll be telling me next that this is +three hundred years ago, and romance and Willie Shakespeare are still +alive." Her mind went racing back to the "once-upon-a-time days," the +days when chivalry walked abroad--before it took up its permanent +residence between the covers of story-books--when poets and saints, +kings' sons and--tinkers journeyed afar to prove their manhood in +deeds instead of inheritances; when it was no shame to live by one's +wits or ask hospitality at any strange door. Ah--those were the days! +And yet--and yet--could not those days be given back to the world +again? And would not the world be made a merrier, sweeter place +because of them? If Patsy could have had her way she would have gone +forth at the ring of each new day like the angel in the folk tale, +and with her shears cut the nets that bound humanity down to petty +differences in creed or birth or tongue. + +"Faith, it makes one sick," she thought. "We tell our children the +tales of the Red Branch Knights--of King Arthur and the Knights of +the Grail--and rejoice afresh over the beauty and wonder of them; we +stand by the hour worshiping at the pictures of the saints--simple +men and women who just went about doing kindness; and we read the +Holy Book--the tales of Christ with his fishermen, wandering about, +looking for some good deed to do, some helpfulness to give, some word +of good cheer to speak; and we pray, 'Father, make us good--even as +Thou wert.' And what does it all mean? We hurry through the streets +afeared to stop on the corner and succor a stranger, or ashamed to +speak a friendly word to a troubled soul in a tram-car; and we go +home at night and lock our doors so that the beggar who asked for a +bit of bread at noon can't come round after dark and steal the +silver." Patsy sighed regretfully--if only this were olden times she +would not be dreading to find Arden now and the man she was seeking +there. + +The tinker caught the sigh and looked over at her with a puzzled +frown. "Tired?" he asked, laconically. + +"Aye, a bit heart-tired," she agreed, "and I'm wishing Arden was +still a good seven miles away." + +Whereupon the tinker turned his head and grinned sheepishly toward +the south. + + * * * * * + +The far-away hills had gathered in the last of the sun unto +themselves when the two turned down the main street of a village. It +was unquestionably a self-respecting village. The well-tarred +sidewalks, the freshly painted meeting-house neighboring the +engine-house "No. 1," the homes with their well-mowed lawns in front +and the tidily kept yards behind--all spoke of a decency and +lawfulness that might easily have set the hearts of the most +righteous of vagabonds a-quaking. + +Patsy looked it carefully over. "Sure, Arden's no name for it at all. +They'd better have called it Gospel Center--or New Canaan. 'Twould be +a grand place, though, to shut in all the Wilfred Peterson-Joneses, +to keep them off the county's nerves--and the rich men's sons, to +keep them off the public sympathy. But 'tis no place for us, lad." + +The tinker shifted his kit from one shoulder to the other and held +his tongue. + +Their entrance was what Patsy might have termed "fit." The dogs of +the village were on hand; that self-appointed escort of all doubtful +characters barked them down the street with a lusty chorus of growls +and snarls and sharp, staccato yaps. There were the children, too, of +course; the older ones followed hot-foot after the dogs; the smaller +ones came, a stumbling vanguard, sucking speculative thumbs or +forefingers, as the choice might be. The hurly-burly brought the +grown-ups to windows and doors. + +"'Hark! hark! the dogs do bark, the beggars are coming to town,'" +quoted Patsy, with a grim little smile, and glanced across at the +tinker. He was blushing fiercely. "Never mind, lad. 'Tis better being +barked into a town than bitten out of it." + +For answer the tinker stopped and folded his arms sullenly. "I'm not +such a fool I can't feel somethin'. Don't you reckon I know the shame +it is to be keepin' a decent woman company with these rags--and no +wits?" + +"If I've not misplaced my memory, 'twas myself that chose the +company, and 'twas largely on account of those very things, I'm +thinking. Do ye guess for a minute that if ye had been a rich man's +son in grand clothes--and manners to match--I'd ever have tramped a +millimeter with ye?" She smiled coaxingly. "Faith! there's naught the +matter with those rags; a king's son might be proud o' them. As for +foolishness, I've known worse faults in a man." + +The tinker winced imperceptibly, and all unconsciously Patsy went on: +"'Tis the heart of a man that measures him, after all, and not the +wits that crowd his brain or the gold that lines his pockets. Oh, +what do the folks who sit snug by their warm hearthsides, knitting +their lives into comfortables to wrap around their real feelings and +human impulses, ever know about their neighbors who come in to drink +tea with them? And what do the neighbors in turn know about them? If +I had my way, I'd tumble the whole sit-by-the-fire-and-gossip world +out of doors and set them tramping the road to somewhere; 'tis the +surest way of getting them acquainted with themselves and the +neighbors. For that matter, all of us need it--just once in so often. +And so--to the road, say I, with a fair greeting to all alike, be +they king's son or beggar, for the road may prove the one's the other +afore the journey's done." + +"Amen!" said the tinker, devoutly, and Patsy laughed. + +They had stopped in the middle of the street, midway between the +church and the engine-house, Patsy so absorbed in her theories, the +tinker so absorbed in Patsy, that neither was aware of the changed +disposition of their circling escort until a cold, inquisitive nose +and a warm, friendly tongue brought them to themselves. Greetings +were returned in kind; heads were patted, backs stroked, ears +scratched--only the children stood aloof and unconvinced. That is +ever the way of it; it is the dogs who can better tell glorious +vagabondage from inglorious rascality. + +"Sure, ye can't fool dogs; I'd be taking the word of a dog before a +man's anywhere when it comes to judging human beings." Patsy looked +over her shoulder at the children. "Ye have the creatures won over +entirely; 'tis myself might try what I could do with the wee ones. If +we had the dogs and the childther to say a good word for us--faith! +the grown-ups might forget how terribly respectable they were and +make us welcome for one night." A sudden thought caught her memory. +"I was almost forgetting why I had come. Hunt up a shop for me, lad, +will ye? There must be one down the street a bit; and if ye'll loan +me some of that half-crown the good man paid for your tinkering, I'd +like to be having a New York News--if they have one--along with the +fixings for a letter I have to be writing. While ye are gone I'll +bewitch the childther." + +And she did. + +When the tinker returned she was sitting on the church steps, the +children huddled so close about her that she was barely +distinguishable in the encircling mass of shingled heads, bobby +curls, pigtails and hair-ribbons. Deaf little ears were being turned +to parental calls for supper--a state of affairs unprecedented and +unbelievable; while Patsy was bringing to an end the tale of Jack, +the Irish hero of a thousand and one adventures. + +"And he married the king's daughter--and they lived happier than ye +can tell me--and twice as happy as I can tell ye--in a castle that +had a window for every day in the year." + +"That would make a fine endin' for any lad's story," said the tinker, +soberly. "'A window for every day in the year' would mean a whole lot +of cheerfulness and sunshine, wouldn't it?" + +Patsy nodded. "But don't those who take to the road fetch that castle +along with them? Sure, there it is"--and her hand swept toward the +skyline an encompassing circle about them--"with the sun flooding it +from dawn to day's end." She turned to the eager faces about her, +waiting for more. "Are ye still there? Faith! what have I been +hearing this half-hour but hungry childther being called for tea. +'Twas 'Joseph' from the house across the way, and 'Rebecca' from off +yonder, and 'Susie May' from somewhere else. Away with yez all to +your mothers!" And Patsy scattered them as if they had been a flock +of young sheep, scampering helter-skelter in all directions. + +But one there was who lagged behind, a little boy with an old, old +face, who watched the others go and then crept closer, held by the +spell of the tale. He pulled at Patsy's sleeve to gain attention. +"I'm--I'm Joseph. Was it true--most of it?" + +She nodded a reply as solemn as his question, "Aye, as true as youth +and the world itself." + +"And would it come true for another boy--any boy--who went a-tramping +off like that? Would he find--whatever he was wishin' for?" And even +as he spoke his eyes left hers and went searching for the far-away +hills--and what might lie beyond. + +"Come here, little lad." Patsy drew him to her and put two steadying +hands on his shoulders. She knew that he, too, had heard the call of +the road and the longing to be gone--to be one with it, journeying to +meet the mysterious unknown--was upon him. "Hearken to me: 'Tis only +safe for a little lad to be going when he has three things to fetch +with him--the wish to find something worth the bringing home, the +knowledge of what makes good company along the way, and trust in +himself. When ye are sure of these, go; but ye'll no longer be a +little lad, I'm thinking. And remember first to get the mother's +blessing and 'God-speed,' same as Jack; a lad's journey ends nowhere +that begins without that." + +He went without a word, but content; and his eyes brimmed with +visions. + +Patsy watched him tenderly. "Who knows--he may find greatness on his +road. Who knows?" + +The tinker dropped the bundle he had brought back from the store into +her lap, but she scarcely heeded him. Her eyes were looking out into +the gathering dusk while her voice sank almost to a whisper. + +"_Ochone!_ but I've always envied that piper fellow from Hamelin +town. Think of being able to gather up all the childther hereabouts, +eager, hungry-hearted childther with mothers too busy or deaf to heed +them, and leading them away to find their fortunes! Wouldn't that be +wonderful, just?" + +"What kind of fortunes?" asked the tinker. + +"What but the best kind!" Patsy thought for a moment, and smiled +whimsically while her eyes grew strangely starry in that early +twilight. "Wouldn't I like to be choosing those fortunes, and +wouldn't they be an odd lot, entirely! There'd be singing hearts that +had learned to sing above trouble; there'd be true fellowship--the +kind that finds brotherhood in beggars as well as--as prime +ministers; there'd be peace of soul--not the kind that naps by the +fire, content that the wind doesn't be blowing down his chimney, but +the kind that fights above fighting and keeps neighbor from harrying +neighbor. Troth, the world is in mortial need of fortunes like the +last." + +"And wouldn't you be choosin' gold for a fortune?" asked the tinker. + +Patsy shook her head vehemently. + +"Why not?" + +"That's the why!" Suddenly Patsy clenched her hands and shook two +menacing fists against the gathering dark. "I hate gold, along with +the meanness and the lying and the thieving and the false judgment it +brings into the world." + +"But the world can't get along without it," reminded the tinker, +shrewdly. + +"Aye, but it can. It can get along without the hoarded gold, the +inherited gold, the cheating, bribing, starving gold--that's the kind +I mean, the kind that gets into a man's heart and veins until his +fingers itch to gild everything he touches, like the rich man in the +city yonder." + +"What rich man? I thought the--I thought the city was full o' rich +men." + +"Maybe; but there's just one I'm thinking of now; and God pity +him--and his son." + +The tinker eyed her stupidly. "How d'you know he has a son?" + +Patsy laughed. "I guessed--maybe." Then she looked down in her lap. +"And here's the news--with no light left to read it by; and I'm as +hungry as an alley cat--and as tired as two. Ye'd never dream, to +hear me talking, that I'd never had much more than a crooked sixpence +to my name since I was born; and here I am, with that gone and not a +slither to buy me bed or board for the night." + +The tinker looked down at her with an altogether strange expression, +very different from anything Patsy had seen on his face all day. Had +she chanced to catch it before it flickered out, it might have +puzzled even her O'Connell wits to fathom the meaning of it. For it +was as if the two had unexpectedly changed places, and the tender +pity and protectiveness that had belonged to her had suddenly become +his. + +"Never mind, lass; there's board in the kit for to-night--what the +farm wife put up; and there's this left, and I'll--I'll--" He did not +finish; instead he dropped a few coins in her hand, the change from +the half-dollar. Then he set about sweeping the dust from the step +with his battered cap and spreading their meager meal before her. + +They ate in silence, so deep in the business of dulling their +appetites that they never noticed a small figure crossing the street +with two goblets and a pitcher hugged tight in his arms. They never +looked up until the things were set down beside them and a voice +announced at their elbow, "Mother said I could bring it; it's better +'n eatin' dry." + +It was Joseph; and the pitcher held milk, still foamy from a late +milking. He looked at Patsy a moment longingly, as if there was more +he wanted to ask; but, overcome with a sudden bashful confusion, he +took to his heels and disappeared around the corner of the +meeting-house before they had time even to give thanks. + +The tinker poured the goblets full, handed Patsy's to her with +another grave bow, and, touching his to hers, said, soberly, "Here's +to a friendly lass--the first I ever knew, I reckon." + +For an instant she watched him, puzzled and amused; then she raised +her glass slowly in reply. "And here's to tinkers--the world over!" + +When everything but the crumbs were eaten she left him to scatter +these and return Joseph's pitcher while she went to get "the loan of +a light from the shopkeeper, and hunt up the news." + + * * * * * + +The store was store, post-office, and general news center combined. +The news was at that very moment in process of circulation among the +"boys"--a shirt-sleeved quorum from the patriarchs of the town +circling the molasses-keg--the storekeeper himself topped it. They +looked up as Patsy entered and acknowledged her "Good evening" with +that perfect indifference, the provincial cloak in habitual use for +concealing the most absolute curiosity. The storekeeper graciously +laid the hospitality of his stool and counter and kerosene-lamp at +her feet; in other words, he "cal'ated she was welcome to make +herself t' home." All of which Patsy accepted. She spread out the +newspaper on the counter in front of her; she unwrapped a series of +small bundles--ink, pen, stamped envelope, letter-pad, and +pen-holder, and eyed them with approval. + +"The tinker's a wonder entirely," she said to herself; "but I would +like to be knowing, did he or did the shopkeeper do the choosing?" +Then she remembered the thing above all others that she needed to +know, and swung about on the stool to address the quorum. "I say--can +you tell me where I'd be likely to find a--person by the name of +Bil--William Burgeman?" + +"That rich feller's boy?" + +Patsy nodded. "Have you seen him?" + +The quorum thumbed the armholes of their vests and shook an emphatic +negative. "Nope," volunteered the storekeeper; "too early for him or +his sort to be diggin' out o' winter quarters." + +"Are you sure? Do you know him?" + +"Wall, can't say exactly ef I know him; but I'd know ef he'd been +hangin' round, sartin. Hain't been nothin' like him loose in these +parts. Has there, boys?" + +The quorum confirmed the statement. + +Patsy wrinkled up a perplexed forehead. "That's odd. You see, he +should have been here last night, to-day at the latest. I had it from +somebody who knew, that he was coming to Arden." + +"Mebby he was," drawled the storekeeper, while the quorum cackled in +appreciation; "but this here is a good seven miles from Arden." + +Patsy's arms fell limp across the counter, her head followed, and she +sat there a crumpled-up, dejected little heap. + +"By Jack-a-diamonds!" swore the storekeeper. "She 'ain't swoomed, has +she, boys?" + +The quorum were on the verge of investigating when she denied the +fact--in person. "Where am I? In the name of Saint Peter, what place +is this?" + +"This? Why, this is Lebanon." + +She smiled weakly. "Lebanon! Sounds more like it, anyhow. Thank you." + +She turned about and settled down to the paper while the "boys" +reverted to their original topic of discussion. There were two items +of news that interested her: Burgeman, senior, was critically ill; he +had been ill for some time, but there had been no cause for +apprehension until the last twenty-four hours; and Marjorie Schuyler +had left for San Francisco--on the way to China. She was to be gone +indefinitely. + +"The heathen idols and the laundrymen are welcome to her," growled +Patsy, maliciously. "If they'd only fix her with the evil eye, or +wish such a homesickness and lovesickness on her that 'twould last +for a year and a day, I'd forgive her for what she's made me wish on +myself." + +Having relieved her mind somewhat, she was able to attend to the +business of the letter with less inward discomfort. The letter was +written to George Travis, already known as the manager of Miss St. +Regis. He was the head of a well-known theatrical managerial firm in +New York, and an old friend and well-wisher of Patsy's. In it she +explained, partly, her continued sojourn in America, and frankly +confessed to her financial needs. If he had anything anywhere that +she could do until the fall bookings with her own company, she would +be most humbly grateful. He might address her at Arden; she had great +hopes of reaching there--some day. There was a postscript added in +good, pure Donegal: + + And don't ye be afeared of hurting my pride by offering + anything too small. Just at present I'm like old Granny + Donoghue's lean pig--hungry for scrapings. + +As she sealed the envelope a shadow fell athwart the counter. Patsy +looked up to find the tinker peering at her sharply. + +"You look clean tuckered out," he announced, baldly; then he laid a +coaxing hand on her arm. "I want you to come along with me. Will you, +lass? I've found a place for you--a nice place. I've been talkin' to +Joseph's mother, an' she's goin' to look after you for the night." + +Patsy's face crinkled up all over; the tinker could not have +told--even if he had been in possession of all his senses--whether +she was going to laugh or cry. As it turned out, she did neither; she +just sighed, a tired, contented little sigh, slipping off the stool +and dropping the letter into the post-box. + +When she faced the tinker again her eyes were misty, and for all her +courage she could not keep the quivering from her lips. She reached +up impulsive, trusting hands to his shoulders: "Lad--lad--how were ye +ever guessing that I'd reached the end o' my wits and was needing +some one to think for me? Holy Saint Michael! but won't I be mortial +glad to be feeling a respectable, Lebanon feather-bed under me!" + + * * * * * + +As the tinker led her out of the store the quorum eyed her silently +for a moment. For a brief space there was a scraping of chairs and +clearing of throats, indicative of some important comment. + +"What sort of a lookin' gal did that Green County sheriff say he was +after?" inquired the storekeeper at last. + +"Small, warn't it?" suggested one of the quorum. + +"Yep, guess it was. And what sort o' clothes did he say she wore?" + +"Brown!" chorused the quorum. + +"Wall, boys"--the storekeeper wagged an accusing thumb in the +direction of the recently vacated stool--"she was small, warn't she? +An' she's got brown clothes, hain't she? An' she acts queer, doan't +she?" + +The quorum nodded in solemn agreement. + +"But she doan't look like no thief," interceded the youngest of the +"boys." He couldn't have been a day over seventy, and it was more +than likely that he was still susceptible to youth and beauty! + +The rest glowered at him with plain disapproval, while the +storekeeper shifted the course of his thumb and wagged it at him +instead. "Si Perkins, that's not for you to say--nor me, neither. +That's up to Green County; an' I cal'ate I'll 'phone over to +the sheriff, come mornin', an' tell him our suspicions. By +Jack-a-diamonds! I've got to square my conscience." + +The quorum invested their thumbs again and cleared their throats. + + + + +VII + +THE TINKER PLAYS A PART + + +There is little of the day's happenings that escapes the ears of a +country boy. Every small item of local interest is so much grist for +his mill; and there is no more reliable method for a stranger to +collect news than a sociable game of "peg" interspersed with a few +casual but diplomatic questions. The tinker played "peg" the night +after he and Patsy reached Lebanon--on the barn floor by the light of +a bleary-eyed lantern with Joseph and his brethren, and thereby +learned of the visit of the sheriff. + +Afterward he sawed and split the apportioned wood which was to pay +for Patsy's lodging, and went to sleep on the hay in a state of +complete exhaustion. But, for all that, Patsy was wakened an hour +before sun-up by a shower of pebbles on the tin roof of the porch, +just under her window. Looking out, she spied him below, a silencing +finger against his lips, while he waved a beckoning arm toward the +road. Patsy dressed and slipped out without a sound. + +"What has happened ye?" she whispered, anxiously, looking him well +over for some symptoms of sickness or trouble. + +His only reply was a mysterious shake of the head as he led the way +down the village street, his rags flapping grotesquely in the dawn +wind. + +There was nothing for Patsy to do except to follow as fast as she +could after his long, swinging strides. Lebanon still slept, +close-wrapped in its peaceful respectability; even the dogs failed to +give them a speeding bark. They stole away as silently as shadows, +and as shadows went forth upon the open road to meet the coming day. + +A mile beyond the township stone the tinker stopped to let Patsy +catch up with him; it was a very breathless, disgruntled Patsy. + +"Now, by Saint Brendan, what ails ye, lad, to be waking a body up at +this time of day? Do ye think it's good morals or good manners to be +trailing us off on a bare stomach like this--as if a county full of +constables was at our heels? What's the meaning of it? And what will +the good folk who cared for us the night think to find us gone with +never a word of thanks or explanation?" + +The tinker scratched his chin meditatively; it was marked by a day's +more growth than on the previous morning, which did not enhance his +comeliness or lessen his state of vagabondage. There was something +about his appearance that made him out less a fool and more an +uncouth rascal; one might easily have trusted him as well as pitied +him yesterday--but to-day--Patsy's gaze was critical and not +over-flattering. + +He saw her look and met it, eye for eye, only he still fumbled his +chin ineffectually. "Have you forgot?" he asked, a bit sheepishly. +"There were the lady's-slippers; you said as how you cared about +findin' 'em; and they're not near so pretty an' bright if they're +left standin' too long after the dew dries." + +Patsy pulled a wry little smile. "Is that so? And ye've been after +making me trade a feather-bed and a good breakfast for--for the best +color of lady's-slippers. Well, if I was Dan instead of myself, +standing here, I'd be likely to tell ye to go to the devil--aye, an' +help ye there with my two fists." Her cheeks were flushed and all the +comradeship faded quickly from her eyes. + +The tinker said never a word, only his lips parted in a coaxing smile +which seemed to say, "Please go on believing in me," and his eyes +still held hers unwaveringly. + +And the tinker's smile won. Bit by bit Patsy's rigid attitude of +condemnation relaxed; the comradeship crept back in her eyes, the +smile to her lips. "Heigho! 'Tis a bad bargain ye can't make the best +of. But mind one thing, Master Touchstone! Ye'll find the right road +to Arden this time or ye and the duke's daughter will part +company--for all Willie Shakespeare wrote it otherwise." + +He nodded. "We can ask the way 's we go. But first we'll be gettin' +the lady's-slippers and some breakfast. You'll see--I'll find them +both for you, lass"; and he set off with his swinging stride straight +across country, wagging his head wisely. Patsy fell in behind him, +and the road was soon out of sight and earshot. + + * * * * * + +It was just about this time that the storekeeper at Lebanon got the +Green County sheriff on the 'phone, and squared his conscience. "I +cal'ate she's the guilty party," were his closing remarks. "She'd +never ha' lighted out o' this 'ere town afore Christian folks were +out o' bed ef she hadn't had somethin' takin' her. And what's more, +she's keepin' bad company." + +And so it came about that all the time the sorrel mare was being +harnessed into the runabout the tinker was leading Patsy farther +afield. And so it came to pass that when the mare's heels were +raising the dust on the road between Lebanon and Arden, they were +following a forest brook, deeper and deeper, into the woods. + +They found it the most cheery, neighborly, and comfortable kind of a +brook, the quiet and well-contained sort that one could step at will +from bank to bank, and see with half an eye what a prime favorite it +was among its neighbors. Patsy and the tinker marked how close things +huddled to it, even creeping on to cover stones and gravel stretches; +there were moss and ferns and little, clinging things, like +baby's-breath and linnea. The major part of the bird population was +bathing in the sunnier pools, soberly or with wild hilarity, +according to disposition. + +The tinker knew them all, calling to them in friendly fashion, at +which they always answered back. Patsy listened silently, wrapped in +the delight and beauty of it. On went the brook--dancing here in a +broken patch of sunshine--quieting there between the banks of +rock-fern and columbine, to better paint their prettiness; and all +the while singing one farther and farther into the woods. She was +just wondering if there could be anything lovelier than this when the +tinker stopped, still and tense as a pointer. She craned her head and +looked beyond him--looked to where the woods broke, leaving for a few +feet a thinly shaded growth of beech and maple. The sunlight sifted +through in great, unbroken patches of gold, falling on the beds +of fern and moss and--yes, there they were, the promised +lady's-slippers. + +A little, indrawn sigh of ecstasy from Patsy caused the tinker to +turn about. "Then you're not hatin' gold when you find it growin' +green that-a-way?" he chuckled. + +Patsy shook her head with vehemence. "Never! And wouldn't it be grand +if nature could be gathering it all up from everywhere and spinning +it over again into the likes of those! In the name o' Saint Francis, +do ye suppose if the English poets had laid their two eyes to +anything so beautiful as what's yonder they'd ever have gone so daffy +over daffodils?" + +"They never would," agreed the tinker. + +Patsy studied him with a sharp little look. "And what do ye know +about English poets, pray?" + +His lower jaw dropped in a dull, foolish fashion. "Nothin'; but I +know daff'dils," he explained at last. + +And at that moment the call of a thrush came to them from just across +the glade. Patsy listened spellbound while he sang his bubbling song +of gladness through half a score of times. + +"Is it the flowers singing?" she asked at last, her eyes dancing +mischievously. + +"It might be the souls o' the dead ones." The tinker considered +thoughtfully a moment. "Maybe the souls o' flowers become birds, same +as ours becomes angels--wouldn't be such a deal o' difference--both +takin' to wings and singin'." He chuckled again. "Anyhow, that's the +bellbird; and I sent him word yesterday by one o' them tattlin' +finches to be on hand just about this time." + +"Ye didn't order a breakfast the same way, did ye?" + +The tinker threw back his head and laughed. "I did, then," and, +before Patsy could strip her tongue of its next teasing remark, he +had vanished as quickly and completely as if magic had had a hand in +it. + +A crescendo of snapping twigs and rustling leaves marked his going, +however; and Patsy leaped the brook and settled herself, tailor +fashion, in the midst of the sunshine and the lady's-slippers. She +unpinned the rakish beaver and tossed it from her; off came the +Norfolk jacket, and followed the beaver. She eyed the rest of her +costume askance; she would have sorely liked to part with that, too, +had she but the Lord's assurance that He would do as well by her as +he had by the lilies of the field or the lady's-slippers. + +"'Tis surprising how wearisome the same clothes can grow when on the +back of a human being--yet a flower can wear them for a thousand +years or more and ye never go tired of them. I'm not knowing why, +but--somehow--I'd like to be looking gladsome--to-day." + +She stretched her arms wide for a minute, in a gesture of intense +longing; then the glory of the woods claimed her again and she gave +herself over completely to the wonder and enjoyment of them. Her eyes +roamed about her unceasingly for every bit of prettiness, her ears +caught the symphony of bird and brook and soughing wind. So still did +she sit that the tinker, returning, thought for a moment that she had +gone, and stood, knee-deep in the brakes, laden to the chin and +covered with the misery of poignant disappointment. For him all the +music of the place had turned to laughing discord--until he spied +her. + +"I thought"--his tongue stumbled--"I was thinkin' you had +gone--sudden-like--same as you came--down the road yesterday." He +paused a moment. "You wouldn't go off by yourself and leave a lad +without you said somethin' about it first, would you?" + +"I'll not leave ye till we get to Arden." + +"An'--an' what then?" + +"The road must end for me there, lad. What I came to do will be done, +and there'll be no excuse for lingering. But I'll not forget to wish +ye 'God-speed' along your way before I go." + +A sly look came into the tinker's eyes. Patsy never saw it, for he +was bending close over the huge basket he had brought; she only +caught a tinge of exultation in his voice as he said, "Then that's +a'right, if you'll promise your comp'ny till we fetch up in Arden." + +With that he went busily about preparations for breakfast, Patsy +watching him, plainly astonished. He gathered bark and brush and +kindled a fire on a large flat rock which he had moved against a +near-by boulder. About it he fastened a tripod of green saplings, +from which he hung a coffee-pot, filled from the brook. + +"I'm praying there's more nor water in it," murmured Patsy. And a +moment later, as the tinker shook out a small white table-cloth from +the basket and spread it at her feet, she clasped her hands and +repeated with perfect faith, "'Little goat bleat, table get set'; I +smell the coffee." + +Out of the basket came little green dishes, a pat of butter, a jug of +cream, a bowl of berries, a plate of biscuits. "Riz," was the +tinker's comment as he put down the last named; and then followed +what appeared to Patsy to be round, brown, sugared buns with holes in +them. These he passed twice under her nose with a triumphant +flourish. + +"And what might they be?" Her curiosity was reaching the +breaking-point. "If ye bring out another thing from that basket I'll +believe ye're in league with Bodh Dearg himself, or ye've stolen the +faeries' trencher of plenty." + +For reply the tinker dived once more beneath the cover and brought +out a frying-pan full of bacon, and four white eggs. "Think whatever +you're mind to, I'm going to fry these." But after he had raked over +the embers to his complete satisfaction and placed the pan on them, +he came back and, picking up one of the "brown buns," slipped it over +Patsy's forefinger. "This is a wishin'-ring," he announced, soberly, +"though most folks calls 'em somethin' different. Now if you wish a +wish--and eat it--all but the hole, you'll have what you've been +wishin' for all your life." + +"How soon will ye be having it?" + +"In as many days as there are bites." + +So Patsy bit while the tinker checked them off on his fingers. "One, +two, three, four, five, six. You'll get your wish by the seventh day, +sure, or I'm no tinker." + +[Illustration: "If you wish a wish and eat it--all but the hole, +you'll have what you've been wishin' for all your life."] + +"But are ye?" Patsy shook the de-ringed finger at him accusingly. +"I'm beginning to have my doubts as to whether ye're a tinker at all. +Ye are foolish one minute, and ye've more wits than I have the +next; I've caught ye looking too lonesome and helpless to be allowed +beyond reach of our mother's kerchief-end, and yet last night and the +day ye've taken care of me as if ye'd been hired out to tend babies +since ye were one yourself. As for your language, ye never speak +twice the same." + +The tinker grinned. "That bacon's burnin'; I--cal'ate I'd better turn +it, hadn't I?" + +"I--cal'ate you had," and Patsy grinned back at him derisively. + +The tinker was master of ceremonies, and he served her as any +courtier might have served his liege lady. He shook out the +diminutive serviette he had brought for her and spread it across her +lap; he poured her coffee and sweetened it according to direction; he +even buttered her "riz" biscuits and poured the cream on her berries. + +"Are ye laboring under the delusion that the duke's daughter was +helpless, entirely?" she asked, at length. + +The tinker shook an emphatic negative. "I was just thinkin' she might +like things a mite decent--onct in a while." + +"Lad--lad--who in the wide world are ye!" Patsy checked her outburst +with a warning hand: "No--don't ye be telling me. Ye couldn't turn +out anything better nor a tinker--and I'd rather keep ye as I found +ye. So if ye have a secret--mind it well; and don't ye be letting it +loose to scare the two of us into over-wise, conventional folk. We'll +play Willie Shakespeare comedy to the end of the road--please God!" + +"Amen!" agreed the tinker, devoutly, as he threw her portion of fried +eggs neatly out of the pan into her plate. + +It was not until she was served that he looked after his own wants; +then they ate in silence, both too hungry and too full of their own +thoughts to loosen their tongues. + +Once the tinker broke the silence. "Your wish--what was it?" he +asked. + +"That's telling," said Patsy. "But if ye'll confess to where ye came +by this heavenly meal, I might confess to the wish." + +He rubbed his chin solemnly for an instant; then he beamed. "I'll +tell ye. I picked it off o' the fern-tops and brambles as I came +along." + +"Of course ye did," agreed Patsy, with fine sarcasm, "and for my +wish--I was after thinking I'd marry the king's son." + +They looked at each other with the teasing, saucy stare of two +children; then they laughed as care-free and as merrily. + +"Maybe you'll get your wish," he suggested, soberly. + +"Maybe I will," agreed Patsy, with mock solemnity. + +A look of shrewdness sprang into the tinker's face. "But you said you +hated gold. You couldn't marry a king's son 'thout havin' gold--lots +of it." + +"Aye--but I could! Couldn't I be making him throw it away before ever +I'd marry him?" And Patsy clapped her hands triumphantly. + +"An' you'd marry him--poor?" The tinker's eyes kindled suddenly, as +he asked it--for all the world as if her answer might have a meaning +for him. + +Patsy never noticed. She was looking past him--into the +indistinguishable wood-tangle beyond. "Sure, we wouldn't be poor. +We'd be blessed with nothing--that's all!" + +For those golden moments of romancing Patsy's quest was forgotten; +they might have reached Arden and despatched her errand, for all the +worriment their loitering caused her. As for the tinker, if he had +either a mission or a destination he gave no sign for her to reckon +by. + +They dallied over the breakfast; they dallied over the aftermath of +picking up and putting away and stamping out the charred twigs and +embers; and then they dallied over the memory of it all. Patsy spun a +hundred threads of fancy into tales about the forest, while the +tinker called the thickets about them full of birds, and whistled +their songs antiphonally with them. + +"Do ye know," said Patsy, with a deep sigh, "I'm happier than ye can +tell me, and twice as happy as I can tell ye." + +"An' this, hereabouts, wouldn't make a bad castle," suggested the +tinker, irrelevantly. + +What Patsy might have answered is not recorded, for they both +happened to look up for the first time in a long space and saw that +the sky above their heads had grown a dull, leaden color. They were +no longer sitting in the midst of sunlight; the lady's-slippers had +lost their golden radiance; the brook sounded plaintive and +melancholy, and from the woods fringing the open came the call of the +bob-white. + +"He's singin' for rain. Won't hurt a mite if we make toward some +shelter." The tinker pulled Patsy to her feet and gathered up the +basket and left-overs. + +"Hurry," said Patsy, with a strange, little, twisted smile on her +lips. "Of course I was knowing, like all faery tales, it had to have +an ending; but I want to remember it, just as we found it +first--sprinkled with sunshine and not turning dull and gray like +this." + +She started plunging through the woods, and the tinker was obliged to +turn her about and set her going right, with the final instruction +to follow her nose and he would catch up with her before she had +caught up with it. She had reached the road, however, and thunder was +grumbling uncomfortably near when the tinker joined her. + +"It's goin' to be a soaker," he announced, cheerfully. + +"Then we'd better tramp fast as we can and ask the first person we +pass, are we on the right road to Arden." + +They tramped, but they passed no one. The road was surprisingly +barren of shelters, and, strangely enough, of the two houses they saw +one was temporarily deserted and the other unoccupied. The wind came +with the breaking of the storm--that cold, piercing wind that often +comes in June as a reminder that winter has not passed by so very +long before. It whipped the rain across their faces and cut down +their headway until it seemed to Patsy as if they barely crawled. +They came to a tumble-down barn, but she was too cold and wet to stop +where there was no fire. + +"Any place that's warm," she shouted across to the tinker; and he +shouted back, as they rounded the bend of the road. + +"See, there it is at last!" + +The sight of a house ahead, whose active chimney gave good evidence +of a fire within, spurred Patsy's lagging steps. But in response to +their knocking, the door was opened just wide enough to frame the +narrow face of a timid-eyed, nervous woman who bade them be gone even +before they had gathered breath enough to ask for shelter. + +"Faith, 'tis a reminder that we are no longer living three hundred +years ago," Patsy murmured between tightening lips. "How long in, do +ye think, the fashion has been--to shut doors on poor wanderers?" + +At the next house, a half-mile beyond, they fared no better. The +woman's voice was curter, and the uninviting muzzle of a bull-terrier +was thrust out between the door and the woman's skirts. As they +turned away Patsy's teeth were chattering; the chill and wet had +crept into her bones and blood, turning her lips blue and her cheeks +ashen; even the cutting wind failed to color them. + +"Curse them!" muttered the tinker, fiercely. "If I only had a coat to +put around you--anything to break the wind. Curse them warm and dry +inside there!" and he shook his fist at the forbidden door. + +Patsy tried to smile, but failed. "Faith! I haven't the breath to +curse them; but God pity them, that's all." + +Before she had finished the tinker had a firm grip of her arm. "Hang +it! If no one will take us in, we'll break in. Cheer up, lass; I'll +have you by a crackling good fire if I have to steal the wood." + +He hurried her along--somewhere. Weariness and bodily depression +closed her eyes; and she let him lead her--whither she neither +wondered nor cared. Time and distance ceased to exist for her; she +stumbled along, conscious of but two things--a fear that she would be +ill again with no one to tend her, and a gigantic craving for +heat--heat! + +When she opened her eyes again they had stopped and were standing +under a shuttered window at what appeared to be the back of a summer +cottage; the tinker was prying a rock out of the mud at their feet. +In a most business-like manner he used it to smash the fastening of +the shutters, and, when these were removed, to break the small, +leaded pane of glass nearest the window-fastening. It was only a +matter of seconds then before the window was opened and Patsy boosted +over the sill into the kitchen beyond. + +"Ye'd best stand me in the sink and wring me out, or I'll flood the +house," Patsy managed to gasp. "I'd do it myself, but I know, if I +once let go of my hands, I'll shake to death." + +The tinker followed her advice, working the water out of her dripping +garments in much the same fashion that he would have employed had she +been a half-drowned cat. In spite of her numbness Patsy saw the grim +humor of it all and came perilously near to a hysterical laugh. The +tinker unconsciously forestalled it by shouldering her, as if she had +been a whole bag of water-soaked cats, and carrying her up the +stairs. After looking into three rooms he deposited her on the +threshold of a fourth. + +"It has the look of women folks; you're sure to find some left-behind +clothes o' theirs hanging up somewhere. Come down when you're dry an' +I'll have that fire waiting for you." + +What followed was all a dream to Patsy's benumbed senses: the search +in drawers and closets for things to put on, and the finding of them; +the insistent aching of fingers and arms in trying to adjust them, +and the persistent refusal of brain to direct them with any degree of +intelligence. She came down the stairs a few minutes later, dragging +a bundle of wet clothes after her, and found the tinker kneeling by +the hearth, still in his dripping rags, and heaping more logs on the +already blazing fire. + +He rose as she came toward him, took the clothes from her and dropped +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. + +It was beginning to seem years ago since she had sat in Marjorie +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." + +A little later, as the dark gathered, she begged two candles and +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. + +"Do ye know," she said, wistfully, "I took the road, thinking I could +mend trouble for that other lad; and instead it's trouble I've been +making for every one--ye, Joseph, and I don't know how many more. And +instead of doling kindness--why, I'm begging it. Now what's the +meaning of it all? What keeps me failing?" + +"'There's a divinity that shapes'--" began the tinker. + +But Patsy cut him short. "Ye do know Willie Shakespeare!" + +He smiled, guiltily. "I'm afraid I do--known him a good many years." + +"He's grand company; best I know, barring tinkers." She turned +impulsively and, standing on tiptoe, her fingers reached to the top +of his shoulders. "See here, lad, ye can just give over thinking +I'll go on alone. If I'm cast for melodrama, sure I'll play it +according to the best rules; the villain has fled, the hero is hurt, +and if I went now I'd be hissed by the gallery. I've got ye into +trouble and I'll not leave ye till I see ye out of it--someway. Oh, +there's lots of ways; I'm thinking them fast. Like as not a passing +team or car would carry ye to Arden; or we might beg the loan of a +horse for a bit from some kind-hearted farmer, and I could drive ye +over and bring the horse back; or we'll ask a corner for ye at a +farm-house till ye are fit to walk--" + +"We are in the wrong part of the country for any of those things to +happen. Look about! Don't you see what a very different road it is +from the one we took in the beginning?" + +Patsy looked and saw. So engrossed had she been in the incidents of +the last hour or more that she had not observed the changing country. +Here were no longer pastures, tilled fields, houses with neighboring +barn-yards, and unclaimed woodland; no longer was the road fringed +with stone walls or stump fencing. Well-rolled golf-links stretched +away on either hand as far as they could see; and, beyond, through +the trees, showed roofs of red tile and stained shingle; and trimmed +hedges skirted everything. + +"'Tis the rich man's country," commented Patsy. + +"It is, and I'd crawl into a hole and starve before I'd take charity +from one of them." + +"Sure and ye would. When a body's poor 'tis only the poor like +himself he'd be asking help of. Don't I know! What's yonder house?" +She broke off with a jerk and pointed ahead to a small building, +sitting well back from the road, partly hidden in the surrounding +clumps of trees. + +"It's a stable; house burned down last year and it hasn't been used +by any one since." + +"And I'll wager it's as snug as a pocket inside--with fresh hay or +straw, plenty to make a lad comfortable. Isn't that grand good luck +for ye?" + +The tinker found it hard to echo Patsy's enthusiasm, but he did his +best. "Of course; and it's just the place to leave a lad behind in +when a lass has seven miles to tramp before she gets to the end of +her journey." + +"Is that so?" Patsy's tone sounded suspiciously sarcastic. "Well, +talking's not walking; supposing ye take the staff in one hand and +lean your other on me, and we'll see can we make it before this time +to-morrow." + +They made it in another hour, unobserved by the few straggling +players on the links. + +The stable proved all Patsy had anticipated. She watched the tinker +sink, exhausted, on the bedded hay, while she pulled down a forgotten +horse-blanket from a near-by peg to throw over him; then she turned +in a business-like manner back to the door. + +"Are you going to Arden?" came the faint voice of the tinker after +her. + +"I might--and then again--I mightn't. Was there any word ye might +want me to fetch ahead for ye?" + +"No; only--perhaps--would you think a chap too everlastingly +impertinent to ask you to wait there for him--until he caught up with +you?" + +"I might--and then again--I mightn't." At the door she stopped, and +for the second time considered her hands speculatively. "It wouldn't +inconvenience your feelings any to take charity from me, would it, +seeing I'm as poor as yourself and have dragged ye into this common, +tuppenny brawl by my own foolishness?" + +"You didn't drag me in; I had one foot in already." + +"I thought so," Patsy nodded, approvingly; her conviction had been +correct, then. "And the charity?" + +"Yes, I'd take it from you." The tinker rolled over with a little +moan composed of physical pain and mental discomfort. But in another +moment he was sitting upright, shaking a mandatory fist at Patsy as +she disappeared through the door. "Remember--no help from the +quality! I hate them as much as you do, and I won't have them coming +around with their inquisitive, patronizing, supercilious offers of +assistance to a--beggar. I tell you I want to be left alone! If you +bring any one back with you I'll burn the stable down about me. +Remember!" + +"Aye," she called back; "I'll be remembering." + + * * * * * + +She reached the road again; and for the manyeth time since she left +the women's free ward of the City Hospital she marshaled all the +O'Connell wits. But even the best of wits require opportunity, and to +Patsy the immediate outlook seemed barren of such. + +"There's naught to do but keep going till something turns up," she +said to herself; and she followed this Micawber advice to the letter. +She came to the end of the grounds which had belonged to the burned +house and the deserted stable; she passed on, between a stretch of +thin woodland and a grove of giant pines; and there she came upon a +cross-road. She looked to the right--it was empty. She looked to the +left--and behold there was "Opportunity," large, florid, and +agitated, coming directly toward her from one of the tile-roofed +houses, and puffing audibly under the combined weight of herself and +her bag. + +"Ze depot--how long ees eet?" she demanded, when she caught sight of +Patsy. + +The accent was unmistakably French, and Patsy obligingly answered her +in her mother-tongue. "I cannot say exactly; about three--four +kilometers." + +"Opportunity" dropped her bag and embraced her. "Oh!" she burst out, +volubly. "Think of Zoe Marat finding a countrywoman in this wild +land. _Moi_--I can no longer stand it; and when madame's temper goes +_pouffe_--I say, it is enough; let madame fast or cook for her +guests, as she prefer. I go!" + +"_Eh, bien!_" agreed the outer Patsy, while her subjective +consciousness addressed her objective self in plain Donegal: "Faith! +this is the maddest luck--the maddest, merriest luck! If yonder +Quality House has lost one cook, 'twill be needing another; and 'tis +a poor cook entirely that doesn't hold the keys of her own pantry. +Food from Quality House needn't be choking the maddest tinker, if +it's paid for in honest work." + +Having been embraced by "Opportunity," Patsy saw no reason for +wasting time in futile sympathy that might better be spent in prompt +execution. She despatched the woman to the station with the briefest +of directions and herself made straight for Quality House. + +She was smiling over her appearance and the incongruities of the +situation as she rang the bell at the front door and asked for +"Madame" in her best parisien. + +The maid, properly impressed, carried the message at once; and +curiosity brought madame in surprising haste to the hall, where she +looked Patsy over with frank amazement. + +"Madame speak French? Ah, I thought so. Madame desires a +cook--_voila!_" + +The abruptness of this announcement turned madame giddy. "How did you +know? Mine did not leave half an hour ago; there isn't another French +cook within five miles; it is unbelievable." + +"It is Providence." Patsy cast her eyes devoutly heavenward. + +"You have references--" + +"References!" Patsy shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. "What +would madame do with references? She cannot eat them; she cannot feed +them to her guests. I can cook. Is that not sufficient?" + +"But--you do not think--It is impossible that I ever employ a servant +without references. And you--you look like anything in the world but +a French cook." + +"Madame is not so foolish as to find fault with the ways of +Providence, or judge one by one's clothes? Who knows--at this moment +it may be _a la mode_ in Paris for cooks to wear sailor blouses. +Besides, madame is mistaken; I am not a servant. I am an artist--a +culinary artist." + +"You can cook, truly?" + +"But yes, madame!" + +"Excellent sauces?" + +"_Mon Dieu_--Bechamel--Hollandaise--chaud-froid--maitre +d'hotel--Espagnole--Bearnaise--" Patsy completed the list with an +ecstatic kiss blown into the air. + +Madame sighed and spoke in English: "It is unbelievable--absurd. I +shouldn't trust my own eyes or palate if I sat down to-night to the +most remarkable dinner in the world; but one must feed one's guests." +She looked Patsy over again. "Your trunk?" + +"Trunk? Is it toilettes or sauces madame wishes me to make for her +guests? _Ma foi!_ Trunks--references--one is as unimportant as the +other. Is it not enough for the present if I cook for madame? +Afterward--" She ended with the all-expressive shrug. + +Evidently madame conceded the point, for without further comment she +led the way to the kitchen and presented the bill of fare for dinner. + +"'For twelve,'" read Patsy. "And to-morrow is Sunday. Ah, Providence +is good to madame, _mais-oui?_" + +But madame's thoughts were on more practical matters. "Your wages?" + +"One hundred francs a week, and the kitchen to myself. I, too, have a +temper, madame." Patsy gave a quick toss to her head, while her eyes +snapped. + + * * * * * + +That night the week-end guests at Quality House sat over their +coffee, volubly commenting on the rare excellence of their dinner and +the good fortune of their hostess in her possession of such a cook. +Madame kept her own counsel and blessed Providence; but she did not +allow that good fortune to escape with her better judgment--or +anything else. She ordered the butler, before retiring, to count the +silver and lock it in her dressing-room; this was to be done every +night--as long as the new cook remained. + +And the new cook? Her work despatched, and her kitchen to herself, +she was free to get dinner for one more of madame's guests. + +"Faith! he'd die of a black fit if he ever knew he was a guest of +Quality House--and she'd die of another if she found out whom she +was entertaining. But, glory be to Peter! what neither of them knows +won't hurt them." And Patsy, unobserved, opened the back door and +retraced the road to the deserted stable with a full basket and a +glad heart. + +She found the tinker under some trees at the back, smoking a +disreputable cuddy pipe with a worse accompaniment of tobacco. When +he saw her he removed it apologetically. + +"It smells horrible, I know. I found it, forgotten, on a ledge of the +stable, but it keeps a chap from remembering that he is hungry." + +"Poor lad!" Patsy knelt on the ground beside him and opened her +basket. "Put your nose into that, just. 'Tis a nine-course dinner and +every bit of the best. Faith! 'tis lucky I was found on a Brittany +rose-bush instead of one in Heidelberg, Birmingham, or Philadelphia; +and if ye can't be born with gold in your mouth the next best thing +is a mixing-spoon." + +"Meaning?" queried the tinker. + +"Meaning--that there's many a poor soul who goes hungry through life +because she is wanting the knowledge of how to mix what's already +under her nose." + +The tinker looked suspiciously from the contents of the basket to +Patsy, kneeling beside it, and he dropped into a shameless mimicry of +her brogue. "Aye, but how did she come by--what's under her nose? +Here's a dinner for a king's son." + +"Well, I'll be letting ye play the king's son instead of the fool +to-night, just, if ye'll give over asking any more questions and +eat." + +"But"--he sniffed the plate she had handed him with added +suspicion--"roast duck and sherry sauce! Honest, now--have ye been +begging?" + +"No--nor stealing--nor, by the same token, have I murdered any one to +get the dinner from him." There was fine sarcasm in her voice as she +returned the tinker's searching look. + +"Then where did it come from? I'll not eat a mouthful until I get an +honest answer." The tinker put the plate down beside him and folded +his arms. + +Patsy snorted with exasperation. "Was I ever saying ye could play the +king's son? Faith! ye'll never play anything but the fool--first and +last." Her voice suddenly took on a more coaxing tone; she was +thinking of that good dinner growing cold--spoiled by the man's +ridiculous curiosity. "I'll tell ye what--if ye'll agree to begin +eating, I'll agree to begin telling ye about it--and we'll both agree +not to stop till we get to the end. But Holy Saint Martin! who ever +heard of a man before letting his conscience in ahead of his hunger!" + +The bargain was made; and while the tinker devoured one plateful +after another with a ravenous haste that almost discredited his +previous restraint, Patsy spun a fanciful tale of having found a +cluricaun under a quicken-tree. With great elaboration and seeming +regard for the truth, she explained his magical qualities, and +how--if you were clever enough to possess yourself of his cap--you +could get almost anything from him. + +"I held his cap firmly with the one hand and him by the scruff of the +neck with the other; and says I to him, 'Little man, ye'll not be +getting this back till ye've fetched me a dinner fit for a tinker.' +'Well, and good,' says he, 'but ye can't find that this side of the +King's Hotel, Dublin; and that will take time.' 'Take the time,' says +I, 'but get the dinner.' And from that minute till the present I've +been waiting under that quicken-tree for him to make the trip there +and back." + +Patsy finished, and the two of them smiled at each other with rare +good humor out under the June stars. Only the tinker's smile was +skeptical. + +"So--ye are not believing me--" Patsy shammed a solemn, grieved look. +"Well--I'll forgive ye this time if ye'll agree that the dinner was +good, for I'd hate like the devil to be giving the wee man back his +cap for anything but the best." + +With laggard grace the tinker stretched his hands over the now empty +basket and gripped Patsy's. "Lass, lass--what are you thinking of me? +Faith! my manners are more ragged than my clothes--and I'm not fit to +be a--tinker. The dinner was the best I ever ate, and--bless ye and +the cluricaun!" + +Patsy cooked for three days at Quality House, that the tinker might +feast night and morning to his heart's content while his ankle slowly +mended. But he still persisted questioning concerning his food--where +and how Patsy had come by it; she still maintained as persistent a +silence. + +"I've come by it honestly, and 'tis no charity fare," was the most +she would say, adding by way of flavor: "For a sorry tinker ye are +the proudest I ever saw. Did ye ever know another, now, who wanted a +written certificate of moral character along with every morsel he +ate?" + +According to wage agreement she had the kitchen to herself; no one +entered except on matters of necessity; no one lingered after her +work was despatched. Madame came twice daily to confer with Patsy on +intricacies of gestation, while she beamed upon her as a probationed +soul might look upon the keeper of the keys of Paradise. But the days +held more for Patsy than sauces and entrees and pastries; they held +gossip as well. Soupcons were served up on loosened tongues, borne in +through open window and swinging door--straight from the dining-room +and my lady's chamber. Most of it passed her ears, unheeded; it was +but a droning accompaniment to her measuring, mixing, rolling, and +baking--until news came at last that concerned herself--gossip of the +Burgemans, father and son. + +The butler and the parlor maid were cleaning the silver in the +pantry--and the slide was raised. As transmitters of gossip they were +more than usually concerned, for had not the butler at one time +served in the house of Burgeman, and the maid dusted next door? +Therefore every item of news was well ripened before it dropped from +either tongue, and Patsy gathered them in with eager ears. + +The master of Quality House happened to be a director of that bank on +which the Burgeman check of ten thousand had been drawn. It had been +the largest check drawn to cash presented at the bank; and the teller +had confessed to the directors that he would never have paid over the +money to any one except the old man's son. In fact, he had been so +much concerned over it afterward that he had called up the Burgeman +office, and had been much relieved to have the assurance of the +secretary that the check was certified and perfectly correct. Not a +second thought would have been given to the matter had not the +secretary's resignation been made public the next day--the day Billy +Burgeman disappeared. + +Patsy's ears fairly bristled with interest. "That's news, if it is +gossip. Where is the secretary now? And which of them has the ten +thousand?" + +The director had touched on the subject of the check the next day +when business had demanded his presence at the Burgeman home. The +result had been distinctly baffling. Not that the director could put +his finger on any one suspicious point in the behavior of Burgeman, +senior; but it left him with the distinct impression that the father +was shielding the son. + +"Aye, that's what Billy said his father would do--shield him out of +pride." Patsy dusted the flour from her arms and stood motionless, +thinking. + +Burgeman, senior, had offered only one remark to the director, given +cynically with a nervous jerking of the shoulders and twitching of +the hands: "He was needing pocket-money, a small sum to keep him in +shoe-laces and collar-buttons, I dare say. That's the way rich men's +sons keep their fathers' incomes from getting too cumbersome." + +Burgeman, senior, had been ill then--confined to his room; but the +next day his condition had become alarming. He was now dying at his +home in Arden and his son could not be found. These last two +statements were not merely gossip, but facts. + +Patsy listened impatiently to the parlor maid arguing the matter of +Billy's guilt with the butler. Their work was finished, and they were +passing through the kitchen on their way to the servants' hall. + +"Of course he took it"--the maid's tone was positive--"those rich +men's sons always are a bad lot." + +"'E didn't take it, then. 'Is father's playin' some mean game on +'im--that's what. Hi worked five months hin that 'ouse an' Hi'd as +lief work for the devil!" And the butler pounded his fist for +emphasis. + +It took all Patsy's self-control to refrain from launching into the +argument herself, and that in the Irish tongue. She saved herself, +however, by resorting to that temper of which she had boasted, and +hurled at the two a torrent of words which sounded to them like the +most horrible pagan blasphemy, and from which they fled in genuine +horror. In reality it was the names of all the places in France that +Patsy could recall with rapidity. + +When the kitchen was empty once more Patsy systematically gathered +together all that she knew and all that she had heard of Billy +Burgeman, and weighed it against the bare possible chance she might +have of helping him should she continue her quest. And in the end she +made her decision unwaveringly. + +"Troth! a conscience is a poor bit of property entirely," she sighed, +as she stood the pate-shells on the ledge of the range to dry. "It +drives ye after a man ye don't care a ha'penny about, and it drives +ye from the one that ye do. Bad luck to it!" + + * * * * * + +That night Patsy sat under the trees with the tinker while he ate his +supper. A half-grown moon lighted the feast for them, for Patsy took +an occasional mouthful at the tinker's insistence that dining alone +was a miserably unsociable affair. + +"To watch ye eat that pate de fois gras a body would think ye had +been reared on them. Honest, now, have ye ever tasted one before in +your life?" + +"I have." + +"Then--ye have sat at rich men's tables?" + +"Or perhaps I have begged at rich men's doors. Maybe that is how I +came to have a distaste for their--charity." + +"Who are ye? Ye know I'd give the full of my empty pockets to know +who ye are, and what started ye tramping the road--in rags." + +The tinker considered a moment. "Perhaps I took the road because I +believed it led to the only place I cared to find. Perhaps I lost the +way to it, as you lost yours to Arden, and in the losing I +found--something else. Perhaps--perhaps--oh, perhaps a hundred +things; but I'll make another bargain with you. I'll tell you all +about it when we reach Arden, if you'll tell me the name of the lad +you came to find." + +"I'll do more than that--I'll bring ye together and let ye help mend +him," and she stretched forth her hand to clinch the bargain. + +They sat in silence under the spattering of moonlight that sifted +down through the branches; for the moment the tinker had forgotten +his hunger. + +"Well?" queried Patsy at last. "A ha'penny for them." + +"I'm thinking the same old thoughts I've thought a hundred times +already--since that first day: What makes you so different from +everybody else? What ever sent you out into the world with your +gospel of kindness--on your lips and in your hands?" + +"Would ye really like to know?" Patsy's fingers stole through the +grass about them. "Faith! the world's not so soft and green as this +under every one's feet. Ye see 'twas by a thorn I was found hanging +to that Killarney rose-bush in Brittany, and I've always remembered +the feeling of it." + +"I always suspected that the people who fell heir to stinging +memories generally went through life hugging their own troubles, and +letting the rest of the world hug theirs." + +"I don't believe it!" Patsy shook her head fiercely. "What's the use +of all the pain and sorrow and trouble scattered about everywhere if +it can't put a cure for others into the hands of those who have first +tasted it? And what better cure can ye find than kindness; isn't it +the best thing in the world?" + +"Is it? Can it cure--gold?" + +"And why not? If every man had more kindness than he had gold, would +neighbor ever have to fear neighbor or childther go hungry for love?" +The tinker did not answer, and Patsy went on with a deepening +intensity: "I'll tell ye a tale--a foolish tale that keeps repeating +itself over and over in my memory like the tick-tick-tick of a clock. +Ye know that the Jesuit Fathers say--give them the care of a child +till he's ten and nothing afterward matters. Well, it's true; a child +can feel all the sweetness or bitterness, hunger or plenty, that life +holds before he is that age even." + +Patsy stopped. A veery was singing in the woods close by, and she +listened for a moment. "Hearken to that bird, now. A good-for-naught +lad may have stolen his nest, or a cat filched his young, or his sons +and daughters flown away and left him; but he'll sing, for all that. +'Tis a pity the rest of us can't do as well." + +"Yes," agreed the tinker, "but the story--" + +"Aye, the story. It begins with a wee white cottage in Brittany, +fronted by roses and backed by great cliffs and the open sea." Patsy +clasped her hands about her knees, while her eyes left the shadow of +the trees and traveled to the open where the moonlight spread silvery +clear and unbroken. And the tinker, watching, knew that her eyes were +seeing the things of which she was telling. "A wee white cottage--the +roses and the cliffs," repeated Patsy, "and a great, grim, silent +figure of a man sitting there idle all day, watching a little lass at +her play. Just the man and the child. And the trouble in his mind +that had kept the man silent and idle was an old, old trouble--old as +the peopled world itself. + +"Long before, he had married a woman who cared for two things--love +and gold; and he had but the one to give her. She had been a great +actress, a favorite at the Comedie Francaise; but she left her work +and all the applause and adulation for him, an expatriated Irishman +with naught but a great love, because she thought she cared for love +more. They had been wonderfully happy at first; he wrote beautiful +verses about her--and his beloved motherland, and she said them for +him in that wonderful singing voice of hers that had made her the +idol of half of France. And she had made a game of their poverty in +the wee white cottage with the roses--until her child was born and +poverty could no longer be played at. Then work became drudgery, and +love naught. The woman went back to her theater--and another man, a +man who had gold a-plenty. And the child grew up playing alone beside +the silent, grim Irishman. + +"Then one day the child played with no one by to watch her; the man +had walked over the cliff and forgot ever to come back. Aye, and the +child played on till dark came and she fell asleep--there on the +door-sill, under the roses. 'Twas a neighbor, passing, that found +her, and carried her home to put to bed with her own children. After +that the child was taken away to a convent, and the rich children +called her '_la pauvre petite_,' shared their saints'-days' gifts +with her, and bought her candles that she might make a _novena_ to +bring her father back again. But 'twas her mother it brought +instead." + +Patsy stopped again to listen to the veery; he was not singing alone +now, and she smiled wistfully. "See! he's found a friend, a comrade +to sing with him. That's grand!" Then she went back to the story: + +"The child was taken from the convent in the night and by somber-clad +servants who seemed in a great hurry. She was brought a long way to a +chateau, one of the oldest and most beautiful in the south of France; +and a small, shrivel-faced man in royal clothes met her at the door +and carried her up great marble stairs to a chamber lighted by two +tall candles, just. They stopped on the threshold for a breath, and +the child saw that a woman was lying in the canopied bed--a very, +very beautiful woman. To the child she seemed some goddess--or saint. + +"'Here is the child,' said the man; and the woman answered: 'Alone, +Rene. Remember you promised--alone.' + +"After that the man left them together--the dying woman and her +child. Ah!--how can I be telling you the way she fondled and caressed +her! How starved were the lips that touched the child's hair, cheeks, +and eyelids! And when her strength failed she drew the child into her +tired arms and whispered fragments of prayers, haunting memories, +pitiful regrets. Of all the things she said the child remembered but +one: 'Gold buys plenty for the body, but nothing for the +heart--nothing--nothing!' + +"And that kept repeating itself over and over in the child's mind. +She remembered it all through the night after they had taken her away +from those lifeless arms and she lay awake alone in a terrifying, +dark room; she remembered it all through the long day when she sat +beside the gorgeous catafalque that held her mother, and watched the +tall candles in the dim chapel burn lower and lower and lower. And +that was why she refused to stay afterward--and be taken care of by +the shrivel-faced man in that oldest and most beautiful chateau. +Instead she slipped out early one morning, before any one was awake +to see and mark the way she went. It is unbelievable, sometimes, how +children who have the will to do it can lose themselves. And so this +child--alone--went out into the world, empty-handed, seeking life." + +"But did she go empty-handed?" asked the tinker. + +"Aye, but not empty-hearted, thank God!" + +"And wherever the child went, she carried with her that hatred of +gold," mused the tinker. + +"Aye; why not? She had learned how pitifully little it was worth, +when all's said and done. 'Twas her father's name she heard last on +her mother's lips, and it was their child she prayed for with her +dying breath." Patsy sprang to her feet. "Do ye see--the moon will be +beating me to bed, and 'twas a poor tale, after all. How is your +foot?" + +"Better--much better." + +"Would ye be able to travel on it to-morrow?" + +The tinker shook his head. "The day after, perhaps." + +"Well, keep on coaxing it. Good night." And she had picked up her +basket and was gone before the tinker could stumble to his feet. + + * * * * * + +When the tinker woke the next morning the basket stood just inside +the stable door, linked through the pilgrim's staff. On investigation +it proved to contain his breakfast and an envelope, and the envelope +contained a ten-dollar bill and a letter, which read: + + DEAR LAD,--I'll be well on the road when you get this; and + with a tongue in my head and luck at my heels, please God, + I'll reach Arden this time. You need not be afraid to use + the money--or too proud, either. It was honestly earned and + the charity of no one; you can take it as a loan or a + gift--whichever you choose. Anyhow, it will bring you after + me faster--which was your own promise. + + Yours in advance, + + P. O'CONNELL + +Surprise, disappointment, indignation, amusement, all battled for the +upper hand; but it was a very different emotion from any of these +which finally mastered the tinker. He smoothed the bill very tenderly +between his hands before he returned it to the envelope; but he did +something more than smooth the envelope. + +And meanwhile Patsy tramped the road to Arden. + + + + +XIII + +A MESSAGE AND A MAP + + +This time there was no mistaking the right road; it ran straight past +Quality House to Arden--unbroken but for graveled driveways leading +into private estates. Patsy traveled it at a snail's pace. Now that +Arden had become a definitely unavoidable goal, she was more loath to +reach it than she had been on any of the seven days since the +beginning of her quest. However the quest ended--whether she found +Billy Burgeman or not, or whether there was any need now of finding +him--this much she knew: for her the road ended at Arden. What lay +beyond she neither tried nor cared to prophesy. Was it not enough +that her days of vagabondage would be over--along with the company of +tinkers and such like? There might be an answer awaiting her to the +letter sent from Lebanon to George Travis; in that case she could in +all probability count on some dependable income for the rest of the +summer. Otherwise--there were her wits. The very thought of them +wrung a pitiful little groan from Patsy. + +"Faith! I've been overworking Dan's legacy long enough, I'm thinking. +Poor wee things! They're needing rest and nourishment for a while," +and she patted her forehead sympathetically. + +Of one thing she was certain--if her wits must still serve her, they +should do so within the confines of some respectable community; in +other words, she would settle down and work at something that would +provide her with bed and board until the fall bookings began. And, +the road and the tinker would become as a dream, fading with the +summer into a sweet, illusive memory--and a photograph. Patsy felt in +the pocket of her Norfolk for the latter with a sudden eagerness. It +had been forgotten since she had found the tinker himself; but, now +that the road was lengthening between them again, it brought her a +surprising amount of comfort. + +"There are three things I shall have to be asking him--if he ever +fetches up in Arden, himself," mused Patsy as she loitered along. +"And, what's more, this time I'll be getting an answer to every one +of them or I'm no relation of Dan's. First, I'll know the fate of the +brown dress; he hadn't a rag of it about him--that's certain. Next, +there's that breakfast with the lady's-slippers. How did he come by +it? And, last of all, how ever did this picture come on the +mantel-shelf of a closed cottage where he knew the way of breaking in +and what clothes would be hanging in the chamber closets? 'Tis all +too great a mystery--" + +"Why, Miss O'Connell--what luck!" + +Patsy had been so deep in her musing that a horse and rider had come +upon her unnoticed. She turned quickly to see the rider dismounting +just back of her; it was Gregory Jessup. + +"The top o' the morning to ye!" She broke into a glad laugh, blessing +that luck, herself, which had broken into her disquieting thoughts +and provided at least fair company and some news--perhaps. She held +out her hand in hearty welcome. "Are ye 'up so early or down so +late'?" + +"I might ask that, myself. Is it the habit of celebrated Irish +actresses to tramp miles between sun-up and breakfast?" + +"'Tis a habit more likely to fasten itself on French cooks, I'm +thinking," and Patsy smiled. + +"Then how is a man to account for you?" + +"He'd best not try; I'm a mortial poor person to account for. Maybe +I'm up early--getting my lines for the next act." + +"Of course. What a stupid duffer I am! You must find us plain, +plodding Americans horribly short-witted sometimes. Don't you?" + +Patsy shook a contradiction. "It's your turn, now. What fetched ye +abroad at this hour?" + +Gregory Jessup slipped his arm through the horse's bridle and fell +into step with her. "Principally because I like the early morning +better than any other part of the day; it's fresh and sweet and +unspoiled--like some Irish actresses. There--please don't mind my +crude attempt at poetic--simile," for Patsy's eyes had snapped +dangerously. "If you only knew how rarely poetry or compliments ever +came to roost on this dry tongue, you really wouldn't want to +discourage them when it does happen. Besides, there was another +reason for my being up--a downright foolish reason." + +Gregory Jessup accompanied the remark with a downright foolish smile, +and then lapsed into silence. In this fashion they walked to the bend +of the road where another graveled driveway branched forth; and here +the horse stopped of his own accord and whinnied. + +"This is the Dempsy Carters' place--where I'm stopping," Gregory +explained. + +"Aye, but the other reason?" Patsy reminded him, her eyes friendly +once more. + +"Oh--the other reason; I told you it was a foolish one." He stood +rubbing his horse's nose and looking over the road they had come for +some seconds before he finally confessed to it. "It's Billy, you see. +Somehow it occurred to me that if he should be in trouble and at the +same time knowing his father was sick--dying--he might be hanging +around somewhere near here--uncertain just what to do--and not +wanting any one to see him. In that case, the best time to run across +him would be early morning before the rest of the people were awake +and up. Don't you think so?" + +"It sounds more sensible than foolish; but I don't think ye'll ever +find him that way. If he was clever enough to let the earth swallow +him up, he's clever enough to keep swallowed. There's but one way to +reach him--and it's been in my mind since yester-eve." + +A look of surprise came into Gregory Jessup's face. "Why, Miss +O'Connell! I had no idea what I said that day would fasten Billy on +your mind like this. It's awfully good of you; and he's a perfect +stranger--" + +Patsy broke in with a whimsical chuckle. "Aye, I've grown overpartial +to strangers of late; but ye hearken to me. Ye'll have to leave a +sign by the roadside for him--if ye want to reach him. Otherwise +he'll see ye first and be gone before ever ye know he's about." + +"What kind of a sign?" + +"Faith! I'm not sure of that yet--myself. It must be something that +will put trust back in a lad and tell him to come home." + +"And where would you put it?" + +"Where? On the roadside, just, anywhere along the road he's used to +tramping." + +Gregory Jessup's face lost its puzzled frown and became suddenly +illumined with an inspiration. "I know! By Hec! I've got it! There's +that path that runs down from the Burgeman estate to our old cottage. +It was a short cut for us kids, and we were almost the only ones to +use it. Billy would be far more likely to take that than the +highroad--and it leads to the Burgeman farm, too, run by an old +couple that simply adore Billy. He might go there when he wouldn't go +anywhere else. That's the place for a message. But what message?" + +"I know!" Patsy clapped her hands. "Have ye a scrap of paper +anywheres about ye--and a pencil?" + +Hunting through the pockets of his riding-clothes, Gregory Jessup +discovered a business letter, the back of which provided ample +writing space, and the stub of a red-ink pencil. "We use 'em in the +drafting-room," he explained. "If these will do--here's a desk," and +he raised the end of his saddle, supporting it with a large expanse +of palm. + +Patsy accepted them all with a gracious little nod, and, spreading +the paper on the improvised desk, she wrote quickly: + + "If it do come to pass + That any man turn ass," + Thinking the world is blind + And trust forsworn mankind, + "Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame": + Here shall he find + Both trust and peace of mind, + An he but leave all foolishness behind. + +"With apologies to Willie Shakespeare," Patsy chuckled again as she +returned paper and pencil to their owner. "Ye put it somewhere he'd +be likely to look--furninst something that would naturally take his +notice." + +"I know just the spot--and they're in blossom now, too. I'll fasten +it to a rock, there, wedge it in the cracks. Billy won't miss it if +he comes within yards of the place." He grasped Patsy's hand with +growing fervor that gave promise of developing suddenly into almost +anything. "You're a brick, Miss O'Connell--a solid gold brick of a +girl, and I wish--" + +"Take care!" warned Patsy. "Ye're not improving as fast in your +compliments as ye might--and there's no poetry in gold--for me." + +Gregory Jessup looked puzzled, but his fervor did not abate one whit. +"I want you to promise me if you ever need a friend--if there is +anything I can ever do--" + +"Ye can," interrupted Patsy, "and ye can do it now. Take that +riding-crop of yours and draw me a map in the dust there of the +country hereabouts--ye can make a cross for Arden.... That's grand. +Now where would ye put Brambleside Inn? And is it seven miles from +there to Arden?" + +Gregory nodded an affirmative while he considered Patsy with grave +perplexity. Patsy saw it, and smiled reassuringly. "'Tis all right. +I've always had a great interest entirely to know the geography of +every new country--and I haven't the wits to discover it for myself. +Now where would ye put the cross-roads and the Catholic church? And +where would Lebanon be? Aye--Did ye ever see an old tabby chasing her +tail? Faith! 'tis a very intelligent spectacle, I'm thinking. Now +where might ye put the cross-roads where ye picked me up with the +Dempsy Carters?... And Dansville?... and the railroad bridge? ... and +the golf links, back yonder?" + +She stood for many minutes, studying the rough chart in the dust at +her feet. The connecting lines of roads between the places named made +fully a hundred and twenty degrees of a circle about the cross +marking Arden. And as chance would have it, every one of the +encircling towns measured approximately seven miles from the central +cross. Patsy smiled, and the smile grew to a chuckle--and the chuckle +to a long, rippling laugh. Patsy was forced to hold her sides with +the ache of it. + +"I know ye think I'm crazy--but 'tis the rarest bit of humor this +side of Ireland. Willie Shakespeare himself would steal it if he +could to put in one of his comedies. There is just one thing I'd like +to be knowing--how much of it was chance, and how much was the tricks +of a tinker?" + +"I don't think I understand," mumbled Gregory Jessup. + +"Of course ye don't," agreed Patsy. "I don't, myself. But there's one +thing more I'll be telling ye--if ye'll swear never to let it pass +your lips?" + +Patsy paused for dramatic effect while Gregory Jessup bound himself +twice over to secrecy. "Well," she said, at length, "'tis this: If I +had the road to travel again I'd pray to Saint Brendan to keep my +feet fast to the wrong turn. That's what!" + +Patsy left him, still looking after her in a puzzled fashion; and +with quickening steps she passed out of sight. + +But once again did she stop; and again it was by a graveled driveway. +She was deep in green memories when a figure in nurse's uniform +coming down the drive caught her attention. She was immediately +reminded of two facts: that the Burgeman estate was in Arden, and +that Burgeman senior was dying. Impulsively she turned toward the +nurse. + +"Is Mr. Burgeman any better this morning?" + +"We hardly expect that." The nurse's tone was cordial but +professionally cautious. + +"I know"--Patsy nodded wisely, as if she had been following the case +professionally herself--"but there is often a last rallying of +strength. Isn't there?" + +"Sometimes. I hardly think there will be anything very lasting in Mr. +Burgeman's case. There are moments, now, when his strength and will +are remarkably vigorous--any other man would be in his bed." + +"Oh! Then he is--up?" + +"He's taken about on a wheeled chair or cot. He is too restless to +stay in any place very long. He seems more contented outdoors, where +he can watch--" She broke off abruptly. "Lovely morning--isn't it? +Good-by." + +She turned about and went up the drive again. Patsy watched her go, a +strange, brooding look in her eyes. "So--he likes to be out of doors +best--where he can be watching. And if a body chanced to trespass +that way--she might come upon him, sudden like, and stay long enough +to set him a-thinking. Would it be too late, now, I wonder?" + +She resumed her way--and her memories. She passed a half-dozen more +driveways and she climbed a hill; and when she came to the top she +found herself looking down on a thickly wooded hamlet. Spires and +gabled roofs broke the foliage here and there, and on the rising +slope beyond towered a veritable forest. Patsy stood on the brink of +the hill and gazed down long and thoughtfully; at last she flung out +her arms in an impetuous gesture of confirmation, while the old, +whimsical smile crept into her lips. + +"'Aye, now am I in Arden, the more fool I; when I was at home, I was +in a better place--but travelers must be content.'" And taking a firm +grip of her memories, her wits, and her courage, she went down the +hill. + + + + +XIV + +ENTER KING MIDAS + + +When Patsy at last reached Arden she went direct to the post-office +and was there confronted by a huge poster occupying an entire wall: + + THE SYLVAN PLAYERS + + Under the Management of Geo. Travis + + Presenting Wm. Shakespeare's Comedy + + "AS YOU LIKE IT" + + In the Forest of Arden, on the Estate of Peterson-Jones, Esq. + +The date given was Wednesday, the day following; and the cast +registered her name opposite Rosalind. + +"So that's the answer to the letter I wrote, and a grand answer it +is. And that's the meaning of Janet Payne's remarks, and I never +guessed it." She heaved the faintest wisp of a sigh--it might have +been pleasure; it might have been a twinge of pain. "And I'm to be +playing the Duke's daughter, after all, at the end of the road." + +She went to the general delivery and asked for mail. The clerk +responded with three letters; Patsy almost whistled under her breath. +Retiring to a corner, she looked them over and opened first the one +from George Travis: + + DEAR IRISH PATSY,--You are a lucky beggar, and so am I. Here + comes the news of Miriam St. Regis's illness and the + canceling of all of her summer engagements in the same mail + as your letter. + + Just think of it! Here you are actually in Arden all ready + for me to pick up and put in Miriam's place without having + to budge from my desk. The Sylvan Players open with "As You + Like It." If the critics like it--and you--as well as I + think they will, I'll book you straight through the summer. + Felton's managing for me, so please report to him on Monday + when he gets there. I may run down myself for a glimpse of + your work. + + Yours, + G. TRAVIS. + + P. S. More good luck. We are just in time to get your name + on the posters; and unless my memory greatly deceives me, + you will be able to walk right into all of Miriam's + costumes. + +"Aye, they'll fit," agreed Patsy, with a chuckle. The second letter +was from Felton--dated Monday. He was worried over her continued +absence. He had not found her registered at either of the two +hotels, and the postal clerk reported her mail uncalled for. Would +she come to the Hillcrest Hotel at once. The third was from Janet +Payne, expressing her grief over Joseph's death, and their +disappointment at finding her gone the next morning when they motored +over to take her to Arden. They were all looking forward to seeing +her play on Wednesday. + +Patsy returned the letters to their envelopes and marveled that her +new-found prosperity should affect her so drearily. Why was she not +elated, transported with the surprise and the sudden promise of +success? She was free to go now to a good hotel and sign for a room +and three regular meals a day. She could wire at once to Miss Gibbs, +of the select boarding-house, and have her trunk down in twenty-four +hours. In very truth, her days of vagabondage were over, yet the fact +brought her no happiness. + +She hunted Felton up at the hotel and explained her absence: "Just a +week-end at one of the fashionable places. No, not exactly +professional. No, not social either. You might call it--providential, +like this." + +The morning was spent meeting her fellow-players--going over the +text, trying on the St. Regis costumes, adjourning at last to the +estate of Peterson-Jones. + +Until the middle of the afternoon they were busy with rehearsals: the +mental tabulating of new stage business, the adapting of strange +stage property, the accustoming of one's feet to tread gracefully +over roots and tangling vines and slippery patches of pine needles +instead of a good stage flooring. And through all this maze Patsy's +mind played truant. A score of times it raced off back to the road +again, to wait between a stretch of woodland and a grove of giant +pines for the coming of a grotesque, vagabond figure in rags. + +"Come, come, Miss O'Connell; what's the matter?" Felton's usual +patience snapped under the strain of her persistent wit-wandering. +"I've had to tell you to change that entrance three times." + +"Aye--and what is the matter?" Patsy repeated the question +remorsefully. "Maybe I've acquired the habit of taking the wrong +entrance. What can you expect from any one taking seven days to go +seven miles. I'm dreadfully sorry. If you'll only let me off this +time I promise to remember to-morrow; I promise!" + + * * * * * + +The day had been growing steadily hotter and more sultry. By five +o'clock every one who was doing anything, and could stop doing it, +went slothfully about looking for cool spots and cooler drinks. +Burgeman senior, alone with his servants on the largest estate in +Arden, ordered one of the nurses to wheel him to the border of his +own private lake--a place where breezes blew if there were any +about--and leave him there alone until Fitzpatrick, his lawyer, came +from town. And there he was sitting, his eyes on nothing at all, when +Patsy scrambled up the bank of the lake and dropped breathless under +a tree--not three feet from him. + +"Merciful Saint Patrick! I never saw you! Maybe I'm trespassing, +now?" + +"You are," agreed Burgeman senior in a colorless voice. "But I hardly +think any one will put you off the grounds--at least until you have +caught your breath." + +"Thank you. Maybe the grounds are yours, now?" she questioned again. + +The sick man signified they were by a slight nod. + +"Well, 'tis the prettiest place hereabouts." Patsy offered the +information as if she had made the discovery herself and was +generously sharing it with him. "I'm a stranger; and when I saw yon +bit of cool, gray water, and the pines clustering round, and the wee +green faery isle in the midst--with the bridge holding onto it to +keep it from disappearing entirely--and the sand so white, and the +lawns so green--why, it looked like a Japanese garden set in a great +sedge bowl. Do you wonder I had to come closer and see it better?" + +Burgeman said nothing; but the ghost of a feeling showed, the greed +of possession. + +"And it all belongs to you. You bought it all--the lake and the woods +and the lawns." It was not a question, but a statement. + +"I own three miles in every direction." + +"Except that one." Patsy smiled as she pointed a finger upward. "Did +you ever think how generous the blessed Lord is to lend a bit of His +sky to put over the land men buy and fence in and call 'private +property'? It's odd how a body can think he owns something because he +has paid money for it; and yet the things that make it worth the +owning he hasn't paid for at all." + +"What do you mean?" + +"Would you think much of this place if you couldn't be looking yonder +and watching the clouds scud by, all turning to pink and flame color +and purple as the sun gathers them in? What would you do if no wild +flowers grew for you, or the birds forgot you in the spring and built +their nests and sang for your neighbor instead? And can you hire the +sun to shine by the day, or order the rain by the hogshead?" + +Burgeman senior was contemplating her with genuine amazement. "I do +not believe I have ever heard any one put forth such extraordinary +theories before. May I ask if you are a socialist?" + +"Bless you, no! I am a very ordinary human being, just; principally +human." + +"Do you know who I am?" + +For an instant Patsy looked at him without speaking; then she +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?" + +"Why does any one forge? He needs money. When Billy caught him the +old fellow went all to pieces and told a pretty tough story. You see, +he'd been Burgeman's secretary for almost twenty years, given him the +best years of his life--slaved for him--lied for him--made money for +him. Billy said his father regarded him as an excellent piece of +office machinery, and treated him as if he were nothing more. The +poor chap had always had hard luck; a delicate wife, three or four +children who were eternally having or needing something, and poor +relations demanding help he couldn't refuse. Between doctors' bills +and clothing--and the relatives--he had no chance to save. At last he +broke down, and the doctor told him it was an outdoor life, with +absolute freedom from the strain of serving a man like Burgeman--or +the undertaker for him. So he went to Burgeman, asked him to loan him +the money to invest in a fruit-farm, and let him pay it off as fast +as he could." + +"Well?" Patsy was interested at last. + +"Well, the old man turned him down--shouted his 'no sentiment' slogan +at him, and shrugged his shoulders at what the doctor said. He told +him, flat, that a man who hadn't saved a cent in twenty years +couldn't in twenty years more; and he only put money into investments +that paid. The poor chap went away, frantic, worked himself into +thinking he was entitled to that last chance; and when Billy heard +the story he thought so, too. In the end, Billy cashed the check, +gave the secretary the money, and they both cleared out. He knew, if +his father ever suspected the truth, he would have the poor chap +followed and dragged back to pay the full penalty of the law--he and +all his family with him." + +Patsy smiled whimsically. "It sounds so simple and believable when +you have it explained; but it would have been rather nice, now, if +Billy Burgeman could have known that one person believed in him from +the beginning without an explanation." + +"Who did?" + +"Faith! how should I know? I was supposing, just." + +But as Patsy climbed onto the train she muttered under her breath: +"We come out even, I'm thinking. If he's missed knowing that, I've +missed knowing a fine lad." + + + + +XVI + +THE ROAD BEGINS ALL OVER AGAIN + + +On the second day following Patsy played Juliet at Brambleside, and +more than satisfied George Travis. While his mind was racing ahead, +planning her particular stardom on Broadway, and her mind was +pestering her with its fears and uncertainties into a state of +"private prostration," the manager of the Brambleside Inn was +telephoning the Green County sheriff to come at once--he had found +the girl. + +So it came about at the final dropping of the curtain, as Patsy was +climbing down from her bier, that four eagerly determined men +confronted her, each plainly wishful to be the first to gain her +attention. + +"Well," said the tinker, pointedly, "are you ready?" + +"It's all settled." Travis was jubilant. "You'll play Broadway for +six months next winter--or I'm no manager." + +It was the manager of the Brambleside Inn and the Green County +sheriff, however, who gave the greatest dramatic effect. They placed +themselves adroitly on either side of Patsy and announced together: +"You're under arrest!" + +"Holy Saint Patrick!" Patsy hardly knew whether to be amused or +angry. With the actual coming of the tinker, and the laying of her +fears, her mind seemed strangely limp and inadequate. Her lips +quivered even as they smiled. "Maybe I had best go back to my bier; +you couldn't arrest a dead Capulet." + +But George Travis swept her aside; he saw nothing amusing in the +situation. "What do you mean by insulting Miss O'Connell and myself +by such a performance? Why should she be under arrest--for being one +of the best Shakespearean actresses we've had in this country for +many a long, barren year?" + +"No! For stealing two thousand dollars' worth of diamonds from a +guest in this hotel the night she palmed herself off as Miss St. +Regis!" The manager of the Inn bit off his words as if he thoroughly +enjoyed their flavor. + +"But she never was here," shouted Travis. + +"Yes, I was," contradicted Patsy. + +"And she sneaked off in the morning with the jewels," growled the +manager. + +"And I trailed over the country for four days, trying to find the +girl in a brown suit that he'd described--said she was on her way to +Arden. I'd give a doggoned big cigar to know where you was all that +time." And there was something akin to admiration in the sheriff's +expression. + +But Patsy did not see. She was looking hard at the tinker, with an +odd little smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. + +The tinker smiled back, while he reached deep into his trousers +pocket and brought out a small package which he presented to the +sheriff. "Are those what you are looking for?" + +They were five unset diamonds. + +"Well, I'll be hanged! Did she give them to you?" The manager of the +Inn looked suspiciously from the tinker to Patsy. + +"No; she didn't know I had them--didn't even know they existed and +that she was being trailed as a suspected thief. Why, what's the +matter?" For Patsy had suddenly grown white and her lips were +trembling past control. + +"Naught--naught they could understand. But I'm finding out there was +more than one quest on the road to Arden, more than one soul who +fared forth to help another in trouble. And my heart is breaking, +just, with the memory of it." And Patsy sank back on the bier and +covered her face. + +"What is it, dear?" whispered a distressed tinker. + +"Don't ask--now--here. Sometime I'll be telling ye." + +"Well"--the sheriff thumbed the armholes of his vest in a +business-like manner--"I cal'ate we've waited about long enough, +young man; supposin' you explain how you come to have those stones in +your possession; and why you lied to me about her and sent me hiking +off to that country club--when you knew durned well where she was." + +The tinker laughed in spite of himself. "Certainly; it's very simple. +I found these, in a suit of rags which I saw on a tramp the morning +you lost the diamonds--and Miss O'Connell. I liked the rags so well +that I paid the tramp to change clothes with me; he took mine and +gave me his, along with a knockout blow for good measure." + +The manager of the Inn interrupted with an exclamation of surprise: +"So! You were the young fellow they picked up senseless by the +stables that morning. When the grooms saw the other man running, they +made out it was you who had struck him first." + +"Wish I had. But I squared it off with him a few days later," the +tinker chuckled. "At the time I couldn't make out why he struck me +except to get the rest of the money I had; but of course he wanted +to get the stones he'd sewed up in these rags and forgotten. I began +to suspect something when I found you trailing Miss O'Connell." + +"See here, young man, and wasn't you the feller that put me on the +wrong road twice?" The sheriff laid a hand of the law suggestively +against his chest. + +The tinker chuckled again. "I certainly was. It would have been +pretty discouraging for Miss O'Connell if you'd found her before we +had the defense ready; and it would have been awkward for you--to +have to take a lady in custody." + +"I cal'ate that's about right." And the sheriff relaxed into a grin. +Suddenly he turned to the manager of the Inn and pounded his palm +with his fist. "By Jupiter! I betcher that there tramp is the feller +that's been cleanin' up these parts for the past two years. Hangs +round as a tramp at back doors and stables, and picks up what +information he needs to break into the house easy. Never hitched him +up in my mind to the thefts afore--but I cal'ate it's the one +man--and he's it." + +"Guess you're right," the tinker agreed. "Last Saturday, when I came +upon him again--in an automobile--still in my clothes, we had a final +fight for the possession of the rags, which I still wore, and the--" +But he never finished. + +Patsy had sprung to her feet and was looking at him, bewilderment, +accusation, almost fright, showing through her tears. "Your +clothes--your clothes! You wore a--Then you are--" + +"Hush!" said the tinker. He turned to the others. "I think that is +all, gentlemen. I searched the rags after I had finished my score +with the thief and found the stones. I brought them over this +afternoon to return to their rightful owner. I might have returned +them that day after the play--but I forgot until the sheriff had +gone. You are entirely welcome. Good afternoon!" He dismissed them +promptly, but courteously, as if the stage had been his own +drawing-room and the two had suddenly expressed a desire to take +their leave. + +At the wings he left them and came back direct to George Travis. +"There is more thieving to be done this afternoon, and I am going to +do it. I am going to steal your future star, right from under your +nose; and I shall never return her." + +"What do you mean?" Travis stared at him blankly. + +"Just what I say; Miss O'Connell and I are to be married this +afternoon in Arden." + +"That's simply out of the--" + +Patsy, who had found her tongue at last, laid a coaxing hand on +Travis's arm. "No, it isn't. I wired Miriam yesterday--to see if she +was really as sick as you thought. She was sick; but she's ever so +much better and her nerves are not going to be nearly as troublesome +as she feared. She's quite willing to come back and take her old +place, and she'll be well enough next week." Patsy's voice had become +vibrant with feeling. "Now don't ye be hard-hearted and think I'm +ungrateful. We've all been playing in a bigger comedy than Willie +Shakespeare ever wrote; and, sure, we've got to be playing it out to +the end as it was meant to be." + +"And you mean to give up your career, your big chance of success?" +Travis still looked incredulous. "Don't you realize you'll be +famous--famous and rich!" he emphasized the last word unduly. + +It set Patsy's eyes to blazing. "Aye, I'd no longer be like Granny +Donoghue's lean pig, hungry for scrapings. Well, I'd rather be hungry +for scrapings than starving for love. I knew one woman who threw away +love to be famous and rich, and I watched her die. Thank God she's +kept my feet from that road! Sure, I wouldn't be rich--" She choked +suddenly and looked helplessly at the tinker. + +"Neither would I." And he spoke with a solemn conviction. + +In the end Travis gave in. He took his disappointment and his loss +like the true gentleman he was, and sent them away with his blessing, +mixed with an honest twinge of self-pity. It was not, however, until +Patsy turned to wave him a last farewell and smile a last grateful +smile from under the white chiffon, corn-flower sunbonnet that he +remembered that convention had been slighted. + +"Wait a minute," he said, running after them. "If I am not mistaken I +have not had the pleasure of meeting your--future husband; perhaps +you'll introduce us--" + +For once in her life Patsy looked fairly aghast, and Travis repeated, +patiently, "His name, Irish Patsy--I want to know his name." + +The tinker might have helped her out, but he chose otherwise. He kept +silent, his eyes on Patsy's as if he would read her answer there +before she spoke it to Travis. + +"Well," she said at last, slowly, "maybe I'm not sure of it +myself--except--I'm knowing it must be a good tinker name." And then +laughter danced all over her face. "I'll tell ye; ye can be reading +it to-morrow--in the papers." Whereupon she slipped her arm through +the tinker's, and he led her away. + +And so it came to pass that once more Patsy and the tinker found +themselves tramping the road to Arden; only this time it was down the +straight road marked, "Seven Miles," and it was early evening instead +of morning. + +"Do ye think we'll reach it now?" inquired Patsy. + +"We have reached it already; we're just going back." + +"And what happened to the brown dress?" + +"I burned it that night in the cottage--to fool the sheriff." + +"And I thought that night it was me ye had tricked--just for the whim +of it. Did ye know who I was--by chance?" + +"Of course I knew. I had seen you with the Irish Players many, many +times, and I knew you the very moment your voice came over the road +to me--wishing me 'a brave day.'" The tinker's eyes deepened with +tenderness. "Do you think for a moment if I hadn't known something +about you--and wasn't hungering to know more--that I would have +schemed and cheated to keep your comradeship?" + +"Ye might tell me, then, how ye came to know about the cottage--and +how your picture ever climbed to the mantel-shelf?" + +"You know--I meant to burn that along with the dress--and I forgot. +What did you think when you discovered it?" + +"Faith! I thought it was the picture of the truest gentleman God had +ever made--and I fetched it along with me--for company." + +The tinker threw back his head and laughed as of old. "What will poor +old Greg say when he finds it gone? Oh, I know how you almost stole +his faithful old heart by being so pitying of his friend--and how you +made the sign for him to follow--" + +"Aye," agreed Patsy, "but what of the cottage?" + +"That belongs to Greg's father; he and the girls are West this +summer, so the cottage was closed." + +"And the breakfast with the throstles and the lady's-slippers?" + +The tinker laid his finger over her lips. "Please, sweetheart--don't +try to steal away all the magic and the poetry from our road. You +will leave it very barren if you do--'I'm thinking.'" + +Silence held their tongues until curiosity again loosened Patsy's. +"And what started ye on the road in rags? Ye have never really +answered that." + +"I have never honestly wanted to; it is not a pleasant answer." He +drew Patsy closer, and his hands closed over hers. "Promise you will +never think of it again, that you and I will forget that part of the +road--after to-day?" + +Patsy nodded. + +"I borrowed the rags so that it would take a pretty smart coroner to +identify the person in it after the train had passed under the +suspension-bridge from which he fell--by accident. Don't shudder, +dear. Was it so terrible--that wish to get away from a world that +held nothing, not even some one to grieve? Remember, when I started +there wasn't a soul who believed in me, who would care much one way +or another--unless, perhaps, poor old Greg." + +"Would ye mind letting me look at the marriage license? I'd like to +be seeing it written down." + +The tinker produced it, and she read "William Burgeman." Then she +added, with a stubborn shake of the head, "Mind, though, I'll not be +rich." + +"You will not have to be. Father has left me absolutely nothing for +ten years; after that I can inherit his money or not, as we choose. +It's a glorious arrangement. The money is all disposed of to good +civic purpose, if we refuse. I am very glad it's settled that way; +for I'm afraid I would never have had the heart to come to you, dear, +dragging all those millions after me." + +"Then it is a free, open road for the both of us; and, please Heaven! +we'll never misuse it." She laughed joyously; some day she would tell +him of her meeting with his father; life was too full now for that. + +The tinker fell into his old swinging stride that Patsy had found so +hard to keep pace with; and silence again held their tongues. + +"Do you think we shall find the castle with a window for every day in +the year?" the tinker asked at last. + +"Aye. Why not? And we'll be as happy as I can tell ye, and twice as +happy as ye can tell me. Doesn't every lad and lass find it anew for +themselves when they take to the long road with naught but love and +trust in their hearts--and their hands together? They may find it +when they're young--they may not find it till they're old--but it +will be there, ever beckoning them on--with the purple hills rising +toward it. And there's a miracle in the castle that I've never told +ye: no matter how old and how worn and how stooped the lad and his +lass may have grown, there he sees her only fresh and fair and she +sees him only brave and straight and strong." + +She stopped and faced him, her hands slipping out of his and creeping +up to his shoulders and about his neck. "Dear lad--promise me one +thing!--promise me we shall never forget the road! No matter how +snugly we may be housed, or how close comfort and happiness sit at +our hearthside--we'll be faring forth just once in so often--to touch +earth again. And we'll help to keep faith in human nature--aye, and +simple-hearted kindness alive in the world; and we'll make our +friends by reason of that and not because of the gold we may or may +not be having." + +"And do you still think kindness is the greatest thing in the world?" + +"No. There is one thing better; but kindness tramps mortal close at +its heels." Patsy's hands slipped from his shoulders; she clasped +them together in sudden intensity. "Haven't ye any curiosity at all +to know what fetched me after ye?" + +"Yes. But there is to-morrow--and all the days after--to tell me." + +"No, there is just to-day. The telling of it is the only wedding-gift +I have for ye, dear lad. I was with Marjorie Schuyler in the den that +day you came to her and told her." + +"You heard everything?" + +"Aye." + +"And you came, believing in me, after all?" + +"I came to show you there was one person in the world who trusted +you, who would trust you across the world and back again. That's all +the wedding-gift I have for ye, dear, barring love." + +And then and there--in the open road, still a good three miles from +the Arden church--the tinker gathered her close in the embrace he had +kept for her so long. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + +Transcriber's note: + +Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise, +every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and +intent. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN*** + + +******* This file should be named 28271.txt or 28271.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/2/7/28271 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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