Seven Miles to Arden Part 12

"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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 pa.s.sing 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 la.s.s 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?"

"G.o.d 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 grat.i.tude 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 "G.o.d-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.