Seven Miles to Arden Part 16

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, pa.s.sing 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 s.p.a.ce, 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--p.r.o.nounced. 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 pa.s.sion and self-pity until they burned down into charred heaps of humanity.

She had met a few of them in her life; but--thank G.o.d!--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 pa.s.sing,"

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 coa.r.s.ely, looking her over with an appraising scrutiny. "Well, a fellow might have a worse--subst.i.tute."

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.