Seven Miles to Arden Part 18

"'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 pa.s.sing 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 la.s.s 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, un.o.bserved by the few straggling players on the links.

The stable proved all Patsy had antic.i.p.ated. 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 a.s.sistance 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 pa.s.sed 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?