Seven Miles to Arden Part 22

"'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 trespa.s.sing, 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 cl.u.s.tering 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 j.a.panese 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; princ.i.p.ally 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. G.o.d 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?"