Seven Miles to Arden Part 26

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 sc.r.a.pings. Well, I'd rather be hungry for sc.r.a.pings than starving for love. I knew one woman who threw away love to be famous and rich, and I watched her die. Thank G.o.d 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 pa.s.s 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 la.s.s 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 la.s.s 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.