Seven Miles to Arden Part 4

IV

THE OCCUPANT OF A BALMACAAN COAT

Safe in her room, with the door closed and locked, Patsy stood transfixed before a trunk--likewise closed and locked.

"Thank Heaven for many blessings!" she said, fervently. "Thank Heaven Miriam St. Regis has worn wigs of every conceivable color and style on the stage, so there is small chance of any one here knowing the real color of her hair. Thank Heaven she's given to missing her engagements and not wiring about it until the next day. Thank Heaven I've played with her long enough to imitate her mannerisms, and know her well enough to explain away the night, if the need ever comes.

Thank Heaven that George Travis is an old friend and can help out, if I fail. Thank Heaven for all of these! But, holy Saint Patrick! how will I ever be getting inside that box?"

On the heels of her fervor came an inspiration. Off came her gloves and hat, off came coat and skirt, blouse and shoes, and into the closet they all went. For, whereas Patsy could carry off her shabbiness before masculine eyes, she had neither the desire nor the fort.i.tude to brave the keener, more critical gaze of her own s.e.x. It was always for the women that Patsy dressed, and above all else did she stand in awe of the opinion of the hotel chambermaid, going down in tottering submission before it. Unlocking her door, she rang the bell; then crept in between the covers of her bed, drawing them up about her.

The chambermaid came and Patsy ordered the housekeeper. The housekeeper came and Patsy explained to her the loss of her bag--the loss of the keys was only implied; it was a part of Patsy's creed of life never to lie unless cornered. She further implied that she was entertaining no worry, as a well-appointed hotel always carried a bunch of skeleton trunk keys for the convenience of their guests.

Patsy's inspiration worked to perfection. In a few minutes the Inn had proved itself a well-appointed hostelry, and the trunk stood open before her. Alone again, she slipped out of bed--to lock the door and investigate. A wistaria lounging-robe was on in a twinkling, with quilted slippers to match. Then Patsy's eager fingers drew forth a dark emerald velvet, with bodice and panniers of gold lace, and she clasped it ecstatically in her arms.

"Miriam always had divine taste, but the faeries must have guided her hand for the choosing of this. Sure, I'd be feeling like a king's daughter if I wasn't so weak and heartsick. I feel more like a young gosling that some one has coaxed out of its sh.e.l.l a day too soon. Is it the effect of Billy Burgeman, I wonder, or the left-overs from the City Hospital, or an overdose of foolishness--or hunger, just?"

"Miss St. Regis" dined in her own room, and she dined like a king's daughter, with an appet.i.te whetted by weeks of convalescing, charity fare. Even the possible appearance at any minute of her original self offered no terrors for her in the presence of such a soul-satisfying, hunger-appeasing feast.

At nine-thirty that evening, when the manager sent the hall-boy to call her, she looked every inch the king's daughter she had dined.

The hall-boy, accustomed to "creations," gave her a frank stare of admiration, which Patsy noted out of the tail of her eye.

She was ravishing. The green and gold brought out the tawny red glint of her hair, which was bound with two gold bands about the head, ending in tiny emerald clasps over the barely discoverable tips of her ears; little gold shoes twinkled in and out of the clinging green as she walked.

"Faith! I feel like a whiff of Old Ireland herself," was Patsy O'Connell's subconscious comment as "Miss St. Regis" crossed the stage; and something of the feeling must have been wafted across the footlights to the audience, for it drew in its breath with a little gasp of genuine appreciation.

She heard it and was grateful for the few seconds it gave her to look at the program the manager had handed her as she was entering. It had never occurred to her that Miss St. Regis might arrange her program beforehand, that the audience might be expecting something definite and desired in the form of entertainment. It took all the control of a well-ordered Irish head to keep her from bolting for the little stage door after one glance at the paper. Her eye had caught the impersonation of two American actresses she had never seen, the reading of a Hawaiian love poem she had never heard of, and scenes from two plays she had never read. It was all too deliciously, absurdly horrible for words; and then Patsy O'Connell geared up her wits, as any true kinswoman of Dan's should.

In a flash there came back to her what the company had done once when they were playing one-night stands and the wrong scenery had come for the play advertised. It was worth trying here.

"Dear people," said Patsy O'Connell-St. Regis, smiling at the audience as one friend to another, "I have had so many requests from among you--since I made out my program--to give instead an evening of old Irish tales, that I have--capitulated; you shall have your wish."

The almost unbelievable applause that greeted her tempted her to further wickedness. "Very few people seem ever to remember that I had an Irish grandfather, Denis St. Regis, and that I like once in a while to be getting back to the sod."

There was something so hypnotic in her intimacy--this taking of every one into her confidence--that one budding youth forgot himself entirely and navely remarked, "It's a long way to Tipperary."

That clinched her success. She might have chanted "Old King Cole" and reaped a houseful of applause. As it was, she turned faery child and led them all forth to the Land of Faery--a world that neighbored so close to the real with her that long ago she had acquired the habit of carrying a good bit of it about with her wherever she went. It was small wonder, therefore, that, at the end of the evening, when she fixed upon a certain young man in the audience--a man with a persevering mustache, an esthetic face, and a melancholy, myopic squint--and told the last tale to him direct, that he felt called upon to go to her as she came down the steps into the ball-room and express his abject, worshipful admiration.

"That's all right," Patsy cut him short, "but--but--it would sound so much nicer outside, somewhere in the moonlight--away from everybody.

Wouldn't it, now?"

This sudden amending of matter-of-factness with arch coquetry would have sounded highly amusing to ears less self-atuned than the erstwhile wearer of the Balmacaan. But he heard in it only the flattering tribute to a man chosen of men; and the hand that reached for Patsy's was almost masterful.

"Oh, would you really?" he asked, and he almost broke his melancholy with a smile.

"It must be my clothes," was her mental comment as he led her away; "they've gone to my own head; it's not altogether strange they've touched his a bit. But for a man who's forged his father's name and lost the girl he loved and then plunged into mortal despair, he's convalescing terribly fast."

They had reached a quiet corner of the veranda. Patsy dropped into a chair, while her companion leaned against a near-by railing and looked down at her with something very like a soulful expression.

"I might have known all along," Patsy was thinking, "that a back like that would have a front like this. Sure, ye couldn't get a real man to dress in knee-length petticoats." And then, to settle all doubts, she faced him with grim determination. "I let you bring me here because I had something to say to you. But first of all, did you come down here to-night on that five-something train from New York?"

The man nodded.

"Did you get to the train by a Madison Avenue car, taken from the corner of Seventy-seventh Street, maybe?"

"Why, how did you know?" The melancholy was giving place to rather pleased curiosity.

"How do I know!" Patsy glared at him. "I know because I've followed you every inch of the way--followed you to tell you I believed in you--you--you!" and her voice broke with a groan.

"Oh, I say, that was awfully good of you." This time the smile had right of way, and such a flattered, self-conscious smile as it was!

"You know everybody takes me rather as a joke."

"Joke!" Patsy's eyes blazed. "Well, you're the most serious, impossible joke I ever met this side of London. Why, a person would have to dynamite his sense of humor to appreciate you."

"I don't think I understand." He felt about in his waistcoat pocket and drew forth a monocle, which he adjusted carefully. "Would you mind saying that again?"

Patsy's hands dropped helplessly to her lap. "I couldn't--only, after a woman has trailed a man she doesn't know across a country she doesn't know to a place she doesn't know--and without a wardrobe trunk, a letter of credit, or a maid, just to tell him she believes in him, he becomes the most tragically serious thing that ever happened to her in all her life."

"Oh, I say, I always thought they were pretty good; but I never thought any one would appreciate my poetry like that."

"Poetry! Do you--do that, too?"

"That's all I do. I am devoting my life to it; that's why my family take me a little--flippantly."

A faint streak of hope shot through Patsy's mind. "Would you mind telling me your name?"

"Why, I thought you knew. I thought you said that was why you wanted to--to--Hang it all! my name's Peterson-Jones--Wilfred Peterson-Jones."

Patsy was on her feet, clasping her hands in a shameless burst of emotion while she dropped into her own tongue. "Oh, that's a beautiful name--a grand name! Don't ye ever be changing it! And don't ye ever give up writing poetry; it's a beautiful pastime for any man by that name. But what--what, in the name of Saint Columkill, ever happened to Billy Burgeman!"

"Billy Burgeman? Why, he came down on the train with me and went back to Arden."

Patsy threw back her head and laughed--laughed until she almost feared she could not stop laughing. And then she suddenly became conscious of the pompous manager standing beside her, a yellow sheet of paper in his hand.

"Will you kindly explain what this means?" and he slapped the paper viciously.

"I'll try to," said Patsy; "but will you tell me just one thing first? How far is it to Arden?"

"Arden? It's seven miles to Arden. But what's that got to do with this? This is a wire from Miss St. Regis, saying she is ill and will be unable to fill her engagement here to-night! Now, who are you?"

"I? Why, I'm her understudy, of course--and--I'm--so happy--"

Whereupon Patricia O'Connell, late of the Irish National Players and later of the women's free ward of the City Hospital, crumpled up on the veranda floor in a dead faint.