The Miracle Man Part 24

"There is Robert"--Mrs. Thornton spoke again--"I am sure he will do as I have asked him to do about this, but--you can have a great deal of influence with him. It--it perhaps may seem a strange thing to say, but I pray that you two may be brought very close to each other. Robert needs a good, true woman so much in his life--and I--we--we--my illness--we have never had a home in its truest sense. Yes, it is strange for me perhaps to talk like this--but it is in my heart. I would like to think of you both engaged in this wonderful work together."

Again, through exhaustion, Mrs. Thornton stopped--and Helena, from gazing at the other's pallid countenance in a sort of involuntary, frightened fascination, dropped her head suddenly upon the bed-spread and hid her face.

Mrs. Thornton's hand found Helena's head and rested upon it.

"I would like to see Robert happy," she murmured, after a little silence. "Riches do not make happiness--they are so sad and empty a thing when the heart is empty. I know he would be happy with you--he has spoken so much of you lately--perhaps--perhaps--"

Mrs. Thornton's voice was very faint--the words reached Helena plainly enough as words, but they seemed to reach her consciousness in an unreal, unnatural, blunted way, coma-like--pregnant of significance, yet with the significance itself elusive, evading her.

"A good woman," whispered Mrs. Thornton, "I have tried to be a good woman--but--but my life, our wealth, our position has made it so artificial. You have never known these things, dear--and so you are just as G.o.d made you--good woman, so pure, so wonderful in your freshness and your innocence. Robert's life has been so barren--so barren. I would like to know that--that it will not always be so. Oh, if it could only be that you and he should carry on this great, glad work together--and love should come into his life--and yours--and sunshine--promise me, dear, that--"

The voice died away. Helena, with head still buried, waited for Mrs.

Thornton to speak again. It seemed she waited for a great length of time--and yet there was no such thing as time. It seemed as though she were transported to a place of great and intense blackness where it was miserably cold and chill, and she stood alone and lost, and strove to find her way--and there was no way--only blackness everywhere, immeasurable. She lifted her head suddenly, desperately, to shake the unreality from her--and her eyes fell upon the gentle face, peaceful, smiling, calm, and so _still_--and a startled, frightened cry rang from her lips.

There was the quick, hurried rush of some one coming into the room, and the nurse brushed by her and bent instantly over the bed--after that, quite soon after that it seemed, and yet it might have been quite a little while, she found herself outside in the corridor and the nurse was speaking to her.

"Sam is still out there," said Miss Harvey gently. "I told him to keep the team. You cannot help me, and I want you to go home, dear. And will you ask Sam to go for Mr. Madison at the hotel on the way back--I do not know who else I can call upon for advice."

"I've sent for him already," said Helena numbly.

"Have you, dear?" Miss Harvey said. "That was very thoughtful of you--I'm sure he'll be here presently then. And now, dear, it is much better that you should go."

There were no tears in Helena's eyes as she stepped down from the car vestibule to the tracks--only a drawn misery in her face. That was Doc over there, pacing up and down on the platform in the darkness--wasn't it weird the way his cigar glowed bright and then went out and then glowed bright again--like a gigantic firefly!

She was across the tracks before he saw her, then, hurrying forward, he helped her to the platform.

"Well?" he asked quickly.

Helena did not answer.

Madison took the cigar from his lips, leaned forward, and peered into Helena's face--then drew back with a low whistle.

"Dead?" he said.

Helena nodded.

"Miss Harvey wants to see you," she said.

"Say," said Madison slowly, "first crack out of the box this looks bad, don't it? If this gets around here without a m.u.f.fler on it, it might make the railroad companies hang fire with those circulars for excursion rates to Needley--what?"

"I--I think I hate you!" Helena cried out suddenly, pa.s.sionately.

"She's--she's dead--and that's all you think about!"

Madison stared at Helena for a moment calmly.

"Now, look here, Helena," said he quietly, "don't get excited. Of course I'm sorry--I'm not a brute and I've got feelings--but I can't afford to lose my head. Something's got to be done, and done quick. We don't want this headlined in every paper in the United States to-morrow morning--Thornton wouldn't want it either. You say Miss Harvey wants to see me? Well, that'll help some--she'll probably do as she's told, and--"

Madison paused abruptly, gazed abstractedly at the private car across the tracks on the siding, and pulled at his cigar.

Helena watched him in silence--a little bitterly. That quick, clever, cunning brain of his was at work again--scheming--scheming--always scheming--and Naida Thornton was dead.

"I'll tell you," said Madison, speaking again as abruptly as he had stopped. "It's simple enough. There's a westbound train due in an hour or so--we'll couple the private car onto that and send it right along to Chicago. What the authorities don't know won't hurt them. There's no reason for anybody except Thornton to know what's happened till she gets there--I'll wire him. The main thing is that the car won't be here in the morning, and that'll take a little of the intimate touch of Needley off. It might well have happened on her way home--journey too much for her--left too soon--see? Thornton'll see it in the right light because he's got fifty thousand dollars worth of faith in what's going on here--get that? He won't want to harm the 'cause.' There'll be some publicity of course, we can't help that--but it won't hurt much--and Thornton can gag a whole lot of it--he'd want to anyway for his own sake. Now then, kid, there's Sam over there--you pile into the wagon and go home, while I get busy--and don't you say a word about this, even to the Flopper."

And so Helena drove back to the Patriarch's cottage that night, a little silent figure in the back seat of the wagon--and her hands were locked tightly together in her lap--and to her, as she drove over the peaceful, moonlit road, and under the still, arched branches of the trees in the wood that hid the starlight, came again and again the words of one who had gone, who perhaps knew better now--"you are as G.o.d made you."

--XVI--

A FLY IN THE OINTMENT

The days pa.s.sed. And with the days, morning, noon and night, they came by almost every train, the sick and suffering, the lame, the paralytics and the maimed--a steady influx by twos and threes and fours--from north over the Canadian boundary line, from the far west, and from the southernmost tip of the Florida coast. No longer on the company's schedule was Needley a flag station--it was a regular stop, and its pa.s.senger traffic returns were benign and pleasing things in the auditor's office. And it was an accustomed sight now, many times a day--what had once been a strange, rare spectacle--that slow procession wending its way from the station to the town, some carried, some limping upon crutches, all s.n.a.t.c.hing at hope of life and health and happiness again. Needley, perforce, had become a vast boarding house, as it were--there were few homes indeed that did not harbor their quota of those who sought the "cure."

But there were others too who came--who were not sick--who had not faith--who came to laugh and peer and peek. Pleasure yachts dropped their anchors in the cove around the headland from the Patriarch's cottage--and their dingeys brought women decked out _de rigeur_ in middy blouses and sailor collars, and nattily attired gentlemen whose only claim to seamanship was the clothes, or rather, the costumes that they wore.

They came laughing, supercilious, tolerant, contemptuous, pitying the inanity of those they held less strongly-minded than themselves who should be taken in by so apparent, glaring and monstrous a fake. They came because it was the rage, the thing to do, quite the thing to do, quite a necessary part of the summer's itinerary. But that they, should they have been sick, would ever have dreamed of coming there was too perfectly ridiculous an idea for words. How strange a thing is the human animal!

They came in their rather cruel, merciless gaiety--and they left sobered and impressed; the ladies holding their embroidered parasols at a less jaunty angle; the men with lightened pockets, their names enrolled in the contribution book in that quiet, simple room, whose door was open, whose cash-box was unguarded, where none asked them to either enter or withdraw. They came and found no air of charlatanism such as they had looked for--only a peaceful, unostentatious, patient air of sincerity that left them remorseful and abashed. They came and went, a source of revenue not counted on or thought of before by Madison; but a source that swelled the coffers, br.i.m.m.i.n.g fuller day by day, to overflowing.

In three weeks from the night of Mrs. Thornton's death, which had had at least no visible effect on Needley, Needley was metamorphosed--with a spontaneity, so to speak, that astounded even Madison himself--into something that approximated very closely in reality the word-picture he had drawn of it that night in the Roost. Madison looked upon his work and saw that it was pleasing beyond his dreams. Money was pouring in--no single breath of suspicion came to disquiet him. Even the cures were working satisfactorily--even Pale Face Harry, who had become great friends with the farmer at whose house he boarded, and who now spent most of his time in the fields, was showing an improvement--Pale Face Harry coughed less. The Flopper was as happy as a lark--and Mamie Rodgers blushed now at mention of the name of Coogan. Helena, demure, adored by all who saw her, went daily about her housework in the cottage, and waited upon the Patriarch with gentle tenderness; while the Patriarch, docile, full of supreme trust and confidence in every one, radiant in Helena's companionship, was as putty in their hands. And so Madison looked upon his work and saw no flaw--but with the days he grew ill at ease.

"It's too easy," he told himself. "I guess that's it--it's too easy. The whole show runs itself. Why, there's nothing to do but count the cash!"

And yet in his heart he knew that wasn't it--it was Helena. Helena was beginning to trouble him a little. She was playing the game all right--playing it to the limit--and making a hit at every performance.

Her name was on every tongue, and men and women alike spoke of her sweetness, her goodness, her loveliness. Well, that was all right, Helena was a star no matter where you put her--but something was the matter. Helena wasn't the Helena of a month ago back in little old New York. He hadn't managed to get a dozen words with her since that night on the station platform, without taking chances and gaining admission to the cottage through the Flopper's window after dark--and then she had held him at arm's length.

"The matter with me?" she had said. "There isn't anything the matter with me--is there? I'm--I'm playing the game."

It certainly couldn't be grief over Mrs. Thornton's death--she had begun to act that way before Mrs. Thornton died--that night when she came home with Thornton, and he and the Flopper were behind the trellis. Thornton!

Had Thornton anything to do with it, after all? No--Madison had laughed at it then, and he had much more reason to laugh at it now. Thornton was still in Chicago, and hadn't been back to Needley.

For three weeks this sort of thing occupied a considerably larger share of Madison's thoughts than he was wont to allow even the most vexing problems to disturb his usually imperturbable and complacent self--and then one afternoon, he smiled a little grimly, and, leaving the hotel, started along the road toward the Patriarch's cottage.

"What Helena needs is--a jolt!" said Madison to himself. "I guess her trouble is one of those everlasting feminine kinks that all women since Adam's wife have patted themselves on the back over, because they think it's a dark veil of mystery that is beyond the ac.u.men of brute man to understand. That's what the novelists write pages about--wade right in up to the armpits in it--feminine psychology--great! And the women smile commiseratingly at the novelist--the idea of a man even pretending to understand them--kind of a blooming merry-go-round and everybody happy!

Feminine psychology! I guess a little masculine kick-up is about the right dope! What the deuce have I been standing for it for? I don't have to--I don't have to go around making sheep's-eyes at her--what? She wants grabbing up and being rushed right off her feet _a la_ Roost, and--h.e.l.lo, Mr. Marvin, how are you to-day!"--he had halted beside a middle-aged man who was sitting on the gra.s.s at the roadside.

"Better, Mr. Madison, better," returned the man, heartily. "Really very much better."

"Fine!" said Madison.

"We all saw the Patriarch to-day--G.o.d bless him!" said Marvin. "We've been waiting out there two days, you know--that woman with the bad back got up off her stretcher."

"Splendid!" exclaimed Madison enthusiastically. "And the glorious thing about it is that there's no reason why everybody can't be cured if they'll only come here in the right spirit."

"That's so!" agreed Marvin. "None are so blind as those who won't see--they're in utter blackness compared with the physical blindness of that grand and marvelous man. I'm going home myself in another week--better than ever I was in my life. It was stomach with me, you know--doctors said there wasn't any chance except to operate, and that an operation was too slim a chance to be worth risking it." He got up and laughed, carefree, joyous. "G.o.d-given place down here, isn't it?

Clean--that's it. Clean air, clean-souled people, clean everything you see or do or hear. Say, it kind of opens your eyes to real living, doesn't it--it's the luxuries and the worries and the pace and the d.a.m.n-fooleries that kill. Well, I'm going along back now to get some of Mrs. Perkins' cream--clean, rich cream--and homemade bread and b.u.t.ter--imagine me with an appet.i.te and able to eat!"