The Miracle Man Part 35

How buoyantly he had tackled the problem--buoyant in his own emanc.i.p.ation, buoyant in his love, in the future full of dreams, full of inspiration, full of the new life that Helena and he would live together! How confidently he had settled himself to undo in a moment the work of months, to outline a mere matter of detail, with never a thought that he was face to face with a problem that he could never solve--that brought him to the realization that the game, not he, was the master still, iron-handed, implacable--that though the mental chains were loosed it was but as if, in ironic justice, in grim punishment, only that he might look, clear-visioned, upon the ignominy of the physical shackles he himself had forged and fashioned so readily, whose breaking now was beyond his strength.

He had done his work well! In the first few moments, an hour ago, when he had begun to consider the problem, as seeming difficulties arose, he had turned coolly from one alternative to another. And then slowly a sickening sense of the truth had begun to dawn upon him--and like a man lost in a great forest, peril around him, he had plunged then desperately in this direction and in that, as a glimmering point of light here or there had seemed to promise an avenue of escape--only to find it vanish at almost the first step, the way closed as by some invisible, remorseless power. No, not invisible--it seemed to take the form of the Patriarch--for at every turn the majestic figure stood and would not let him pa.s.s.

Madison's face was gray now as he walked up and down the room--there was his own revulsion, his abhorrence at the part he had played, a frantic, honorable eagerness to be rid of it; there were these others too who looked to him, the Flopper and Pale Face Harry; and there was--Helena!

He did not dare to look at the misery in her face again--he was unmanned enough now.

And then Helena spoke.

"It--it seems," she said, in a low broken way, "as if--as if G.o.d did not want to pardon us--as if our repentance had come too late, and that there was no Eleventh Hour for us." Then, in pa.s.sionate pleading, facing Madison: "G.o.d cannot mean that--it is we who cannot see. There is some way out--there must be--there _must_ be."

"It begins and ends with the Patriarch," said Madison monotonously. "We can't sacrifice him--can we! What's the use of going over it again? It all comes back to the same point--the Patriarch."

"Yes, yes; I know, I know," she said piteously. "But think, Doc--_think_! See now, we just send back all the money and jewels--we know to whom they belong."

"Well, what reason do we give?" Madison said heavily. "The Patriarch is alive and well. The immediate corollary is that from the moment we do that, to-morrow morning for instance, every gift, every offering here is suddenly refused. What reason do we give? If it were only the donors who were to be considered it might be done. It's human nature that ninety-nine out of every hundred of them"--his voice rose a little bitterly--"would probably be only too glad to get their money back--and the mere statement that you, as the Patriarch's grand-niece, his only relative, on mature thought did not consider the project as planned advisable might suffice. But this thing goes beyond that, beyond even the remaining few who are earnestly interested and would cause us trouble--it is world-wide in its publicity! Every newspaper in the land would s.n.a.t.c.h at it for a headline, and ask--why? And they would not be content with simply asking why--this thing is too big for that--too much before the people's eyes--too good 'copy.' They'd start in to find out--and the result is inevitable. Our safety so far has lain in the fact that there has been no suspicion aroused; but snooping around a bank vault at midnight with a mask on and a bull's-eye lantern fades to a whisper as a suspicion-arouser compared with anybody willingly coughing up a bunch of money once they've got their claws on it--and a yellow journal, let alone an army corps of them, on the scent of a possible sensation has all the detective bureaus in the country pinned to the ropes--they'd have us uncovered quicker than I like to think about it--and that means--"

He stopped, and with a hurried motion, carried his hands across his eyes--Helena, pure as one of G.o.d's own angels now, to come to that, to come to--

It was the Flopper who completed the sentence.

"Ten s.p.a.ces up de river," said the Flopper, and shivered, and his tongue sought his lips; "or mabbe--mabbe twenty."

Pale Face Harry stirred uneasily.

"There's the other way," he said without looking up, his eyes on his finger nail that traced the grain of the wood again. "Get the money and the sparklers all done up and addressed to the ones they came from, send 'em off in a bunch to Thornton--and we fly the coop before he gets them, disappear, fade away--and take our chances of getting caught."

"An' den it's all off wid me an' Mamie"--the Flopper's face grew hard.

"Nix on dat! Dat don't go!"

"We cannot do that, Harry," said Helena, in a tired voice. "There is--the Patriarch."

"Yes," said Madison, beginning his stride up and down the room again.

"After all, whether we could give back the money without being caught, or whether we couldn't, is not the vital thing; there is--the Patriarch."

Helena's eyes were on the silent figure in the shadows by the fireplace.

"If--if it were not for him," she said, "I think that perhaps--perhaps I might be brave enough to confess it all, and--and not try to escape from the punishment that I deserve. But he would know--he cannot see, nor hear, nor speak, but he would know--as he seems so strangely, so wonderfully, so supernaturally to know and understand everything. And, oh, he means so much to me, to us all, for it is he, more than any one else, who has saved us from--from what we were. And he loves us. It would shatter his faith, ruin all that his life has meant to him, and--and we cannot bring him grief and sorrow like that. Oh, what can we do! What _can_ we do! We cannot stop--and we cannot go on! We cannot stay here even if we returned the money successfully, and we cannot stay here if we kept it as it is; for things would still have to go on as they are, even if we didn't mean to steal any more, no matter what we might say or do, for it's beyond our control now, and to stay means that we should still have to live and lead our double lives, still have to practise hypocrisy and deceit, and--and I cannot--we cannot do that any more. And the only way to get away from it all is to run away--and we can't do that, either! There is--the Patriarch. We cannot leave him--to break his heart--with none he loves to care for him. We can't do that.

He is a very old, old man, and--and I think he has been happy with us, and--and we must make him happy always as long as he lives. We cannot go away and leave him. We can't do that." Then, in a heartbroken, despairing cry: "We can't do--_anything_!"

No one answered her. She had begged Madison to go over it all again--and she had summed it up herself. There was--the Patriarch.

There was utter silence in the room now, save only for that low, solemn boom of distant surf--for Madison had stopped his nervous pacing up and down, and stood now by the Patriarch's armchair gazing into the fireplace.

The minutes pa.s.sed, and the silence in that dim, shadowed room grew tense--and tenser still--until the very shadows themselves, as the lamp flickered now and then, seemed to creep and shift and readjust themselves in stealth. No sound--no movement--utter stillness--only, from without, the mourning of the surf, like a dirge now.

And then, with a sudden sob, Helena flung out her arms across the table toward the Patriarch.

"Oh, if he could only speak!" she cried pitifully. "If he could only speak--he would show us the way out."

The words seemed to come to Madison as an added pang. He turned his eyes instinctively from the fireplace to the Patriarch beside him--and then, a moment, as a man stricken, he stood there--and then reaching quickly for the lamp from the table he held it up, and leaned forward toward the figure in the chair.

Helena, startled at the act, rose almost unconsciously to her feet, her hands holding tightly to the table edge--looking at Madison, looking at the silent form where Pale Face Harry, where the Flopper looked.

"What is it?" she asked tensely, under her breath.

Madison's lips moved--silently. His face was white, ashen--there was no color in it. Then his lips moved once more.

"The way out," he said; and again, in a low, awed way: "_The way out_.

We can make rest.i.tution now--we can give it all back--he _has_ shown us the way out."

Helena's lips were quivering, tears were dimming the brown eyes, trembling on the lashes, as she stepped now to Madison's side.

"It is G.o.d who has shown us the way out," she whispered brokenly--and dropping down before the chair, her little form shaken with sobs, she hid her face on the Patriarch's knees.

And serene and peaceful as a child in sleep, a smile like a benediction on the saintly face, the Patriarch sat in his armchair by the fireplace where he had been wont to sit in years gone by--and so he had pa.s.sed on.

The Patriarch was dead.

--XXIV--

VALE!

The years have pa.s.sed--but in their pa.s.sing have brought few changes to the little village nestling in the Maine pines that border on the sea.

Not many changes--it is as though Time had touched it loath to touch at all; as though some spirit lingering there, sweet and fresh and vernal, had bade Time stay its hand.

Not many changes--the same familiar faces gather around the stove in the hotel office; and, neither as a memory, nor yet as of one who has gone, but as if he were amongst them, living still, they speak of the Patriarch as of yore.

And with this little circle of kindly, simple folk Time has dealt gently too, for there is only one who is no more--Cale Rodgers, the proprietor of the general store.

But the general store on the village street still flourishes, and in Cale Rodgers' place is one whose speech is still a marvelous thing in staid old New England ears--it is an Irish brogue perhaps, for his name is Michael Coogan. There are little Coogans too, and Mamie is a happy wife. And to the Coogans come sometimes letters from a far-western farm to say that things are well and that prosperity has come to one who signs himself--facetiously it always seems to Mamie who reads the letters to her husband--as Pale Face Harry.

And so the years have pa.s.sed, and it is summer time again. The fields are green; the trees in leaf; the flowers in bloom. And there are visitors who have come again to the scenes of yesterday--a man and woman--and between them a st.u.r.dy little lad of eight. They stop at the end of the wagon track and look out across the lawn.

It is still and peaceful, tranquil--and to them conies the soft, low murmur of the surf. Slowly they walk across the lawn, and pa.s.s beneath the splendid maples--and pause again.

The cottage is like some poet's fancy, hidden shyly in its creepers and its vines; and seems to speak and breathe in its simple beauty of the gentle soul who once had lived there--and loved his fellow-men. It is as it always was, open, free for all to pa.s.s within who wish to enter; for loving hands have cared for it, and grateful purses, opened to its needs, have kept it as--a Shrine.

But they do not enter now, for Madison points to where the sunlight, as it glints through the trees at the far end of the cottage, falls on a slender shaft of marble.

"Let us go there, Helena," he said softly.

And so they walked that way, past the trellises laden with flowers, past the end of the cottage; and presently they stopped again where, beneath the maples' shade, rises the pure white stone--and beyond it is the sweep of the eternal sea.

Madison, his hair streaking just a little gray at the temples now, removed his hat--and his face softened, saddened, as he read the simple inscription: