“Then one day the child played with no one by to watch her; the man had walked over the cliff and forgot ever to come back. Aye, and the child played on till dark came and she fell asleep—there on the door-sill, under the roses. ’Twas a neighbor, passing, that found her, and carried her home to put to bed with her own children. After that the child was taken away to a convent, and the rich children called her ‘la pauvre petite,’ shared their saints’-days’ gifts with her, and bought her candles that she might make anovenato bring her father back again. But ’twas her mother it brought instead.”
Patsy stopped again to listen to the veery; hewas not singing alone now, and she smiled wistfully. “See! he’s found a friend, a comrade to sing with him. That’s grand!” Then she went back to the story:
“The child was taken from the convent in the night and by somber-clad servants who seemed in a great hurry. She was brought a long way to a château, one of the oldest and most beautiful in the south of France; and a small, shrivel-faced man in royal clothes met her at the door and carried her up great marble stairs to a chamber lighted by two tall candles, just. They stopped on the threshold for a breath, and the child saw that a woman was lying in the canopied bed—a very, very beautiful woman. To the child she seemed some goddess—or saint.
“‘Here is the child,’ said the man; and the woman answered: ‘Alone, Réné. Remember you promised—alone.’
“After that the man left them together—the dying woman and her child. Ah!—how can I be telling you the way she fondled and caressed her! How starved were the lips that touched the child’s hair, cheeks, and eyelids! And when her strength failed she drew the child into her tired arms and whispered fragments of prayers, haunting memories, pitiful regrets. Of all the things she said the child remembered but one: ‘Gold buys plentyfor the body, but nothing for the heart—nothing—nothing!’
“And that kept repeating itself over and over in the child’s mind. She remembered it all through the night after they had taken her away from those lifeless arms and she lay awake alone in a terrifying, dark room; she remembered it all through the long day when she sat beside the gorgeous catafalque that held her mother, and watched the tall candles in the dim chapel burn lower and lower and lower. And that was why she refused to stay afterward—and be taken care of by the shrivel-faced man in that oldest and most beautiful château. Instead she slipped out early one morning, before any one was awake to see and mark the way she went. It is unbelievable, sometimes, how children who have the will to do it can lose themselves. And so this child—alone—went out into the world, empty-handed, seeking life.”
“But did she go empty-handed?” asked the tinker.
“Aye, but not empty-hearted, thank God!”
“And wherever the child went, she carried with her that hatred of gold,” mused the tinker.
“Aye; why not? She had learned how pitifully little it was worth, when all’s said and done. ’Twas her father’s name she heard last on her mother’s lips, and it was their child she prayedfor with her dying breath.” Patsy sprang to her feet. “Do ye see—the moon will be beating me to bed, and ’twas a poor tale, after all. How is your foot?”
“Better—much better.”
“Would ye be able to travel on it to-morrow?”
The tinker shook his head. “The day after, perhaps.”
“Well, keep on coaxing it. Good night.” And she had picked up her basket and was gone before the tinker could stumble to his feet.
When the tinker woke the next morning the basket stood just inside the stable door, linked through the pilgrim’s staff. On investigation it proved to contain his breakfast and an envelope, and the envelope contained a ten-dollar bill and a letter, which read:
Dear Lad,—I’ll be well on the road when you get this; and with a tongue in my head and luck at my heels, please God, I’ll reach Arden this time. You need not be afraid to use the money—or too proud, either. It was honestly earned and the charity of no one; you can take it as a loan or a gift—whichever you choose. Anyhow, it will bring you after me faster—which was your own promise.Yours in advance,P. O’Connell
Dear Lad,—I’ll be well on the road when you get this; and with a tongue in my head and luck at my heels, please God, I’ll reach Arden this time. You need not be afraid to use the money—or too proud, either. It was honestly earned and the charity of no one; you can take it as a loan or a gift—whichever you choose. Anyhow, it will bring you after me faster—which was your own promise.
Yours in advance,
P. O’Connell
Surprise, disappointment, indignation, amusement, all battled for the upper hand; but it wasa very different emotion from any of these which finally mastered the tinker. He smoothed the bill very tenderly between his hands before he returned it to the envelope; but he did something more than smooth the envelope.
And meanwhile Patsy tramped the road to Arden.
Thistime there was no mistaking the right road; it ran straight past Quality House to Arden—unbroken but for graveled driveways leading into private estates. Patsy traveled it at a snail’s pace. Now that Arden had become a definitely unavoidable goal, she was more loath to reach it than she had been on any of the seven days since the beginning of her quest. However the quest ended—whether she found Billy Burgeman or not, or whether there was any need now of finding him—this much she knew: for her the road ended at Arden. What lay beyond she neither tried nor cared to prophesy. Was it not enough that her days of vagabondage would be over—along with the company of tinkers and such like? There might be an answer awaiting her to the letter sent from Lebanon to George Travis; in that case she could in all probability count on some dependable income for the rest ofthe summer. Otherwise—there were her wits. The very thought of them wrung a pitiful little groan from Patsy.
“Faith! I’ve been overworking Dan’s legacy long enough, I’m thinking. Poor wee things! They’re needing rest and nourishment for a while,” and she patted her forehead sympathetically.
Of one thing she was certain—if her wits must still serve her, they should do so within the confines of some respectable community; in other words, she would settle down and work at something that would provide her with bed and board until the fall bookings began. And, the road and the tinker would become as a dream, fading with the summer into a sweet, illusive memory—and a photograph. Patsy felt in the pocket of her Norfolk for the latter with a sudden eagerness. It had been forgotten since she had found the tinker himself; but, now that the road was lengthening between them again, it brought her a surprising amount of comfort.
“There are three things I shall have to be asking him—if he ever fetches up in Arden, himself,” mused Patsy as she loitered along. “And, what’s more, this time I’ll be getting an answer to every one of them or I’m no relation of Dan’s. First, I’ll know the fate of the brown dress; he hadn’t a rag of it about him—that’s certain. Next,there’s that breakfast with the lady’s-slippers. How did he come by it? And, last of all, how ever did this picture come on the mantel-shelf of a closed cottage where he knew the way of breaking in and what clothes would be hanging in the chamber closets? ’Tis all too great a mystery—”
“Why, Miss O’Connell—what luck!”
Patsy had been so deep in her musing that a horse and rider had come upon her unnoticed. She turned quickly to see the rider dismounting just back of her; it was Gregory Jessup.
“The top o’ the morning to ye!” She broke into a glad laugh, blessing that luck, herself, which had broken into her disquieting thoughts and provided at least fair company and some news—perhaps. She held out her hand in hearty welcome. “Are ye ‘up so early or down so late’?”
“I might ask that, myself. Is it the habit of celebrated Irish actresses to tramp miles between sun-up and breakfast?”
“’Tis a habit more likely to fasten itself on French cooks, I’m thinking,” and Patsy smiled.
“Then how is a man to account for you?”
“He’d best not try; I’m a mortial poor person to account for. Maybe I’m up early—getting my lines for the next act.”
“Of course. What a stupid duffer I am! Youmust find us plain, plodding Americans horribly short-witted sometimes. Don’t you?”
Patsy shook a contradiction. “It’s your turn, now. What fetched ye abroad at this hour?”
Gregory Jessup slipped his arm through the horse’s bridle and fell into step with her. “Principally because I like the early morning better than any other part of the day; it’s fresh and sweet and unspoiled—like some Irish actresses. There—please don’t mind my crude attempt at poetic—simile,” for Patsy’s eyes had snapped dangerously. “If you only knew how rarely poetry or compliments ever came to roost on this dry tongue, you really wouldn’t want to discourage them when it does happen. Besides, there was another reason for my being up—a downright foolish reason.”
Gregory Jessup accompanied the remark with a downright foolish smile, and then lapsed into silence. In this fashion they walked to the bend of the road where another graveled driveway branched forth; and here the horse stopped of his own accord and whinnied.
“This is the Dempsy Carters’ place—where I’m stopping,” Gregory explained.
“Aye, but the other reason?” Patsy reminded him, her eyes friendly once more.
“Oh—the other reason; I told you it was a foolish one.” He stood rubbing his horse’s noseand looking over the road they had come for some seconds before he finally confessed to it. “It’s Billy, you see. Somehow it occurred to me that if he should be in trouble and at the same time knowing his father was sick—dying—he might be hanging around somewhere near here—uncertain just what to do—and not wanting any one to see him. In that case, the best time to run across him would be early morning before the rest of the people were awake and up. Don’t you think so?”
“It sounds more sensible than foolish; but I don’t think ye’ll ever find him that way. If he was clever enough to let the earth swallow him up, he’s clever enough to keep swallowed. There’s but one way to reach him—and it’s been in my mind since yester-eve.”
A look of surprise came into Gregory Jessup’s face. “Why, Miss O’Connell! I had no idea what I said that day would fasten Billy on your mind like this. It’s awfully good of you; and he’s a perfect stranger—”
Patsy broke in with a whimsical chuckle. “Aye, I’ve grown overpartial to strangers of late; but ye hearken to me. Ye’ll have to leave a sign by the roadside for him—if ye want to reach him. Otherwise he’ll see ye first and be gone before ever ye know he’s about.”
“What kind of a sign?”
“Faith! I’m not sure of that yet—myself. It must be something that will put trust back in a lad and tell him to come home.”
“And where would you put it?”
“Where? On the roadside, just, anywhere along the road he’s used to tramping.”
Gregory Jessup’s face lost its puzzled frown and became suddenly illumined with an inspiration. “I know! By Hec! I’ve got it! There’s that path that runs down from the Burgeman estate to our old cottage. It was a short cut for us kids, and we were almost the only ones to use it. Billy would be far more likely to take that than the highroad—and it leads to the Burgeman farm, too, run by an old couple that simply adore Billy. He might go there when he wouldn’t go anywhere else. That’s the place for a message. But what message?”
“I know!” Patsy clapped her hands. “Have ye a scrap of paper anywheres about ye—and a pencil?”
Hunting through the pockets of his riding-clothes, Gregory Jessup discovered a business letter, the back of which provided ample writing space, and the stub of a red-ink pencil. “We use ’em in the drafting-room,” he explained. “If these will do—here’s a desk,” and he raised theend of his saddle, supporting it with a large expanse of palm.
Patsy accepted them all with a gracious little nod, and, spreading the paper on the improvised desk, she wrote quickly:
“If it do come to passThat any man turn ass,”Thinking the world is blindAnd trust forsworn mankind,“Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame”:Here shall he findBoth trust and peace of mind,An he but leave all foolishness behind.
“With apologies to Willie Shakespeare,” Patsy chuckled again as she returned paper and pencil to their owner. “Ye put it somewhere he’d be likely to look—furninst something that would naturally take his notice.”
“I know just the spot—and they’re in blossom now, too. I’ll fasten it to a rock, there, wedge it in the cracks. Billy won’t miss it if he comes within yards of the place.” He grasped Patsy’s hand with growing fervor that gave promise of developing suddenly into almost anything. “You’re a brick, Miss O’Connell—a solid gold brick of a girl, and I wish—”
“Take care!” warned Patsy. “Ye’re not improvingas fast in your compliments as ye might—and there’s no poetry in gold—for me.”
Gregory Jessup looked puzzled, but his fervor did not abate one whit. “I want you to promise me if you ever need a friend—if there is anything I can ever do—”
“Ye can,” interrupted Patsy, “and ye can do it now. Take that riding-crop of yours and draw me a map in the dust there of the country hereabouts—ye can make a cross for Arden.... That’s grand. Now where would ye put Brambleside Inn? And is it seven miles from there to Arden?”
Gregory nodded an affirmative while he considered Patsy with grave perplexity. Patsy saw it, and smiled reassuringly. “’Tis all right. I’ve always had a great interest entirely to know the geography of every new country—and I haven’t the wits to discover it for myself. Now where would ye put the cross-roads and the Catholic church? And where would Lebanon be? Aye—Did ye ever see an old tabby chasing her tail? Faith! ’tis a very intelligent spectacle, I’m thinking. Now where might ye put the cross-roads where ye picked me up with the Dempsy Carters?... And Dansville?... and the railroad bridge? ... and the golf links, back yonder?”
She stood for many minutes, studying the roughchart in the dust at her feet. The connecting lines of roads between the places named made fully a hundred and twenty degrees of a circle about the cross marking Arden. And as chance would have it, every one of the encircling towns measured approximately seven miles from the central cross. Patsy smiled, and the smile grew to a chuckle—and the chuckle to a long, rippling laugh. Patsy was forced to hold her sides with the ache of it.
“I know ye think I’m crazy—but ’tis the rarest bit of humor this side of Ireland. Willie Shakespeare himself would steal it if he could to put in one of his comedies. There is just one thing I’d like to be knowing—how much of it was chance, and how much was the tricks of a tinker?”
“I don’t think I understand,” mumbled Gregory Jessup.
“Of course ye don’t,” agreed Patsy. “I don’t, myself. But there’s one thing more I’ll be telling ye—if ye’ll swear never to let it pass your lips?”
Patsy paused for dramatic effect while Gregory Jessup bound himself twice over to secrecy. “Well,” she said, at length, “’tis this: If I had the road to travel again I’d pray to Saint Brendan to keep my feet fast to the wrong turn. That’s what!”
Patsy left him, still looking after her in a puzzledfashion; and with quickening steps she passed out of sight.
But once again did she stop; and again it was by a graveled driveway. She was deep in green memories when a figure in nurse’s uniform coming down the drive caught her attention. She was immediately reminded of two facts: that the Burgeman estate was in Arden, and that Burgeman senior was dying. Impulsively she turned toward the nurse.
“Is Mr. Burgeman any better this morning?”
“We hardly expect that.” The nurse’s tone was cordial but professionally cautious.
“I know”—Patsy nodded wisely, as if she had been following the case professionally herself—“but there is often a last rallying of strength. Isn’t there?”
“Sometimes. I hardly think there will be anything very lasting in Mr. Burgeman’s case. There are moments, now, when his strength and will are remarkably vigorous—any other man would be in his bed.”
“Oh! Then he is—up?”
“He’s taken about on a wheeled chair or cot. He is too restless to stay in any place very long. He seems more contented outdoors, where he can watch—” She broke off abruptly. “Lovely morning—isn’t it? Good-by.”
She turned about and went up the drive again. Patsy watched her go, a strange, brooding look in her eyes. “So—he likes to be out of doors best—where he can be watching. And if a body chanced to trespass that way—she might come upon him, sudden like, and stay long enough to set him a-thinking. Would it be too late, now, I wonder?”
She resumed her way—and her memories. She passed a half-dozen more driveways and she climbed a hill; and when she came to the top she found herself looking down on a thickly wooded hamlet. Spires and gabled roofs broke the foliage here and there, and on the rising slope beyond towered a veritable forest. Patsy stood on the brink of the hill and gazed down long and thoughtfully; at last she flung out her arms in an impetuous gesture of confirmation, while the old, whimsical smile crept into her lips.
“‘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.
WhenPatsy 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 PLAYERSUnder the Management of Geo. TravisPresenting 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 mighthave 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.
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 thetwo 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 coolerdrinks. 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 trespassing, 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 clustering 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 Japanese 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; principally 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 whatcomforts 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. God 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?”
The sick man stirred uneasily. “Well—can’t a rich man find the same happiness?”
“Aye, he can; but does he? Does he even want it? Count up the rich men you know, and how many are there—like that?” No answer being given, Patsy continued: “Take the richest man—the very richest man in all this country—do you suppose in all his life he ever saw his own lad watching for him to come home?”
“What do you know about the richest man—and his son?” The sick man had for a moment become again a fiercely bitter, fighting force, a power given to sweeping what it willed before it.He sat with hands clenched, his eyes burning into the girl’s on the ground beside him. “I know what the world says.”
“The world lies; it has always lied.”
“You are wrong. It is a tongue here and a tongue there that bears false witness; but the world passes on the truth; it has to.”
“You forget”—Burgeman senior spoke with difficulty—“it is the rich who bear the burdens of the world’s cares and troubles, and what do they get for it? The hatred of every one else, even their sons! Every one hates and envies the man richer and more powerful than himself; the more he has the more he is feared. He lives friendless; he dies—lonely.”
Patsy rose to her knees and knelt there, shaking her fist—a composite picture of supplicating Justice and accusing Truth. She had forgotten that the man before her was sick—dying; that he must have suffered terribly in spirit as well as body; and that her words were so many barbed shafts striking at his soul. She remembered nothing save the thing against which she was fighting: the hard, merciless possession of money and the arrogant boast of it.
“And you forget that the burden of trouble which the brave rich bear so nobly are troubles they’ve put into the world themselves. Theyhoard their money to buy power; and then they use that power to get more money. And so the chain grows—money and power, money and power! I heard of a rich man once who turned a terrible fever loose all over the land because he bribed the health inspectors not to close down his factories. And after death had swept his books clean he gave large sums of money to stamp out the epidemic in the near-by towns. Faith! that was grand—the bearing of that trouble! And why are the rich hated? Why do they live friendless and die lonely? Not because they hold money, not because they give it away or help others with it. No! But because they use it to crush others, to rob those who have less than they have, to turn their power into a curse. That’s the why!”
Patsy, the fanatic, turned suddenly into Patsy, the human, again. The fist that had been beating the air under his nose dropped and spread itself tenderly on the sick man’s knee. “But I’m sorry you’re lonely. If there was anything you wanted—that you couldn’t buy and I could earn for you—I would get it gladly.”
“I believe you would,” and the confession surprised the man himself more than it did Patsy. “Who are you?” he asked at last.
“No one at all, just; a laggard by the roadside—a lass with no home, no kin, and that fora fortune,” and she flung out her two empty hands, palm uppermost, and laughed.
“And you are audacious enough to think you are richer than I.” This time there was no sneer in his voice, only an amused toleration.
“I am,” said Patsy, simply.
“You have youth and health,” he conceded, grudgingly.
“Aye, and trust in other folks; that’s a fearfully rich possession.”
“It is. I might exchange with you—all this,” and his hand swept encompassingly over his great estate, “for that last—trust in other folks—in one’s own folks!”
“Maybe I’d give it to you for nothing—a little of it at any rate. See, you trust me; and here’s—trust in your son.” Patsy’s voice dropped to a whisper; she leaned forward and opened one of the sick man’s hands, then folded the fingers tightly over something that appeared to be invisible—and precious. “Now, you believe in him, no matter what he’s done; you believe he wouldn’t wrong you or himself by doing anything base; you believe that he is coming back to you—to break the loneliness, and that he’ll find a poor, plain man for a father, waiting him. Don’t you remember the prodigal lad—how his father saw him a long way off and went to meet him?Well, you can meet him with a long-distance trust—understanding. And there’s one thing more; don’t you be so blind or so foolish as to crush him with the weight of ‘all this.’ Mind, he has the right to the making of his own life—for a bit at least; and it’s your privilege to give him that right—somehow. You’ve still a chance to keep him from wanting to pitch your money for quoits off the Battery.”
Patsy sprang to her feet; but Burgeman senior had reached forward quickly and caught her skirt, holding it in a marvelously firm grip. “Then you do know who I am; you’ve known it all along.”
“I know you’re the master of all this, and your lad is the Rich Man’s Son; that’s all.”
“And you think—you think I have no right to leave my son the inheritance I have worked and saved for him.”
“I think you have no right to leave him your—greed. ’Tis a mortal poor inheritance for any lad.”
“Your vocabulary is rather blunt.” Burgeman smiled faintly. “But it is very refreshing. It is a long time since naked truth and I met face to face.”
“But will it do you any good—or is it too late?” Patsy eyed him contemplatively.
“Too late for what?”
“Too late for the inheritance—too late to give it away somewhere else—or loan it for a few years till the lad had a chance to find out if he could make some decent use of it himself. There’s many ways of doing it; I have thought of a few this last half-hour. You might loan it to the President to buy up some of the railroads for the government—or to purchase the coal or oil supply; or you might offer it as a prize to the country that will stop fighting first; or it might buy clean politics into some of the cities—or endow a university.” She laughed. “It’s odd, isn’t it, how a body without a cent to her name can dispose of a few score millions—in less minutes?”
“If you please, sir.” A motionless, impersonal figure in livery stood at a respectful distance behind the wheel-chair. Neither of them had been conscious of his presence.
“Well, Parsons?”
“Mr. Billy, sir, has come back, sir. He and Mr. Fitzpatrick came together. Shall I bring them out here or wheel you inside, sir?”
“Inside!” Burgeman senior almost shouted it. Then he turned to Patsy and there was more than mere curiosity in his voice: “Who are you?”
“No one at all, just; a laggard by the roadside,” she repeated, wistfully. And then she added inher own Donegal: “But don’t ye let the lagging count for naught. Promise me that!”
The sick man turned his head for a last look at her. “Such a simple promise—to throw away the fruits of a lifetime!” Bitterness was in his voice again, but Patsy caught the muttering under his breath. “I might think about the boy, though, if the Lord granted me time.”
“Amen!” whispered Patsy.
She scrambled down the bank the way she had come. For a moment she stopped by the lake and skimmed a handful of white pebbles across its mirrored surface. She watched the ripples she had made spread and spread until they lost themselves in the lake itself, leaving behind no mark where they had been.
“Yonder’s the way with the going and coming of most of us, a little ripple and naught else—unless it is one more stone at the bottom.” She heaved a sigh. “Well, the quest is over, and I’ve never laid eyes on the lad once. But it’s ended well, I’m thinking; aye, it’s ended right for him.”
Summermust have made one day in June purposely as a setting for a pastoral comedy; and chance stole it, like a kindly knave, and gave it to the Sylvan Players. Never did a gathering of people look down from the rise of a natural amphitheater upon a fairer scene; a Forest of Arden, built by the greatest scenic artist since the world began. Birds flew about the trees and sang—whenever the orchestra permitted; a rabbit or two scuttled out from under rhododendron-bushes and skipped in shy ingénue fashion across the stage; while overhead a blue, windless sky spread radiance about players and audience alike.
Shorn of so much of the theatricalism of ordinary stage performances, there was reality and charm about this that warmed the spectators into frequent bursts of spontaneous enthusiasm which were as draughts of elixir to the players.Those who were playing creditably played well; those who were playing well excelled themselves, and Patsy outplayed them all.
She lived every minute of the three hours that spanned the throwing of Charles, the wrestler, and her promise “to make all this matter even.” There was no touch of coarseness in her rollicking laughter, no hoydenish swagger in her masquerading; it was all subtly, irresistibly feminine. And George Travis, watching from the obscurity of a back seat, pounded his knee with triumph and swore he would make her the greatest Shakespearean actress of the day.
As Hymen sang her parting song, Patsy scanned the sea of faces beyond the bank of juniper which served instead of footlights. Already she had picked out Travis, Janet Payne and her party, the people from Quality House, who still gaped at her, unbelieving, and young Peterson-Jones, looking more melancholy, myopic, and poetical than before. But the one face she hoped to find was missing, even among the stragglers at the back; and it took all her self-control to keep disappointment and an odd, hurt feeling out of her voice as she gave the epilogue.
On the way to her tent—a half-score of them were used as dressing-rooms behind the stage—George Travis overtook her. “It’s all right, girl.You’ve made a bigger hit than even I expected. I’m going to try you out in—”
Patsy cut him short. “You sat at the back. Did you see a vagabond lad hanging around anywhere—with a limp to him?”
The manager looked at her with amused toleration. “Does a mere man happen to be of more consequence this minute than your success? Oh, I say, that’s not like you, Irish Patsy!”
She crimsoned, and the manager teased no more. “We play Greyfriars to-morrow and back to Brambleside the day after; and I’ve made up my mind to try you out there in Juliet. If you can handle tragedy as you can comedy, I’ll star you next winter on Broadway. Oh, your future’s very nearly made, you lucky girl!”
But Patsy, slipping into her tent, hardly heard the last. If they played Greyfriars the next day, that meant they would leave Arden on the first train after they were packed; and that meant she was passing once and for all beyond tramping reach of the tinker. There was a dull ache at her heart which she attempted neither to explain nor to analyze; it was there—that was enough. With impatient fingers she tore off Rosalind’s wedding finery and attacked her make-up. Then she lingered over her dressing, hoping to avoid the rest of the company and any congratulatory friendswho might happen to be browsing around. She wanted to be alone with her memories—to have and to hold them a little longer before they should grow too dim and far away.
A hand scratched at the flap of her tent and Janet Payne’s voice broke into her reverie: “Can’t we see you, please, for just a moment? We’ll solemnly promise not to stay long.”
Patsy hooked back the flap and forced the semblance of a welcome into her greeting.
“It was simply ripping!” chorused the Dempsy Carters, each gripping a hand.
Janet Payne looked down upon her with adoring eyes. “It was the best, the very best I’ve ever seen you or any one else play it. For the first time Rosalind seemed a real girl.”
But it was the voice of Gregory Jessup that carried above the others: “Have you heard, Miss O’Connell? Burgeman died last night, and Billy was with him. He’s come home.”
“Faith! then there’s some virtue in signs, after all.”
A hush fell on the group. Patsy suddenly put out her hand. “I’m glad for you—I’m glad for him; and I hope it ended right. Did you see him?”
“For a few minutes. There wasn’t time to say much; but he looked like a man who had won out. He said he and the old man had had a goodtalk together for the first time in their lives—said it had given him a father whose memory could never shame him or make him bitter. I wanted to tell you, so you wouldn’t have him on your mind any longer.”
She smiled retrospectively. “Thank you; but I heaved him off nearly twenty-four hours ago.”
Left to herself again, she finished her packing; then tying under her chin a silly little poke-bonnet of white chiffon and corn-flowers, still somewhat crushed from its long imprisonment in a trunk, she went back for a last glimpse of the Forest and her Greenwood tree.
The place was deserted except for the teamsters who had come for the tents and the property trunks. A flash of white against the green of the tree caught her eye; for an instant she thought it one of Orlando’s poetic effusions, overlooked in the play and since forgotten. Idly curious, she pulled it down and read it—once, twice, three times: