Chapter 10

Burgeman, senior, had offered only one remark to the director, given cynically with a nervous jerking of the shoulders and twitching of the hands: "He was needing pocket-money, a small sum to keep him in shoe-laces and collar-buttons, I dare say. That's the way rich men's sons keep their fathers' incomes from getting too cumbersome."

Burgeman, senior, had been ill then--confined to his room; but the next day his condition had become alarming. He was now dying at his home in Arden and his son could not be found. These last two statements were not merely gossip, but facts.

Patsy listened impatiently to the parlor maid arguing the matter of Billy's guilt with the butler. Their work was finished, and they were passing through the kitchen on their way to the servants' hall.

"Of course he took it"--the maid's tone was positive--"those rich men's sons always are a bad lot."

"'E didn't take it, then. 'Is father's playin' some mean game on 'im--that's what. Hi worked five months hin that 'ouse an' Hi'd as lief work for the devil!" And the butler pounded his fist for emphasis.

It took all Patsy's self-control to refrain from launching into the argument herself, and that in the Irish tongue. She saved herself, however, by resorting to that temper of which she had boasted, and hurled at the two a torrent of words which sounded to them like the most horrible pagan blasphemy, and from which they fled in genuine horror. In reality it was the names of all the places in France that Patsy could recall with rapidity.

When the kitchen was empty once more Patsy systematically gathered together all that she knew and all that she had heard of Billy Burgeman, and weighed it against the bare possible chance she might have of helping him should she continue her quest. And in the end she made her decision unwaveringly.

"Troth! a conscience is a poor bit of property entirely," she sighed, as she stood the pate-shells on the ledge of the range to dry. "It drives ye after a man ye don't care a ha'penny about, and it drives ye from the one that ye do. Bad luck to it!"

* * * * *

That night Patsy sat under the trees with the tinker while he ate his supper. A half-grown moon lighted the feast for them, for Patsy took an occasional mouthful at the tinker's insistence that dining alone was a miserably unsociable affair.

"To watch ye eat that pate de fois gras a body would think ye had been reared on them. Honest, now, have ye ever tasted one before in your life?"

"I have."

"Then--ye have sat at rich men's tables?"

"Or perhaps I have begged at rich men's doors. Maybe that is how I came to have a distaste for their--charity."

"Who are ye? Ye know I'd give the full of my empty pockets to know who ye are, and what started ye tramping the road--in rags."

The tinker considered a moment. "Perhaps I took the road because I believed it led to the only place I cared to find. Perhaps I lost the way to it, as you lost yours to Arden, and in the losing I found--something else. Perhaps--perhaps--oh, perhaps a hundred things; but I'll make another bargain with you. I'll tell you all about it when we reach Arden, if you'll tell me the name of the lad you came to find."

"I'll do more than that--I'll bring ye together and let ye help mend him," and she stretched forth her hand to clinch the bargain.

They sat in silence under the spattering of moonlight that sifted down through the branches; for the moment the tinker had forgotten his hunger.

"Well?" queried Patsy at last. "A ha'penny for them."

"I'm thinking the same old thoughts I've thought a hundred times already--since that first day: What makes you so different from everybody else? What ever sent you out into the world with your gospel of kindness--on your lips and in your hands?"

"Would ye really like to know?" Patsy's fingers stole through the grass about them. "Faith! the world's not so soft and green as this under every one's feet. Ye see 'twas by a thorn I was found hanging to that Killarney rose-bush in Brittany, and I've always remembered the feeling of it."

"I always suspected that the people who fell heir to stinging memories generally went through life hugging their own troubles, and letting the rest of the world hug theirs."

"I don't believe it!" Patsy shook her head fiercely. "What's the use of all the pain and sorrow and trouble scattered about everywhere if it can't put a cure for others into the hands of those who have first tasted it? And what better cure can ye find than kindness; isn't it the best thing in the world?"

"Is it? Can it cure--gold?"

"And why not? If every man had more kindness than he had gold, would neighbor ever have to fear neighbor or childther go hungry for love?" The tinker did not answer, and Patsy went on with a deepening intensity: "I'll tell ye a tale--a foolish tale that keeps repeating itself over and over in my memory like the tick-tick-tick of a clock. Ye know that the Jesuit Fathers say--give them the care of a child till he's ten and nothing afterward matters. Well, it's true; a child can feel all the sweetness or bitterness, hunger or plenty, that life holds before he is that age even."

Patsy stopped. A veery was singing in the woods close by, and she listened for a moment. "Hearken to that bird, now. A good-for-naught lad may have stolen his nest, or a cat filched his young, or his sons and daughters flown away and left him; but he'll sing, for all that. 'Tis a pity the rest of us can't do as well."

"Yes," agreed the tinker, "but the story--"

"Aye, the story. It begins with a wee white cottage in Brittany, fronted by roses and backed by great cliffs and the open sea." Patsy clasped her hands about her knees, while her eyes left the shadow of the trees and traveled to the open where the moonlight spread silvery clear and unbroken. And the tinker, watching, knew that her eyes were seeing the things of which she was telling. "A wee white cottage--the roses and the cliffs," repeated Patsy, "and a great, grim, silent figure of a man sitting there idle all day, watching a little lass at her play. Just the man and the child. And the trouble in his mind that had kept the man silent and idle was an old, old trouble--old as the peopled world itself.

"Long before, he had married a woman who cared for two things--love and gold; and he had but the one to give her. She had been a great actress, a favorite at the Comedie Francaise; but she left her work and all the applause and adulation for him, an expatriated Irishman with naught but a great love, because she thought she cared for love more. They had been wonderfully happy at first; he wrote beautiful verses about her--and his beloved motherland, and she said them for him in that wonderful singing voice of hers that had made her the idol of half of France. And she had made a game of their poverty in the wee white cottage with the roses--until her child was born and poverty could no longer be played at. Then work became drudgery, and love naught. The woman went back to her theater--and another man, a man who had gold a-plenty. And the child grew up playing alone beside the silent, grim Irishman.

"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 a _novena_ to bring her father back again. But 'twas her mother it brought instead."

Patsy stopped again to listen to the veery; he was 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 chateau, 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, Rene. 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 plenty for 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 chateau. 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 prayed for 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

Surprise, disappointment, indignation, amusement, all battled for the upper hand; but it was a 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.

XIII

A MESSAGE AND A MAP

This time 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 of the 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! You must 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 nose and 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 the end 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 pass That any man turn ass," Thinking the world is blind And trust forsworn mankind, "Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame": Here shall he find Both 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 improving as 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 rough chart 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 puzzled fashion; 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?"