Chapter 8

The car was nearing the cross-roads from which Patsy had been originally kidnapped. She looked up to identify it, and saw a second car speeding toward them from the opposite direction, while between the two plodded a solitary little figure, coming toward them, supported by a mammoth pilgrim staff. It was a boy, apparently conscious of but the one car--theirs; and he swerved to their left--straight into the path of the car behind--to let them pass. They sounded their horns, waved their hands, and shouted warnings. It seemed wholly unbelievable that he should not understand or that the other car would not stop. But the unbelievable happened; it does sometimes.

Before Gregory Jessup could jump from their machine the other car had struck and the boy was tossed like a bundle of empty clothing to the roadside beyond. The nightmarish suddenness of it all held them speechless while they gaped at the car's driver, who gave one backward glance and redoubled his speed. Patsy was the first out of the tonneau, and she reached the boy almost as soon as Gregory Jessup.

"Damn them! That's the second time in my life I've seen a machine run some one down and sneak--"

He broke off at Patsy's sharp cry: "Holy Mary keep him! 'Tis the wee lad from Lebanon!"

By this time the rest of the carful had gathered about them; and Dempsy Carter--being a good Catholic--bared his head and crossed himself.

"'Tis wee Joseph of Lebanon," Patsy repeated, dully; and then to Dempsy Carter, "Aye, make a prayer for him; but ye'd best do it driving like the devil for the doctor."

They left at once with her instructions to get the nearest doctor first, and then to go after the boy's parents. Gregory Jessup stayed behind with her, and together they tried to lift the still, little figure onto some rugs and pillows. Then Patsy crept closer and wound her arms about him, chafing his cheeks and hands and watching for some sign of returning life.

The man stood silently beside them, holding the pilgrim staff, while his eyes wandered from Patsy to the child and back to Patsy again, her face full of harboring tenderness and a great suffering as she gathered the little boy into her arms and pressed her warm cheek against the cold one.

Only once during their long wait was the silence broken. "'Tis almost as if he'd slipped over the border," Patsy whispered. "Maybe he's there in the gray dusk--a wee shadow soul waiting for death to loosen its wings and send it lilting into the blue of the Far Country."

"How did you happen to know him?"

"Chance, just. I stopped to tell him a tale of a wandering hero and he--" She broke off with a little moan. "_Ochone!_ poor wee Joseph! did I send ye forth on a brave adventure only to bring ye to this?" Her fingers brushed the damp curls from his forehead. "Laddy, laddy, why didn't ye mind the promise I laid on ye?"

The doctor was kindly and efficient, but professionally non-committal. The boy was badly injured, and he must be moved at once to the nearest house. Somehow they lifted Joseph and held him so as to break the jar of stone and rut as the doctor drove his car as carefully as he could down the road leading to the nearest farm-house.

There they were met with a generous warmth of sympathy and hospitality; the spare chamber was opened, and the farm wife bustled about, turning down the bed and bringing what comforts the house possessed. The doctor stayed as long as he could; but the stork was flying at the other end of the township, and he was forced to leave Patsy in charge, with abundant instructions.

Soon after his leaving the Dempsy Carters returned without Joseph's parents; they had gone to town and were not expected home until "chore time."

"All right," Patsy sighed. "Now ye had best all go your ways and I'll bide till morning."

"But can you?" Janet Payne asked it, wonderingly. "I thought you said you had to be in Arden to-day?"

A smile, whimsical and baffling, crept to the corners of Patsy's mouth. "Sure, life is crammed with things ye think have to be done to-day till they're matched against a sudden greater need. Chance and I started the wee lad on his journey, and 'twas meant I should see him safe to the end, I'm thinking. Good-by."

Gregory Jessup lingered a moment behind the others; his eyes were suspiciously red, and the hands that gripped Patsy's shook the least bit. "I wanted to say something: If--if you should ever happen to run up against Billy Burgeman--anywhere--don't be afraid to do him a kindness. He--he wouldn't mind it from you."

Patsy leaned against the door and watched him go. "There's another good lad. I'd like to be finding him again, too, some day." She pressed her hands over her eyes with a fierce little groan, as if she would blot out the enveloping tragedy along with her surroundings. "Faith! what is the meaning of life, anyway? Until to-day it has seemed such a simple, straight road; I could have drawn a fair map of it myself, marking well the starting-point and tracing it reasonably true to the finish. But to-night--to-night--'tis all a tangle of lanes and byways. There's no sign-post ahead--and God alone knows where it's leading."

She went back to the spare chamber and took up her watching by the bedside; and for the rest of that waning day she sat as motionless as everything else in the room. The farm wife came and went softly, in between her preparations for supper. When it was ready she tried her best to urge Patsy down-stairs for a mouthful.

But the girl refused to stir. "I couldn't. The wee lad might come back while I was gone and find no one to reach him a hand or smile him a welcome."

A little later, as the dark gathered, she begged two candles and stood them on the stand beside the bed. Something in her movements or the flickering light must have pierced his stupor, for Joseph moaned slightly and in a moment opened his eyes.

Patsy leaned over him tenderly; could she only keep him content until the mother came and guard the mysterious borderland against all fear or pain, "Laddy, laddy," she coaxed, "do ye mind me--now?"

The veriest wisp of a smile answered her.

"And were ye for playing Jack yourself, tramping off to find the castle with a window in it for every day in the year?" Her voice was full of gentle, teasing laughter, the voice of a mother playing with a very little child. "I'm hoping ye didn't forget the promise--ye didn't forget to ask for the blessing before ye went, now?"

No sound came; but the boy's lips framed a silent "No." In another moment his eyes were drooping sleepily.

* * * * *

Night had come, and with it the insistent chorus of tree-toad and katydid, interspersed with the song of the vesper sparrow. From the kitchen came the occasional rattle of dish or pan and the far-away murmur of voices. Patsy strained her ears for some sound of car or team upon the road; but there was none.

Again the lids fluttered and opened; this time Joseph smiled triumphantly. "I thought--p'r'aps--I hadn't found you--after all--there was--so many ways--you might ha' went." He moistened his lips. "At the cross-roads--I wasn't quite--sure which to be takin', but I took--the right one, I did--didn't I?"

There was a ring of pride in the words, and Patsy moistened her lips. Something clutched at her throat that seemed to force the words back. "Aye," she managed to say at last.

"An' I've--found you now--you'll have to--promise me not to go back--not where they can get you. Si Perkins said--as how they'd soon forget--if you just stayed away long enough." The boy looked at her happily. "Let's--let's keep on--an' see what lies over the next hill."

To Patsy this was all an unintelligible wandering of mind; she must humor it. "All right, laddy, let's keep on. Maybe we'll be finding a wood full of wild creatures, or an ocean full of ships."

"P'r'aps. But I'd rather--have it a big--big city. I never--saw a city."

"Aye, 'tis a city then"--Patsy's tone carried conviction--"the grandest city ever built; and the towers will be touching the clouds, and the streets will be white as sea-foam; and there will be a great stretch of green meadow for fairs--"

"An' circuses?"

"What else but circuses! And at the entrance there will be a gate with tall white columns--"

The sound Patsy had been listening for came at last through the open windows: the pad-pad-pad of horses' hoofs coming fast.

Joseph looked past Patsy and saw for the first time the candles by his bed. His eyes sparkled. "They _are_--woppin' big columns--an' at night--they have lighted lamps on top--all shinin'. Don't they?"

"Aye, to point the way in the dark."

"It's dark--now." The boy's voice lagged in a tired fashion.

"Maybe we'd best hurry--then."

A door slammed below, and there was a rustle of tongues.

"Who'll be 'tendin' the city gates?" asked Joseph.

"Who but the gatekeeper?"

Muffled feet crept up the stairs.

"Will he let us in?"

"He'll let ye in, laddy; I might be too much of a stranger."

"But I could speak for you. I--I wouldn't like--goin' in alone in the dark."

"Bless ye! ye'd not be alone." Patsy's voice rang vibrant with gladness. "Now, who do you think will be watching for ye, close to the gate? Look yonder!"

Joseph's eyes went back to the candles, splendid, tall columns they were, with beacon lamps capping each. "Who?"

Dim faces looked at him through the flickering light; but there was only one he saw, and it brought the merriest smile to his lips.

"Why--'course it's mother--sure's shootin'!"

* * * * *

Early the next morning Patsy waited on the braided rug outside the spare chamber for Joseph's mother to come out.

"I've been praying ye'd not hate me for the tale I told the little lad that day, the tale that brought him--yonder. And if it isn't overlate, I'd like to be thanking ye for taking me in that night."

The woman looked at her searchingly through swollen lids. "I cal'ate there's no thanks due; your man paid for your keep; he sawed and split nigh a cord o' wood that night--must ha' taken him 'most till mornin'." She paused an instant. "Didn't--he"--she nodded her head toward the closed door behind her--"never tell you what brought him?"

"Naught but that he wanted to find me."

"He believed in you," the woman said, simply, adding in a toneless voice: "I cal'ate I couldn't hate you. I never saw any one make death so--sweet like--as you done for--him."

Patsy spread her hands deprecatingly. "Why shouldn't it be sweet like? Faith! is it anything but a bit of the very road we've been traveling since we were born, the bit that lies over the hill and out of sight?" She took the woman's work-worn hands in hers. "'Tis terrible, losing a little lad; but 'tis more terrible never having one. God and Mary be with ye!"

When Patsy left the house a few minutes later Joseph's pilgrim staff was in her hands, and she stopped on the threshold an instant to ask the way of Joseph's father.

The good man was dazed with his grief and he directed Patsy in terms of his own home-going: "Keep on, and take the first turn to your right."

So Patsy kept on instead of returning to the cross-roads; and chance scored another point in his comedy and continued chuckling.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Joseph's father went back to the spare chamber.

"'S she gone?" inquired Joseph's mother.

"Yep."

"You know, the boy believed in her."

"Yep, I know."

"Well, I cal'ate we've got to, too."

"Sure thing!"

"Ye'll never say a word, then--about seein' her; nuthin' to give the sheriff a hint where she might be?"

"Why, mother!" The man laid a hand on her shoulder, looking down at her with accusing eyes. "Hain't you known me long enough to know I couldn't tell on any one who'd been good to--" He broke off with a cough. "And what's more, do you think any one who could take our little boy's hand and lead him, as you might say, straight to heaven--would be a thief? No, siree!"

* * * * *

It was a sober, thoughtful Patsy that followed the road, the pilgrim staff gripped tightly in her hand. She clung to it as the one tangible thing left to her out of all the happenings and memories of her quest. The tinker had disappeared as completely as if the earth had swallowed him, leaving behind no reason for his going, no hope of his coming again; Billy Burgeman was still but a flimsy promise; and Joseph had outstripped them both, passing beyond her farthest vision. Small wonder, then, that the road was lonely and haunted for Patsy, and that she plodded along shorn of all buoyancy.

Her imagination began playing tricks with her. Twice it seemed as if she could feel a little lad's hand, warm and eager, curled under hers about the staff; another time she found herself gazing through half-shut eyes at a strange lad--a lad of twelve--who walked ahead for a space, carrying two great white roses; and once she glanced up quickly and saw the tinker coming toward her, head thrown back and laughing. Her wits had barely time to check her answering laugh and hands outstretching, when he faded into empty winding road.

The morning was uneventful. Patsy stopped but once--to trundle a perambulator laden with washing and twins for its small conductor, a mite of a girl who looked almost too frail to breast the weight of a doll's carriage.

Even Patsy puffed under the strain of the burden. "How do you do it?" she gasped.

"Well, I started when them babies was tiny and the washin' was small; an' they both growed so gradual I didn't notice--much. An' ma don't make me hurry none."

"How many children are there?"

"Nine. Last's just come. Pa says he didn't look on him as no blessin', but ma says the Lord must provide--an' if it's babies, then it's babies." She stopped and clasped her hands after the fashion of an ancient grandmother tottering in the nineties: "Land o' goodness, I do think an empty cradle's an awful dismal thing to have round. Don't you?"

Patsy agreed, and a moment later unloaded the twins and the washing for the child at her doorstep.

Soon after this she caught her first glimpse of the town she was making. "If luck will only turn stage-manager," she thought, "and put Billy Burgeman in the center of the scene--handy, why, I'll promise not to murder my lines or play under."

It was not luck, however, but chance, still pulling the wires; and accordingly he managed Patsy's entrance as he wished.

The town had one main street, like Lebanon, and in front of the post-office in a two-seated car sat a familiar figure. There was the Balmacaan coat and the round plush hat; and to Patsy, impulsive and heart-strong, it sufficed. She ran nearly the length of the street in her eagerness to reach him.

XI

AND CHANCE STAGES MELODRAMA INSTEAD OF COMEDY

"A brave day to ye!" A little bit of everything that made Patsy was wrapped in the smile she gave the man in the Balmacaan coat standing by the wheel-guard of the car before the town post-office, a hand on the front seat. "Maybe ye're not knowing it, but it's a rare good day for us both. If you'll only take me for a spin in your car I'll tell you what brings me--and who I am--if you haven't that guessed already."

Plainly the occupant of the coat and the car was too much taken by surprise to guess. He simply stared; and by that stare conveyed a heart-sinking impression to Patsy. She looked at the puffed eyes and the grim, unyielding line of the mouth, and she wanted to run. It took all the O'Connell stubbornness, coupled with the things Gregory Jessup had told her about his friend, to keep her feet firm to the sidewalk and her resolution.

"Maybe," she thought, "he's just taken on the look of a rascal because he thinks the world has written him down one. That's often the way with a man; and often it takes but a bit of kindness to change it. If I could make him smile--now--"

Her next remark accomplished this, but it did not mend matters a whit. Patsy's heart turned over disconsolately; and she was safety-locking her wits to keep them from scattering when she made her final plea.

"I'm not staying long, and I want to know you; there's something I have to be saying before I go on my way. 'Twould be easiest if you'd take me for a ride in your car; we could talk quieter there."

She tried to finish with a reasonably cheerful look, but it was a tragic failure. The man was looking past her to the post-office beyond, and the things Patsy had seemed to feel in his face suddenly rose to the surface and revealed themselves with an instant's intensity. Patsy followed the look over her shoulder and shrank away perceptibly.

In the doorway of the office stood another man, younger and more--pronounced. It could mean but one thing: Billy Burgeman had lost his self-respect along with Marjorie Schuyler and had fallen in with foul company.

There were natures that crumbled and went to pieces under distrust and failure--natures that allowed themselves to be blown by passion and self-pity until they burned down into charred heaps of humanity. She had met a few of them in her life; but--thank God!--there were only a few.

She found herself praying that she might not have come too late. Just what she would do or say she could not tell; but she must make him understand that he was not the arbiter of his own life, that in spite of what he had found, there were love and trust and disinterested kindness in the world, lots of it. Money might be a curse, but it was a curse that a man could raise for himself; and a little lad who could shovel snow for half a day to earn two white roses for a dead friend was too fine to be lost out of life's credit-sheet.

She did not wait for any invitation; silently, with a white face, she climbed into the car and sat with hands folded about the pilgrim staff. It was as if she had taken him for granted and was waiting for his compliance to her will. And he understood. He moved the starter, and, as the motor began its chugging, he called out to the man in the doorway:

"Better not wait for me. I seem to have a date with--a lady." There was an unpleasant intonation on the last word.

"Please take a quiet road--where there will not be much passing," commanded Patsy.

She did not speak again until the town lay far behind and they were well on that quiet road. Then she turned partly toward him, her hands still clasped, and when she spoke it was still in the best of the king's English--she had neither feeling nor desire for the intimacy of her own tongue.

"I know it must seem a bit odd to have me, a stranger, come to you this way. But when a man's family and betrothed fail him--why, some one must--make it up--"

He turned fiercely. "How did you know that?"

"I--she--Never mind; I know, that's all. And I came, thinking maybe you'd be glad--"

"Of another?" he laughed coarsely, looking her over with an appraising scrutiny. "Well, a fellow might have a worse--substitute."

Patsy crimsoned. It seemed incredible that the man she had listened to that day in Marjorie Schuyler's den, who had then gripped her sympathies and thereby pulled her after him in spite of past illness and all common sense, should be the man speaking now. And yet--what was it Gregory Jessup had said about him? Had he not implied that old King Midas had long ago warped his son's trust in women until he had come to look upon them all as modern Circes? And gradually shame for herself changed into pity for him. What a shabby performance life must seem to such as he!

She had an irresistible desire to take him with her behind the scenes and show him what it really was; to point out how with a change of line here, a new cue there, and a different drop behind; with a choice of fellow-players, and better lights, and the right spirit back of it all--what a good thing he could make of his particular part. But would he see--could she make him understand? It was worth trying.

"You are every bit wrong," she said, evenly. "Look at me. Do I look like an adventuress? And haven't you ever had anybody kind to you simply because they had a preference for kindness?"

The two looked at each other steadily while the machine crawled at minimum speed down the deserted road. Her eyes never flinched under the blighting weight of his, although her heart seemed to stop a hundred times and the soul of her shrivel into nothing.

"Well," she heard herself saying at last, "don't you think you can believe in me?"

The man laughed again, coarsely. "Believe in you? That's precisely what I'm doing this minute--believing in your cleverness and a deuced pretty way with you. Now don't get mad, my dear. You are all daughters of Eve, and your intentions are very innocent--of course."

Pity and sympathy left Patsy like starved pensioners. The eyes looking into his blazed with righteous anger and a hating distrust; they carried to him a stronger, more direct message than words could have done. His answer was to double the speed of the car.

"Stop the car!" she demanded.

"Oh, ho! we're getting scared, are we? Repenting of our haste?" The grim line of his mouth became more sinister. "No man relishes a woman's contempt, and he generally makes her pay when he can. Now I came for pleasure, and I'm going to get it." An arm shot around Patsy and held her tight; the man was strong enough to keep her where he wished her and steer the car down a straight, empty road. "Remember, I can prove you asked me to take you--and it was your choice--this nice, quiet spin!"

She sat so still, so relaxed under his grip that unconsciously he relaxed too; she could feel the gradual loosening of joint and muscle.

"Why didn't you scream?" he sneered at length.

"I'm keeping my breath--till there's need of it."

Silence followed. The car raced on down the persistently empty road; the few houses they passed might have been tenantless for any signs of human life about them. In the far distance Patsy could see a suspension-bridge, and she wished and wished it might be closed for repairs--something, anything to bring to an end this hideous, nightmarish ride. She groaned inwardly at the thought of it all. She--Patricia O'Connell--who would have starved rather than play cheap, sordid melodrama--had been tricked by chance into becoming an actual, living part of one. She wondered a little why she felt no fear--she certainly had nothing but distrust and loathing for the man beside her--and these are breeders of fear. Perhaps her anger had crowded out all other possible emotion; perhaps--back of everything--she still hoped for the ultimate spark of decency and good in him.

Her silence and apparent apathy puzzled the man. "Well, what's in your mind?" he snapped.

"Two things: I was thinking what a pity it was you let your father throw so much filth in your eyes, that you grew up to see everything about you smirched and ugly; and I was wondering how you ever came to have a friend like Gregory Jessup and a fancy for white roses."

"What in thunder are you talking--"

But he never finished. The scream he had looked for came when he had given up expecting it. Patsy had wrenched herself free from his hold and was leaning over the wind-shield, beckoning frantically to a figure mounted on one of the girders of the bridge. It was a grotesque, vagabond figure in rags, a battered cap on the back of its head.

"Good God!" muttered the man in the car, stiffening.

Luckily for the tinker the car was running again at a moderate speed; the man had slowed up when he saw the rough planking over the bridge, and his hand had not time enough to reach the lever when the tinker was upon him. The car came to an abrupt stop.