Seven Miles to Arden Part 1

Seven Miles to Arden.

by Ruth Sawyer.

I

THE WAY OF IT

Patsy O'Connell sat on the edge of her cot in the women's free ward of the City Hospital. She was pulling on a vagabond pair of gloves while she mentally gathered up a somewhat doubtful, ragged lot of prospects and stood them in a row before her for contemplation, comparison, and a final choice. They strongly resembled the contents of her steamer trunk, held at a respectable boarding-house in University Square by a certain Miss Gibb for unpaid board, for these were made up of a jumble of priceless and worthless belongings, unmarketable because of their extremes.

She had time a-plenty for contemplation; the staff wished to see her before she left, and the staff at that moment was consulting at the other end of the hospital.

Properly speaking, Patsy was Patricia O'Connell, but no one had ever been known to refer to her in that cold-blooded manner, save on the programs of the Irish National Plays--and in the City Hospital's register. What the City Hospital knew of Patsy was precisely what the American public and press knew, what the National Players knew, what the world at large knew--precisely what Patricia O'Connell had chosen to tell--nothing more, nothing less. They had accepted her on her own scanty terms and believed in her implicitly. There was one thing undeniably true about her--her reality. Having established this fact beyond a doubt, it was a simple matter to like her and trust her.

No one had ever thought it necessary to question Patsy about her nationality; it was too obvious. Concerning her past and her family she answered every one alike: "Sure, I was born without either. I was found by accident, just, one morning hanging on to the thorn of a Killarney rose-bush that happened to be growing by the Brittany coast. They say I was found by the Physician to the King, who was traveling past, and that's how it comes I can speak French and King's English equally pure; although I'm not denying I prefer them both with a bit of brogue." She always thought in Irish--straight, Donegal Irish--with a dropping of final g's, a bur to the r's, and a "ye"

for a "you." Invariably this was her manner of speech with those she loved, or toward whom she felt the kins.h.i.+p of sympathetic understanding.

To those who pushed their inquisitiveness about ancestry to the breaking-point Patsy blinked a pair of steely-blue eyes while she wrinkled her forehead into a speculative frown: "Faith! I can hearken back to Adam the same as yourselves; but if it's some one more modern you're asking for--there's that rascal, Dan O'Connell. He's too long dead to deny any claim I might put on him, so devil a word will I be saying. Only--if ye should find by chance, any time, that I'd rather fight with my wits than my fists, ye can lay that to Dan's door; along with the stubbornness of a tinker's a.s.s."

People had been known to pry into her religion; and on these Patsy smiled indulgently as one does sometimes on overcurious children.

"Sure, I believe in every one--and as for a church, there's not a place that goes by the name--synagogue, meeting-house, or cathedral--that I can't be finding a wee bit of G.o.d waiting inside for me. But I'll own to it, honestly, that when I'm out seeking Him, I find Him easiest on some hilltop, with the wind blowing hard from the sea and never a human soul in sight."

This was approximately all the world and the press knew of Patsy O'Connell, barring the fact that she was neighboring in the twenties, was fresh, unspoiled, and charming, and that she had played the ingenue parts with the National Players, revealing an art that promised a good future, should luck bring the chance. Unfortunately this chance was not numbered among the prospects Patsy reviewed from the edge of her hospital cot that day.

The interest of the press and the public approval of the National Irish Players had not proved sufficient to propitiate that iron-hearted monster, Financial Success. The company went into bankruptcy before they had played half their bookings. Their final curtain went down on a bit of serio-comic drama staged, impromptu, on a North River dock, with barely enough cash in hand to pay the company's home pa.s.sage. On this occasion Patsy had missed her cue for the first time. She had been left in the wings, so to speak; and that night she filled the only vacant bed in the women's free ward of the City Hospital.

It was pneumonia. Patsy had tossed about and moaned with the racking pain of it, raving deliriously through her score or more of roles.

She had gone dancing off with the Faery Child to the Land of Heart's Desire; she had sat beside the bier in "The Riders to the Sea"; she had laughed through "The Full o' Moon," and played the Fool while the Wise Man died. The nurses and doctors had listened with open-eyed wonder and secret enjoyment; she had allowed them to peep into a new world too full of charm and lure to be denied; and then of a sudden she had settled down to a silent, grim tussle with the "Gray Brother."

This was all weeks past. It was early June now; the theatrical season was closed for two months, with no prospects in the booking agencies until August. In the mean time she had eight dollars, seventy-six cents, and a crooked sixpence as available collateral; and an unpaid board bill.

Patsy felt sorry for Miss Gibb, but she felt no shame. Boarding-house keepers, dressmakers, bootmakers, and the like must take the risk along with the players themselves in the matter of getting paid for their services. If the public--who paid two dollars a seat for a performance--failed to appear, and box-office receipts failed to margin their salaries, it was their misfortune, not their fault; and others had to suffer along with them. But these debts of circ.u.mstance never troubled Patsy. She paid them when she could, and when she could not--there was always her trunk.

The City Hospital happened to know the extent of Patsy's property; it is their business to find out these little private matters concerning their free patients. They had also drawn certain conclusions from the facts that no one had come to see Patsy and that no communications had reached her from anywhere. It looked to them as if Patsy were down and out, to state it baldly. Now the Patsys that come to free wards of city hospitals are very rare; and the superintendent and staff and nurses were interested beyond the usual limits set by their time and work and the professional hardening of their cardiac region.

"She's not to leave here until we find out just who she's got to look after her until she gets on her feet again, understand"--and the old doctor tapped the palm of his left hand with his right forefinger, a sign of important emphasis.

Therefore the day nurse had gone to summon the staff while Patsy still sat obediently on the edge of her cot, pulling on her vagabond gloves, reviewing her prospects, and waiting.

"My! but we'll miss you!" came the voice from the woman in the next bed, who had been watching her regretfully for some time.

"It's my noise ye'll be missing." And Patsy smiled back at her a winning, comrade sort of smile.

"You kind o' got us all acquainted with one another and thinkin'

about somethin' else but pains and troubles. It'll seem awful lonesome with you gone," and the woman beyond heaved a prodigious sigh.

"Don't ye believe it," said Patsy, with conviction. "They'll be fetching in some one a good bit better to fill my place--ye see, just."

"No, they won't; 'twill be another dago, likely--"

"Whist!" Patsy raised a silencing finger and looked fearsomely over her shoulder to the bed back of her.

Its inmate lay covered to the cheek, but one could catch a glimpse of tangled black hair and a swarthy skin. Patsy rose and went softly over to the bed; her movement disturbed the woman, who opened dumb, reproachful eyes.

"I'll be gone in a minute, dear; I want just to tell you how sorry I am. But--sure--Mother Mary has it safe--and she's keeping it for ye."

She stooped and brushed the forehead with her lips, as the staff and two of the nurses appeared.

"Faith! is it a delegation or a constabulary?" And Patsy laughed the laugh that had made her famous from Dublin to Duluth, where the bankruptcy had occurred.

"It's a self-appointed committee to find out just where you're going after you leave here," said the young doctor.

Patsy eyed him quizzically. "That's not manners to ask personal questions. But I don't mind telling ye all, confidentially, that I haven't my mind made yet between--a reception at the Vincent Wanderl.u.s.ts'--or a musicale at the Ritz-Carlton."

"Look here, la.s.sie"--the old doctor ruffled his beard and threw out his chest like a mammoth pouter pigeon--"you'll have to give us a sensible answer before we let you go one step. You know you can't expect to get very far with that--in this city," and he tapped the bag on her wrist significantly.

Patsy flushed crimson. For the first time in her life, to her knowledge, the world had discovered more about her than she had intended. Those humiliating eight dollars, seventy-six cents, and the crooked sixpence seemed to be scorching their way through the leather that held them. But she met the eyes looking into hers with a flinty resistance.

"Sure, 'twould carry me a long way, I'm thinking, if I spent it by the ha'penny bit." Then she laughed in spite of herself. "If ye don't look for all the world like a parcel of old mother hens that have just hatched out a brood o' wild turkeys!" She suddenly checked her Irish--it was apt to lead her into compromising situations with Anglo-Saxon folk, if she did not leash her tongue--and slid into English. "You see, I really know quite a number of people here--rather well--too."

"Why haven't they come to see you, then?" asked the day nurse, bluntly.

Patsy eyed her with admiration. "You'd never make a press agent--or a doctor, I'm afraid; you're too truthful."

"You see," explained the old doctor, "these friends of yours are what we professional people term hypothetical cases. We'd like to be sure of something real."

One of Patsy's vagabond gloves closed over the doctor's hand. "Bless you all for your goodness! but the people are more real than you think. Everybody believes I went back with the company and I never bothered them with the truth, you see. I've more than one good friend among the theatrical crowd right here; but--well, you know how it is; if you are a bit down on your luck you keep away from your own world, if you can. There is a girl--just about my own age--in society here.

We did a lot for her in the way of giving her a good time when she was in Dublin, and I've seen her quite a bit over here. I'm going to her to get something to do before the season begins. She may need a secretary or a governess--or a--cook. Holy Saint Martin! but I can cook!" And Patsy clasped her hands in an ecstatic appreciation of her culinary art; it was the only one of which she was boastful.

"I'll tell you what," said the old doctor, gruffly, "we will let you go if you will promise to come back if--if no one's at home. It's against rules, but I'll see the superintendent keeps your bed for you to-night."

"Thank you," said Patsy. She waved a farewell to the staff and the ward as she went through the door. "I don't know where I'm going or what I shall be finding, but if it's anything worth sharing I'll send some back to you all."

The staff watched her down the corridor to the elevator.

"Gee!" exclaimed the youngest doctor, his admiration working out to the surface. "When she's made her name I'm going to marry her."

"Oh, are you?" The voice of the old doctor took on its habitual tartness. "Acute touch of philanthropy, what--eh?"

Patricia O'Connell swung the hospital door behind her and stepped out into a blaze of June suns.h.i.+ne. "Holy Saint Patrick! but it feels good. Now if I could be an alley cat for two months I could get along fine."

She cast a backward look toward the granite front of the City Hospital and her eyes grew as blue and soft as the waters of Killarney. "Sure, cat or human, the world's a grand place to be alive in."

II

A SIGN-POST POINTS TO AN ADVENTURE