Seven Miles to Arden Part 14

"Contents don't tally--mine are some very un-Christian thoughts." He abandoned the sandwich and cheese, and settled himself to the more serious business of balancing his remarks. "Billy and I work for the same engineering firm; he walked out for lunch Tuesday and no one has seen him since--unless it's Marjorie Schuyler. Couldn't get anything out of the old man when I first went to see him, and now he's too ill to see any one. Marjorie said she really didn't know where he was, and quit town the next day. Now maybe they don't either of them know what's happened any more than I do; but I think it's infernally queer for a man to disappear and say nothing to his father, the girl he's engaged to, or his best friend. Don't you?"

Patsy's past training stood stanchly by her. She played the part of the politely interested listener--nothing more--and merely nodded her head.

"You see," the man went on, "Billy has a confoundedly queer sense of honor; he can stretch it at times to cover nearly everybody's calamities and the fool shortcomings of all his acquaintances. Why, it wasn't a month ago a crowd of us from the works were lunching together, and the talk came around to speculating. Billy's hard against it on principle, but he happened to say that if he was going in for it at all he'd take cotton. What was in Billy's mind was not the money in it, but the chance to give the South a boost. Well, one of the fellows took it as a straight tip to get rich from the old man's son and put in all he had saved up to be married on; lost it and squealed. And Billy--the big chump--claimed he was responsible for it--that, being the son of his father, he ought to know enough to hold his tongue on some subjects. He made it good to the fellow. I happen to know, for it took every cent of his own money and his next month's salary into the bargain--and that he borrowed from me."

"Wouldn't his father have helped him out?"

Gregory Jessup gave a bitter little laugh. "You don't know the old man or you wouldn't ask. He is just about as soft-hearted and human as a Labrador winter. I've known Billy since we were both little shavers--and, talk about the curse of poverty! It's a saintly benediction compared to a fortune like that and life with the man who made it."

"And--himself, Billy--what does he think of money?"

"I'll tell you what he said once. He had dropped in late after a big dinner where he had been introduced to some one as the fellow who was going to inherit sixty millions some day. Phew! but he was sore! He walked miles--in ten-foot laps--about my den, while he cursed his father's money from Baffin Bay to Cape Horn. 'I tell you, Greg,' he finished up with, 'I want enough to keep the cramps out of life, that's all; enough to help the next fellow who's down on his luck; enough to give the woman I marry a home and not a residence to live in, and to provide the father of my kiddies with enough leisure for them to know what real fatherhood means. I bet you I can make enough myself to cover every one of those necessities; as for the millions, I'd like to chuck them for quoits off the Battery.'"

For a moment Patsy's eyes danced; but the next, something tumbled out of her memory and quieted them. "Then why in the name of Saint Anthony did he choose to marry Marjorie Schuyler?"

"That does seem funny, I know, but that's a totally different side of Billy. You see, all his life he's been falling in with people who made up to him just for his money, and his father had a confounded way of reminding him that he was bound to be plucked unless he kept his wits sharp and distrusted every one. It made Billy sick, and yet it had its effect. He's always been mighty shy with girls--reckon his father brought him up on tales of rich chaps and modern Circes.

Anyway, when he met Marjorie Schuyler it was different--she had too much money of her own to make his any particular attraction, and he finally gave in that she liked him just for himself. That was a proud day for him, poor old Bill!"

"And did she--could she really love him?" Patsy asked the question of herself rather than the man beside her.

But he answered it promptly: "I don't believe Marjorie Schuyler has anything to love with; it was overlooked when she was made. That's what's worrying me. If he's got into a sc.r.a.pe he'd tell Marjorie the first thing; and she's not the understanding, forgiving kind. He hasn't any money; he wouldn't go to his father; and because he's borrowed from me once, he's that idiotic he wouldn't do it again. If Marjorie has given him his papers he's in a jolly blue funk and perfectly capable of going off where he'll never be heard of again.

Hang it all! I don't see why he couldn't have come to me?"

Patsy said nothing while he replenished her plate and helped himself to another sandwich. At last she asked, casually, "Did the two of you ever have a disagreement over Marjorie Schuyler?"

"He asked me once just what I thought of her, and I told him. We never discussed her again."

"No?" Inwardly Patsy was tabulating why Billy Burgeman had not gone to his friend when Marjorie Schuyler failed him. He would hardly have cared to criticize the shortcomings of the girl he loved with the man who had already discovered them.

"What are you two jabbering about?" Janet Payne had left her group and the hectic argument over fas.h.i.+ons.

"Sure, we're thres.h.i.+ng out whether it's the Irish or the suffragettes will rule England when the war is over."

"Well, which is it?"

"Faith! the answer's so simple I'm ashamed to give it. The women will rule England--that's an easy matter; but the Irish will rule the women."

"Then you are one of the old-fas.h.i.+oned kind who approves of a lord and master?" Gregory Jessup looked up at her quizzically.

"'Tis the new fas.h.i.+on you're meaning; having gone out so long since, 'tis barely coming in yet. I'd not give a farthing for the man who couldn't lead me; only, G.o.d help him! if he ever leaves his hands off the halter."

The laugh that followed gave Patsy time to think. There was one more question she must be asking before the others joined them and the conversation became general. She turned to Janet Payne with a little air of anxious inquiry.

"Maybe you'd ask the rascally villain who kidnapped me, when he has it in his mind to keep his promise and fetch me to Arden?"

As the girl left them Patsy turned toward Gregory Jessup again and asked, softly: "Supposing Billy Burgeman has fallen among strangers?

If they saw he was in need of friendliness, would it be so hard to do him a kindness?"

The man shook his head. "The hardest thing in the world. Billy Burgeman has been proud and lonely all his life, and it's an infernal combination. You may know he's out and out aching for a bit of sympathy, but you never offer it; you don't dare. We could never get him to own up as a little shaver how neglected and lonely he was and how he hated to stay in that horrible, gloomy Fifth Avenue house. It wasn't until he had grown up that he told me he used to come and play as often as they would let him--just because mother used to kiss him good-by as she did her own boys."

Gregory Jessup looked beyond the firs to the little lake, and there was that in his face which showed that he was wrestling with a treasured memory. When he spoke again his voice sounded as if he had had to grip it hard against a sign of possible emotion.

"You know Billy's father never gave him an allowance; he didn't believe in it--wouldn't trust Billy with a cent. Poor little shaver--never had anything to treat with at school, the way the rest of the boys did; and never even had car-fare--always walked, rain or s.h.i.+ne, unless his father took him along with him in the machine.

Billy used to say even in those days he liked walking better. Mother died in the winter--snowy time--when Billy was about twelve; and he borrowed a shovel from a corner grocer and cleared stoops all afternoon until he'd made enough to buy two white roses. Father hadn't broken down all day--wouldn't let us children show a tear; but when Billy came in with those roses--well, it was the children who finally had to cheer father up."

Patsy sprang to her feet with a little cry. "I must be going." She turned to the others, a ring of appeal in her voice. "Can't we hurry a bit? There's a deal of work at Arden to be done, and no one but myself to be doing it."

"Rehearsals?" asked Janet Payne.

And Patsy, unheeding, nodded her head.

There was a babel of nonsense in the returning car. Patsy contributed her share the while her mind was busy building over again into a Balmacaan coat and plush hat the semblance of a man.

"Sure, I'm not saying I can make out his looks or the color of his eyes and hair, but he's real, for all that. Holy Saint Patrick, but he's a real man at last, and I'm liking him!" She smiled with deep contentment.

X

JOSEPH JOURNEYS TO A FAR COUNTRY

Having established the permanent reality of Billy Burgeman to her own satisfaction, Patsy's mind went racing off to conjure up all the possible things Billy and the tinker might think of each other as soon as chance should bring them together. Whereas it was perfectly consistent that Billy should shun the consolation and companions.h.i.+p of his own world, he might follow after vagabond company as a thirsty dog trails water; and who could slake that thirst better than the tinker? For a second time that day she pictured the two swinging down the open road together; and for the second time she pulled a wry little smile.

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 pa.s.s.

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.

"d.a.m.n 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?"