Seven Miles to Arden Part 23

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 pa.s.ses 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 n.o.bly are troubles they've put into the world themselves. They h.o.a.rd 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 la.s.s with no home, no kin, and that for a 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 encompa.s.singly 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 refres.h.i.+ng. 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 in her 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."

XV

ARDEN

Summer must 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 ingenue fas.h.i.+on 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 coa.r.s.eness 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!"