The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Miracle Man, by Frank L. Packard
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Title: The Miracle Man
Author: Frank L. Packard
Release Date: April 7, 2005 [EBook #15578]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIRACLE MAN ***
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THE
MIRACLE MAN
BY
FRANK L. PACKARD
AUTHOR OF
GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN, ETC.
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
1914
TO
NEARLY
EVERYBODY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE "ROOST"
II A NEW CULT
III NEEDLEY
IV THE PATRIARCH
V A STRANGE CONVERSATION
VI OFFICIALLY ENDORSED
VII THE PATRIARCH'S GRAND NIECE
VIII IN WHICH THE BAIT IS NIBBLED
IX THE PILGRIMAGE
X THE MIRACLE
XI THE AFTERMATH
XII "SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY"
XIII REAL MONEY
XIV KNOTTING THE STRINGS
XV THE MIRACLE OVERDONE
XVI A FLY IN THE OINTMENT
XVII IN WHICH HELENA TAKES A RIDE
XVIII THE BOOMERANG
XIX THE SANCTUARY OF DARKNESS
XX TO THE VICTOR ARE THE SPOILS
XXI FACE VALUE
XXII THE SHRINE
XXIII THE WAY OUT
XXIV VALE!
THE MIRACLE MAN
--I--
THE "ROOST"
He was a misshapen thing, bulking a black blotch in the night at the
entrance of the dark alleyway--like some lurking creature in its lair.
He neither stood, nor kneeled, nor sat--no single word would describe
his posture--he combined all three in a sort of repulsive, formless
heap.
The Flopper moved. He came out from the alleyway onto the pavement, into
the lurid lights of the Bowery, flopping along knee to toe on one leg,
dragging the other leg behind him--and the leg he dragged was limp and
wobbled from the knee. One hand sought the pavement to balance himself
and aid in locomotion; the other arm, the right, was twisted out from
his body in the shape of an inverted V, the palm of his hand, with half
curled, contorted fingers, almost touching his chin, as his head sagged
at a stiff, set angle into his right shoulder. Hair straggled from the
brim of a nondescript felt hat into his eyes, and curled, dirty and
unshorn, around his ears and the nape of his neck. His face was covered
with a stubble of four days' growth, his body with rags--a coat; a
shirt, the button long since gone at the neck; and trousers gaping in
wide rents at the knees, and torn at the ankles where they flapped
around miss-mated socks and shoes.
A hundred, two hundred people passed him in a block, the populace of the
Bowery awakening into fullest life at midnight, men, women and
children--the dregs of the city's scum--the aristocracy of upper Fifth
Avenue, of Riverside Drive, aping Bohemianism, seeking the lure of the
Turkey Trot, transported from the Barbary Coast of San Francisco. Rich
and poor, squalor and affluence, vice and near-vice surged by him,
voicing their different interests with laughter and sobs and soft words
and blasphemy, and, in a sort of mocking chorus, the composite effect
rose and fell in pitiful, jangling discords.
Few gave him heed--and these few but a cursory, callous glance. The
Flopper, on the inside of the sidewalk, in the shadow of the buildings,
gave as little as he got, though his eyes were fastened sharply, now
ahead, now, screwing around his body to look behind him, on the faces of
the pedestrians as they passed; or, rather, he appeared to look through
and beyond those in his immediate vicinity to the ones that followed in
his rear from further down the street, or approached him from the next
corner.
Suddenly the Flopper shrank into a doorway. From amidst the crowd
behind, the yellow flare of a gasoline lamp, outhanging from a
secondhand shop, glinted on brass buttons. An officer, leisurely
accommodating his pace to his own monarchial pleasure, causing his
hurrying fellow occupants of the pavement to break and circle around
him, sauntered casually by. The Flopper's black eyes contracted with
hate and a scowl settled on his face, as he watched the policeman pass;
then, as the other was lost again in the crowd ahead, he once more
resumed his progress down the block.
The Flopper crossed the intersecting street, his leg trailing a
helpless, sinuous path on its not over-clean surface, and started along
the next block. Halfway down was a garishly lighted establishment. When
near this the Flopper began to hurry desperately, as from further along
the street again his ear caught the peculiar raucous note of an
automobile horn accompanied by the rumbling approach of a heavy motor
vehicle. He edged his way now, wriggling, squirming and dodging between
the pedestrians, to the outer edge of the sidewalk, and stopped in front
of the music hall.
A sight-seeing car, crammed to capacity, reaching its momentary Mecca,
drew up at the curb; and the guide's voice rose over the screech of the
brakes:
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, we will get out here for a little while.
This is Black Ike's famous Auditorium, the scene of last week's
sensational triple murder! Please remember that there is no charge for
admission to patrons of the company. Just show your coupons, ladies and
gentlemen, and walk right ahead."
The passengers began to pour from the long seats to the ground. The
Flopper's hat was in his hand.
"Fer God's sake, gents an' ladies, don't pass me by," he cried
piteously. "I could work once, but look at me now--I was run over by a
fire truck. God bring pity to yer hearts--youse have money fer pleasure,
spare something fer me."
The first man down from the seat halted and stared at the twisted,
unsightly thing before him, and, with a little gasp, reached into his
pocket and dropped a bill into the Flopper's hat.
"God bless you!" stammered the Flopper--and the tears sprang swimming to
his eyes.
The first man passed on with a gruff, "Oh, all right," but he had left
an example behind him that few of his fellow passengers ignored.
"T'ank you, mum," mumbled the Flopper, as the money dropped into his
hat. "God reward you, sir.... Ah, miss, may you never know a tear....
'Twas heaven brought you 'ere to-night, lady."
They passed, following the guide. The Flopper scooped the money into a
pile in his hat, began to tuck it away in some recess of his shirt--when
a hand was thrust suddenly under his nose.
"Come on, now, divvy!" snapped a voice in his ear.
It was the driver of the car, who had dropped from his seat to the
ground. A gleam of hate replaced the tears in the Flopper's eyes.
"Go to hell!" he snarled through thin lips--and his hand closed
automatically over the cap.
"Come on, now, I ain't got no time to fool!" prompted the man, with a
leer. "I'm dead onto your lay, and there's a bull comin' along now--half
or him, which?"
The Flopper's eyes caught the brass buttons of the officer returning on
his beat, and his face was white with an inhuman passion, as, clutching
a portion of what was left in the hat, he lifted his hand from the rest.
"Thanks!" grinned the chauffeur, snatching at the remainder. "'Tain't
half, but it'll do"--and he hurried across the sidewalk, and disappeared
inside a saloon.
Oaths, voicing a passion that rocked the Flopper to his soul, purled in
a torrid stream from his lips, and for a moment made him forget the
proximity of the brass buttons. He raised his fist, that still clenched
some of the money, and shook it after the other--and his fist, uplifted
in midair, was caught in a vicious grip--the harness bull was standing
over him.
"Beat it!" rasped the officer roughly, "or I'll--hullo, what you got
here? Open your hand!"--he gave a sharp twist as he spoke, the
Flopper's fingers uncurled, and the money dropped into the policeman's
other hand--held conveniently below the Flopper's.
"It's mine--gimme it back," whined the Flopper.
"Yours! Yours, is it!" growled the officer. "Where'd you get it? Stole
it, eh? Go on, now, beat it--or I'll run you in! Beat it!"
With twitching fingers, the Flopper picked up his cap, placed it on his
head and sidled away. Ten yards along, in the shadow of the buildings
again, he looked back--the officer was still standing there, twirling
his stick, one hand just emerging from his pocket. The Flopper's finger
nails scratched along the stone pavement and curved into the palm of his
hand until the skin under the knuckles was bloodless white, and his lips
moved in ugly, whispered words--then, still whispering, he went on
again.
Down the Bowery he went like a human toad, keeping in the shadows,
keeping his eyes on the ground before him, a glint like a shudder in
their depths--on he went with hopping, lurching jerks, with whispering
lips. Street after street he passed, and then at a corner he turned and
went East--not far, only to the side entrance of the saloon on the
corner known, to those who _knew_, as the "Roost."
The door before which he stopped, on a level with the street, might
readily have passed for the entrance to one of the adjoining tenements,
for it was innocent to all appearances of any connection with the
unlovely resort of which it was a part--and it was closed.
The Flopper rang no bell. After a quick glance around him to assure
himself that he was not observed, he reached up for the doorknob, turned
it, and with surprising agility hopped oven the threshold and closed the
door behind him.
A staircase, making one side of a narrow and dimly lighted hall, from
down whose length came muffled sounds from the barroom, was before him;
and this, without hesitation, the Flopper began to mount, his knee
thumping from step to step, his dangling leg echoing the sound in a
peculiar; quick double thump. He reached the first landing, went along
it, and started up the second flight--but now the thumping sound he made
seemed accentuated intentionally, and upon his face there spread a grin
of malicious humor.
He halted before the door opposite the head of the second flight of
stairs, opened it, wriggled inside and shut it behind him.
"Hullo, Helena!" he snickered. "Pipe me comin'?"
The room was a fairly large one, gaudily appointed with cheap
furnishings, one of the Roost's private parlors--a girl on a couch in
the corner had raised herself on her elbow, and her dark eyes were fixed
uncompromisingly upon the Flopper, but she made no answer.
The Flopper laughed--then a spasm seemed to run through him, a horrible
boneless contortion of limbs and body, a slippery, twitching movement,
a repulsive though almost inaudible clicking of rehabilitated
joints--and the Flopper stood erect.
The girl was on her feet, her eyes flashing.
"Can that stunt!" she cried angrily. "You give me the shivers! Next time
you throw your fit, you throw it before you come around me, or I'll make
you wish you had--see?"
The Flopper was swinging legs and arms to restore a normal channel of
circulation.
"Y'oughter get used to it," said he, with a grin. "Ain't Pale Face Harry
come yet, an' where's the Doc?"
"Behind the axe under the table," said the girl tartly--and flung
herself back on the couch.
"T'anks," said the Flopper. "Say, Helena, wot's de new lay de Doc has
got up his sleeve?"
Helena made no answer.
"Is yer grouch painin' you so's yer tongue's hurt?" inquired the Flopper
solicitously.
Still no answer.
"Well, go to the devil!" said the Flopper politely.
He resumed the swinging of his arms and legs, but stopped suddenly a
moment later as a step, sounded outside in the hall and he turned
expectantly.
A young man, thin, emaciated, with gaunt, hollow face, abnormally bright
eyes and sallow skin, entered. He was well, but modestly, dressed; and
he coughed a little now, as though the two flights' climb had overtaxed
him--it was the man who had headed the subscription list to the Flopper
half an hour before in front of Black Ike's Auditorium.
"Hello, Helena!" he greeted, nodding toward the couch. "I shook the
rubber-neck bunch at Ike's, Flopper. That was a peach of a haul, eh, old
pal--the boobs came to it as though they couldn't get enough."
A sudden and reminiscent scowl clouded the Flopper's face. He stepped to
the table, reached his hand into his shirt, and flung down a single
one-dollar bill and a few coins.
"Dere's de haul, Harry--help yerself"--his invitation was a snarl.
Pale Face Harry had followed to the table. He looked first at the money,
then at the Flopper--and a tinge of red dyed his cheek. He coughed
before he spoke.
"Y'ain't going to stall on _me_, Flopper, are you?" he demanded, in an
ominous monotone.
"Stall!"--the word came away in a roar too genuine to leave any doubt of
the Flopper's sincerity, or the turbulent state of the Flopper's soul.
"Stall nothin'! De driver held me up fer some of it, an' de cop pinched
de rest."
"And you the king of Floppers!" breathed Pale Face Harry sadly. "D'ye
hear that, Helena? Come over here and listen. Go ahead, Flopper, tell us
about it."
Helena rose from the couch and came over to the table.
"Poor Flopper!" said she sweetly.
"Shut up!" snapped the Flopper savagely.
"Go on," prompted Pale Face Harry. "Go on, Flopper--tell us about it."
"I told you, ain't I?" growled the Flopper. "De driver called a divvy
wid de cop comin', an I had ter shell--an' wot he left de cop pinched.
Dat's all"--the Flopper's mouth was working again with the rage that
burned within him.
Pale Face Harry, with pointed forefinger, gingerly and facetiously laid
the coins out in a row on the table.
"And you the king of Floppers!" he murmured softly. "It's a wonder you
didn't let the Salvation Army get the rest away from you on the way
along!"
Helena laughed--but the Flopper didn't. He stepped close to Pale Face
Harry, and shoved his face within an inch of the other's.
"You close yer jaw," he snarled, "or I'll make yer map look like wot's
goin' ter happen ter dat cross-eyed snitch of a guy dat did me--him an'
de harness bull, when I--" The Flopper stopped abruptly, and edged away
from Pale Face Harry. "Hullo, Doc," he said meekly. "I didn't hear youse
comin' in."
A man, fair-haired, broad-shouldered, immaculate in well-tailored
tweeds, reliant in poise, leaned nonchalantly against the door--inside
the room. He was young, not more than twenty-eight, with clean-shaven,
pleasant, open face--a handsome face, marred only to the close observer
by the wrinkles beginning to pucker around his eyes, and a slight,
scarcely discernible puffiness in his skin--"Doc" Madison, gentleman
crook and high-class, polished con-man, who had lifted his profession to
an art, was still too young to be indelibly stamped with the hall-marks
of dissipation.
His gray eyes travelled from one to another, lingered an instant on
Helena, and came back to the Flopper.
"What's the trouble?" he demanded quietly.
It was Pale Face Harry who answered him.
"The Flopper's got it in for a couple of ginks that handed him one--a
bull and a chauffeur on a gape-wagon," he grinned, punctuating his words
with a cough. "The Flopper's got an idea the corpse-preserver's business
is dull, and he's going to help 'em out with two orders and pay for the
flowers himself."
Doc Madison shook his head and smiled a little grimly.
"Forget it, Flopper!" he said crisply. "I've something better for you to
do. You fade away, disappear and lay low from this minute. I don't care
what you do when you're resurrected, but from now on the three of you
are dead and buried, and the police go into mourning for at least six
months."
"What you got for us, Doc?--something nice?"--Helena pushed Pale Face
Harry and the Flopper unceremoniously out of her line of vision as she
spoke.
"Yes--the drinks. Cleggy's bringing them," Madison laughed--and opened
the door, as the tinkle of glass and a shuffling footstep sounded
without.
A man, big, hulking, thick-set and slouching, with shifty, cunning
little black eyes and the face of a bruiser, his nose bent over and
almost flattened down on one cheek, entered the room, carrying four
glasses on a tin tray. He set down the tray, and, as he lifted the
glasses from it and placed them on the table, he leered around at the
little group.
"Gee!" he said, sucking in his breath. "De Doc, an' Helena, an' Pale
Face, an' de Flopper! Gee, dis looks like de real t'ing--dis looks like
biz."
"It does--fifty-cents' worth--ten for yourself," said Doc Madison
suavely, flipping the coin into the tray. "Now, clear out!"
"Say"--Cleggy put his forefinger significantly to the side of his
nose--"say, can't youse let a sport in on--"
"Clear out!" Doc Madison broke in quite as suavely as before--but there
was a sudden glint of steel in the gray eyes as they held the bruiser's,
and Cleggy, hastily picking up the tray, scuffled from the room.
Madison watched the door close, then he began to pace slowly up and down
the room.
"Pull the chairs up to the table so we can take things comfortably," he
directed.
"There ain't but two," grinned Pale Face Harry.
"Oh, well, never mind," said Madison.
"Slew the couch around and pull that up--Helena and I will sit on the
head of it."
Still pacing up and down the length of the room, his hands in his
pockets, Doc Madison watched the others as they carried out his
directions; and then, suddenly, as he neared the door, his hand shot
out, wrenched the door open, and, quick as a panther in its spring, he
was in the hall without.
There was a yell, a scuffle, the rip and crash of rending bannisters, an
instant's silence, then a heavy thud--and then Cleggy's voice from
somewhere below in a choice and fervent flow of profanity.
Doc Madison re-entered the room, closed the door, dispassionately
arranged a disordered cuff, brushed a few particles of dust from his
sleeves and shoulder, and, this done, started toward the table--and
stopped.
Helena had swung herself to the table edge, and, glass in hand, dangling
her neatly shod little feet, was smoking a cigarette, her brown hair
with a glint of amber in it, her dark eyes veiled now by their heavy
lashes; on the other side of the table Pale Face Harry coughed, as, with
sleeve rolled back, he was intent on the hypodermic needle he was
pushing into his arm; while the Flopper, his eyes with a dog-like
admiration in them fixed on Madison, stood facing the door, a grotesque,
unpleasant figure, unkempt, unshaven, furtive-faced, his rags hanging
disreputably about him, his trousers with their frayed edges, now that
he stood upright, reaching far above his boot tops and flagrantly
exposing his wretched substitutes for socks.
Doc Madison reached thoughtfully into his pocket, brought out a silver
cigarette case, and carefully selected a cigarette from amongst its
fellows.
"Yes; Cleggy was right," he said softly, tapping the end of the
cigarette on his thumb nail. "You're the real thing--the real, real
thing."
--II--
A NEW CULT
Doc Madison swung Helena lightly down from the table to the head of the
couch, sat down beside her, one arm circling her waist, and motioned the
Flopper to a chair--then he leaned forward and watched Pale Face Harry
critically, as the latter carefully replaced the shining little
hypodermic in its case.
"Harry," said he abruptly, jerking his free hand toward the hypodermic,
"could you give up that dope-needle?"
"Sure, I could--if I wanted to!" asserted Pale Face Harry defiantly.
"That's good," said Madison cheerfully. "Because you'll have to."
"Eh?"--Pale Face Harry stared at Doc Madison in amazement.
"Because you'll have to--by and by," said Madison coolly. "And how about
that cough--can you quit coughing?"
"When I'm dead--which won't be long," sniffed Pale Face Harry. "D'ye
think I cough because I like it? How'm I going to quit coughing?"
"I don't know," admitted Doc Madison, frowning seriously. "I only know
you'll have to."
Pale Face Harry, with jaw dropped, accentuating the gaunt leanness of
his hollow-cheeked, emaciated face, gazed at Doc Madison with a curious
mingling of incredulity and affront--and coughed.
"Say," he inquired grimly, "what's the answer?"
Doc Madison took his arm from Helena's waist, pulled a newspaper from
his pocket, spread it out on the table--and his manner changed
suddenly--enthusiasm was in his eyes, his voice, his face.
"I've steered you three through a few deals," said he impressively,
"that have sized up big enough to keep you out of the raw vaudeville
turn you, Harry, and you, Flopper, are so fond of, and that would have
put Helena here on easy street, if you hadn't blown in all you got about
ten minutes after you got your hands on it--but I've got one here that
sizes up so big you wouldn't be able to spend the money fast enough to
close out your bank account if you did your damnedest! Get that? It's
the greatest cinch that ever came down from the gateway of heaven--and
that's where it came from--heaven. It couldn't have come from anywhere
else--it's too good. And it's new, bran new--it's never had the string
cut or the wrapper taken off. It's got anything that was ever run beaten
by more laps than there are in the track, and it's got a purse tied on
to the end of it that's the biggest ever offered since Adam. But you've
got to work for it, and that's what I brought you here for to-night--to
learn your little pieces so's you can say 'em nice and cute when you get
up on the platform before the audience."
The Flopper's tongue made a greedy circuit of his upper and under lips,
and he hitched his chair closer to the table.
A flush spread over Pale Face Harry's cheeks, and his eyes, abnormally
bright, grew brighter.
"You're all right, Doc," he assured Doc Madison anxiously. "You're all
right."
"U-uu-mm!" cooed Helena excitedly. "Go on, Doc--go on!"
"Listen," said Doc Madison, his voice lowered a little. "I found this
tucked away as a filler in a corner of the newspaper this evening. It's
headed, 'A New Cult,' with an interrogation mark after it. Now listen,
while I read it:"
A NEW CULT?
Needley, Maine, offers no attraction for aspiring young medical
men. One who tried it recently, and who pulled down his shingle in
disgust after a week, says competition is too strong, as the
village is obsessed with the belief that they have a sort of
faith-healer in their midst to whom is attributed cures of all
descriptions stretching back for a generation or more. The healer,
he adds, who rejoices in the name of the Patriarch and lives in
solitude a mile or so from the village, is something of an anomaly
in himself, being both deaf and dumb. We--
"But that's all that interests us," said Doc Madison, as he stopped
reading abruptly and lifted his head to scrutinize his companions
quizzically.
Pale Face Harry's eyes had lost their gleam and dulled--he gaped
reproachfully at Doc Madison. Helena's small mouth drooped downward in a
disappointed _moue_. Only the Flopper evidenced enthusiastic response.
"Sure!" he chortled. "Sure t'ing! I see. De old geezer'll have a pile of
shekels hid away, an' he lives by his lonesome a mile from de town. We
sneaks down dere, croaks de guy wid de queer monaker, an' beats it wid
de shekels--sure!"
Doc Madison turned a sad gray eye on the Flopper.
"Flopper," said he pathetically, "your soul, like your bones, runs to
rank realism. No; we don't 'croak de guy'--we cherish him, we nurse him,
we fondle him. He's our one best bet, and we fold him to our breasts
tenderly, and we protect him from all harm and danger and sudden death."
The Flopper blinked a little helplessly.
"Mabbe," said the Flopper, "I got de wrong dope. Some of dem words you
read I ain't hip to. Wot's anymaly mean?"
"Anomaly?"--Doc Madison reached for his glass, tossed off the contents
and set it down. "It means, Flopper, in this particular instance," he
said gravely, "that there shouldn't be any interrogation point after the
heading."
Again the Flopper blinked helplessly--and his fingers picked uncertainly
at the stubble on his chin. The other two gazed disconsolately--and
Helena a little pityingly as well--at Doc Madison.
Doc Madison flung out his arms suddenly.
"What's the matter with you all?" he demanded sarcastically. "You look
as though your faces pained you! What's the matter with you? You're
bright enough ordinarily, Helena, and, Harry, you're no dub--what's the
matter with you? Can't you see it--can't you see it! Why, it's sticking
out a mile--it's _waiting_ for us! The whole plant's there and all we've
got to do is get steam under the boilers. We'll have 'em coming for the
cure from every State in the Union, and begging us to let them throw
their diamond tiaras at us for a look-in at the shrine. Don't you see
it--can't you get it--can't you _get_ it!"
Helena bent suddenly over Doc Madison's shoulder, her eyes opening wide
with dawning comprehension.
"The cure?" she breathed.
"Sure--the cure," said Doc Madison earnestly. "The new cult--that's us.
Get the people talking, show 'em something, and you'll have to put up
fences and 'keep off the grass' signs to stop the lame and the halt and
the blind and the neurasthenics from crowding and suffocating to death
for want of air. We'll start a shrine down there that'll be a winner,
and the railroads will be running excursion-rate pilgrimages inside of
two months."
Pale Face Harry's chair creaked, as, like the Flopper, he now crowded it
in toward the table.
"I get you!" said he feverishly. "I get you! I've read about them
shrines--only you gotter have churches, and a carload of crutches, and
that sort of thing laying around."
Doc Madison smiled pleasantly.
"Yes; you've got me, Harry--only we'll do the stage setting a little
differently. Mostly what is required is--faith. Get them going on that,
and everybody that's sick or near-sick in this great United States,
that's got the swellest collection of boobs and millionaires on earth,
will swarm thitherward like bees--there won't be any one left in the
sanatoriums throughout the length of this broad land of freedom but the
bell boys and the elevator men. Get them going, and all we've got to do
is look out we don't let anything get by us in the crush--a snowball
rolling down hill will size up like a plugged nickel alongside of a
twenty-dollar gold piece when it gets to the bottom, compared with what
we start rolling."
"I've got you, too," said Helena. "But I don't see where the faith is
coming from, or how you're going to get them coming. You've got to show
them--you said so yourself--even the boobs. How are you going to do
that?"
"Well," said Doc Madison placidly, "we'll start the show with--a
miracle. I haven't thought of anything more effective than that so
far."
"A what?" inquired Pale Face Harry, with a grin.
"A miracle," repeated Doc Madison imperturbably. "A miracle--with the
Flopper here in the star rôle. The Flopper goes down there all tied up
in knots, the high priest, alias the deaf and dumb healer, alias the
Patriarch, lays his soothing hands upon him, the Flopper uncoils into
something that looks like a human being--and the trumpets blow, the band
plays, and the box office opens for receipts."
Helena slid from her seat, and, with hands on the edge of the table,
advanced her piquant little face close to Doc Madison's, staring at him,
breathing hard.
"Say that again," she gasped. "Say that again--say it just once more."
Pale Face Harry's hand, trembling visibly with emotion, was thrust out
across the table.
"Put it there, Doc," he whispered hoarsely.
The Flopper, practical, earnestly so, lifted his right arm, wriggled it
a little and began to twist it around, as though it were on a pivot at
the elbow, preparatory to drawing it in, a crippled thing, toward his
chin.
Doc Madison reached out hurriedly and stopped him.
"Here, that'll do, Flopper," he said quietly. "You don't need any
rehearsal to hold your job--you're down for the number and your check's
written out."
"Swipe me!" said the Flopper to the universe. "I can smell de pine woods
of Maine in me nostrils now. When does I beat it, Doc--to-morrer?"
Doc Madison laughed.
"No, Flopper, not to-morrow--nor for several to-morrows--not till the
bill-posters get through, and the stage is dark, and you can hear a pin
drop in the house. I don't want you camping out and catching cold and
missing any of the luxuries you're accustomed to, so I'll start along
ahead in a day or so myself and see what kind of accommodations I can
secure."
"Swipe me!" said the Flopper again. "An' to think of me wastin' me
talent on rubber-neck fleets!"
A puzzled little frown puckered Helena's forehead.
"I was thinking about the deaf and dumb man," she said slowly. "How
about him, when we pull this off--will he stand for it--and what'll he
do?"
"Aw!" said Pale Face Harry impatiently. "He don't count! He'll have bats
in his belfry anyway, and if he ain't he'll go off his chump for fair
getting stuck on himself when he sees the stunt he'll think he's done.
He'll be looking for the wings between his shoulder blades, and hunting
for the halo around his head."
"Harry is waking up," observed Doc Madison affably. "That's about the
idea, Helena. I haven't seen the Patriarch yet, but I don't imagine from
his description that it'll be very hard to make him believe in himself.
He doesn't stand for anything--we don't deal him any cards--he's just
the kitty that circles around with the jackpots while we annex the
chips."
Doc Madison reached into his vest pocket, took out a penknife whose
handle was gold-chased, opened it, and very carefully cut the article he
had read from the paper.
"Flopper," said he, "you've heard of gold bonds, haven't you?"
The Flopper's eyes gleamed an eloquent response.
"Only you've never had any, eh?" supplied Doc Madison.
"Where'd I get 'em?" inquired the Flopper, with some bitterness.
"Right here," smiled Doc Madison, handing him the clipping. "Here's a
trainload and a bank vault full of them combined. Put it away, Flopper,
and don't lose it. Lose anything you've got first--lose your life. It's
worth a private car to you with a buffet full of fizz, and Sambo to wait
on you for the rest of your life. Get that? Don't lose it!"
The Flopper tucked the clipping into the mysterious recess of his shirt.
"Say," he said earnestly, "if you say so, Doc, it'll be here when dey
plant me."
"All right, Flopper," nodded Doc Madison. "And now let's get down to
cases. I've been able to pay my club dues lately, and there's money
enough on deck to buy the costumes and put the show on the road. I start
for Needley as soon as I can get away. When I'm ready for the support,
you three will hear from me--and in the meantime you lay low. Nothing
doing--understand? You'll get all the lime-light you want before you're
through, and it's just as well not to show up so familiar when they
throw the spot on you that even the school kids will know the date of
your birth, and the population will start in squabbling over the choice
of reserved niches for you in the Hall of Fame. See?"
The Flopper, Pale Face Harry and Helena nodded their heads with one
accord.
"Give us the whole lay, Doc," urged Pale Face Harry. "And give it to us
quick."
"Me mouth's waterin'," observed the Flopper, licking his lips again.
Helena lighted another cigarette, and swung herself back to her perch on
the head of the couch.
Doc Madison surveyed the three with mingled admiration and delight.
"The world is ours!" he murmured softly.
"Oh, hurry up and give us the rest of it," purred Helena. "We know we're
an all-star cast, all right."
"Very good," said Doc Madison--and laughed. "Well then, the order of
your stage cues will depend on circumstances and what turns up down
there, but we'll start with the Flopper now. First of all, Flopper,
you've got to have a name. What's your real name--what did they decorate
you with at the baptismal font back in the dark ages?"
The Flopper scrubbed at his very dirty chin with a very dirty thumb and
forefinger.
"I dunno," said the Flopper anxiously.
"Well, never mind," said Doc Madison reassuringly. "Maybe you are
blessed above most people--you can pick one out for yourself. What'll it
be?"
The Flopper's thumb and forefinger scratched desperately for a moment,
then his face lighted with inspiration.
"Swipe me!" said he excitedly. "I got it--Jimmy de Squirm."
Doc Madison shook his head gravely.
"No, Flopper, I'm afraid not," he said gently. "That's another weak
point in your interpretation of the rôle, that I'll come to in a minute.
We'll give you an Irish name by way of charity--it'll help to make your
classical English sound like brogue. We'll call you Coogan--Michael
Coogan--that lets you off with plain Mike in times of stress."
"Swipe me!" said the Flopper, with perfect complacence.
"Glad it pleases you," smiled Doc Madison, "Here's your lay, then.
You've got to remember that you were born crooked and--"
Helena giggled.
"I didn't mean it"--Doc Madison's gray eyes twinkled. "You are waking
up, too, Helena. I mean, Flopper, you've got to remember that you were
born twisted up into the same shape you are in when you hit Needley. You
come from--let's see--we'll have to have a big city where the next door
neighbors pass each other with a vacant stare. Ever been in Chicago?"
"Naw! Wot fer?" said the Flopper, with withering spontaneity. "Noo Yoik
fer mine."
"Well, all right--New York it is, then," agreed Doc Madison. "You're
poor, but respectable--and that brings us to the other point. Before you
go down there, Helena's going to start a little night-school with a
grammar, and teach you to paddle along the fringe of the great American
language so's you won't fall in and get wet all over every time you open
your mouth."
"My!" exclaimed Helena. "Won't that be nice!"
"I hope so," said Doc Madison drily. "And don't run away with the idea
that I'm joking about this--that goes. I don't expect to make a
silver-tongued orator out of you, Flopper, and perhaps not even a
purist--but I hope to eradicate a few minor touches of Bad Land
vernacular from your vocabulary."
"I've gotcher--swipe me!" grinned the Flopper. "Me at school! Say,
wouldn't that put a smile on de maps of de harness bulls, an' de dips,
an' de lags doin' spaces up de river!"
"Quite so," admitted Doc Madison pleasantly.
"You won't laugh when I get through with you," remarked Helena, her eyes
on the curl of smoke from her cigarette.
"There's just one more thing," went on Doc Madison, "and I'm through
with you, Flopper. Don't come down there looking like a skate--that's
too raw. Get new clothes and a shave--and keep shaved. And from the
minute you buy your ticket, you keep your bones, or whatever a
beneficent nature has given you in place of them, out of joint--see?"
"I'm hip," declared the Flopper--and the dog-like admiration for Doc
Madison burned in his eyes. "Say, Doc, youse are de--"
"Never mind, Flopper," Madison cut in brightly. "It's getting late. Now,
Harry, about you. You've got a name, I believe. Evans, isn't it?
Yes--well, that will do. Now, don't kill yourself at it, but the more
you work your dope needle overtime before you start, and the harder you
cough when you first land there the better. We've got to have variety,
you know. You're a physical wreck with the folks back home sending the
casket and trimmings after you on the next train in care of the station
agent."
"I guess," coughed Pale Face Harry, with a sickly smile, "I look the
part."
"You certainly do," said Helena cheerfully, beating a tattoo with her
heels on the end of the couch.
Pale Face Harry scowled.
"I ain't no artist with the paint," he sniffed.
"I don't paint," said Helena sweetly. "It's rouge."
"Are you through?" inquired Doc Madison patiently. "Because, if you are,
I'll go on. When the train whistles for Needley, Harry, you put the soft
pedal on the dope--that ought to help some. And then you begin to taper
that cough off and become a cure--that's all."
"I ain't like the Flopper," said Pale Face Harry ruefully. "I told you
once I can't stop the hack, and I ask you again how'm I going to?"
"Have faith in the Patriarch," suggested Helena innocently.
"You close your trap!" exclaimed Pale Face Harry savagely; then, to
Madison: "Go on, Doc--it's up to you."
"No," said Doc Madison coolly, "it's up to you. You've got to try, and
if you can't stop altogether you can make yourself scarce when you feel
the fit coming on--you won't have to climb up on the grandstand and
cough in people's faces, will you?"
"He might carry a screen around with him and cough behind that,"
volunteered Helena. "That's enough about the Flopper and Pale Face--what
about muh? Where do I get off?"
"You?" said Doc Madison calmly. "Oh, you're a moral neurasthenic."
"And what's that when it's at home?" demanded Helena sharply.
Doc Madison threw out his hands in a comically helpless, impotent
gesture.
"It's what we need to keep up the standard of variety," he said. "We're
playing to the masses. Don't you like the rôle, Helena--it's the leading
woman's."
"What do I do?" countered Helena non-committingly.
"Do?" echoed Doc Madison. "Why, you go down there like a whole parade
and a gorgeous pageant rolled into one, in feathers and paint and
diamond boulders in your ears--and you come out of it in a gingham apron
and coy sunbonnet as sweet sixteen."
"Oh!" said Helena--and her eyes were on the curl of smoke from her
cigarette again.
"Say," said Pale Face Harry suddenly, evidently still worried about his
cough, "we ain't going to have no easy cinch of this."
"No," said Doc Madison, with a grim smile; "you're not! It's going to be
the hardest work any of you have ever done--you've got to lead decent
lives for awhile."
"Sure--dat's right," said the loyal Flopper; "but we stands fer anyt'ing
dat de Doc says--an' dat goes!"
"It'll come hard on some of us," remarked Pale Face Harry, with a sly
glance at Helena, which met with contemptuous silence.
Doc Madison leaned back, felt carefully at his carefully adjusted
tie--and smiled engagingly.
"Well?" he asked. "Can you see them coming?"
Pale Face Harry stared at him with a far-away expression in his eyes.
"When we get through with this, if I ain't handed in my checks before,"
he said dreamily, "it's mine for a brownstone on the Avenue, and one of
them life-size landscapes with a shack on it for the season down to Pa'm
Beach that they call country cottages. I'll dress the ginks that scrub
the horses down in solid gold braid, and put the corpse of chamber
ladies in Irish lace--I bust into society, marry a duke's one and only,
and swipe her coronet for my manly brow. Did you ask me anything, Doc?"
"Swipe me!" said the Flopper. "Me in me private Pullman in a plush seat
an' anudder to put me feet in, an' me thumbs in de armholes of me vest.
I wears a high polished lid an' a red tie, an' scatters simoleans outer
de window in me travels to the gazaboes on de platforms as I pass--an'
den I joins Tammany Hall so's I can stick me fingers to me nose every
time I sees a cop."
"Flopper," said Doc Madison in an awed voice, "the honor is all mine."
Helena went off into a peal of rippling, silvery, contagious laughter,
and her little heels again beat an exuberant tattoo on the end of the
couch.
"Yes?" invited Doc Madison, smiling at her.
"I'm seeing them coming," said Helena--and one heel went through the
cretonne upholstery of the couch.
"Good!" said Doc Madison--and from the inside pocket of his coat he
pulled out a package of crisp, new, yellow-backed bills. "You
understand that down there none of you ever heard of each other or of me
before, and you drop the 'doc'--bury it! My name is John G. Madison--G.
for Garfield." His fingers passed deftly over the edges of the bills. He
pushed a little pile toward the Hopper, another toward Pale Face Harry,
and tucked the remainder into his coat pocket again. "That'll do for
expenses," he said. "And now, if you understand everything, principally
that you're to go to church Sundays till you hear from me, and you're
quite satisfied with the lay, we'll adjourn, _sine die_, to Needley."
Helena was holding out a very dainty hand, with pink, wiggling fingers.
"I'll need, oh, ever so much more than they will," she declared, with a
bewitching pout. "And, please, I'm waiting very patiently."
Doc Madison laughed.
"By and by, Helena," he said, patting her hand. "Well, Flopper, well,
Harry--what do you say?"
The Flopper pushed back his chair and stood up hesitantly like a man
unexpectedly called upon for an after-dinner speech. He stood there
awkwardly a moment gazing at Doc Madison, his tongue slowly circling his
lips; then, with a gulp, as though words to express his feelings were
utterly beyond him, he turned and started for the door.
Pale Face Harry, as he rose, shoved out his hand.
"I don't deserve my luck to be in on this," he said modestly. "Only,
Doc, push it along on the high gear, will you--I ain't going to be able
to sleep thinking about it." He looked at Helena a little
undecidedly--and compromised on brevity. "'Night, Helena," he flung out.
"Oh, good-night, Harry," she smiled.
The Flopper turned at the door and came back a few steps into the room.
"Say, Doc," he said, blinking furiously, "youse can wipe yer feet on me
any time youse like--dat's wot!"
"All right, Flopper," said Doc Madison gravely. "When you've joined
Tammany Hall--good-night." He followed across the room, and from the
doorway watched the two descend the stairs. "Good-night," he said again,
then closed the door and came back into the room. "Well, Helena?" he
remarked tentatively.
"Well--Garfield?"--Helena clasped her hands around one knee and rocked
gently.
"Don't be familiar, Helena," Doc Madison chuckled. "Is that all you've
got to say?"
"I'm busy thinking about The Great American Play," she said pertly.
"There's one thing you forgot."
"What's that?" he asked, still smiling.
"The curtain on the last act," she said. "The getaway."
Doc Madison shook his head.
"Nothing doing!" he returned. "There's no getaway. It's safe--so safe
that there's nothing to it. We don't guarantee anything, and there's no
entrance fee to the pavilion--all contributions are strictly voluntary."
"That's all right," said Helena. "But of course we can't really cure
them. We can get them going hard enough to make them think they are for
awhile, but after they've thrown away their crutches and got back
home--what then?"
"Well, what then?" inquired Doc Madison easily.
"They'll yell 'fake!' and swear out warrants," said Helena, her dark
eyes studying Doc Madison.
"Not according to statistics," replied Doc Madison, and his lips
twitched quizzically at the corners. "According to statistics they'll
buy another crutch and come back to buck the tiger again. Say, Helena,
to-morrow, you go up to the public library and read up on
shrines--they've been running since the ark--and they're running still.
You never heard any howl about them, did you? What's the answer to those
cures?"
"That's different," said Helena. "That's religion, and they've got
relics and things."
"It's faith," said Doc Madison, "and it doesn't matter what the basis of
it is. Faith, Helena, _faith_--get that? And we're going to imbue them
with a faith that'll set them crazy and send them into hysterics. And
talk about relics! Haven't we got one? Look at the Patriarch! Can't you
see the whole town yelling 'I told you so!' and swopping testimonials
hard enough to crowd the print down so fine, if you tried to get it all
into the papers, that you'd have to use a magnifying glass to read it,
once we've pulled off the miracle? Don't you worry about the getaway. If
there's any sign of anything like that, you and I, Helena, will be
taking moonlight rides in the gondolas of Venice long before it breaks."
Helena choked--and began to laugh deliciously.
Doc Madison stared at her for a moment whimsically--then he, too, burst
into a laugh.
"Oh, Lord!" he gurgled. "It's rich, isn't it?" And sweeping Helena off
the couch and into his arms, he began to dance around and around the
table. "Ring-around-a-rosy!" he cried. "We haven't done so bad in the
misty past, but here's where we cross to the enchanted shore and play on
jewelled harps with golden strings and--"
"Is that all?" gasped Helena, laughing and breathless, as at last she
pulled herself away.
"No," panted Doc Madison. "There's a table I've reserved up at the
Rivoli that's waiting for us now. We're about to part for days and days,
lady mine, that's the tough luck of it, but we'll make a night of it
to-night anyway--what?"
"You bet!" said Helena, doing a cake-walk towards the door. "Come on!"
--III--
NEEDLEY
"Needley?"
It wasn't wholly an interrogation--it seemed to Madison that there was
even sympathy in the parlor-car conductor's voice, as the other took his
seat check.
"Health," said Madison meekly. "Perfect rest and quiet--been overdoing
it, you know."
"_Needley_!"--the train conductor of the Bar Harbor Express, collecting
the transportation, threw the word at Madison as though it were a
personal affront.
The tone seemed to demand an apology from Madison--and Madison
apologized.
"Health," he said apologetically. "Perfect rest and quiet--been
overdoing it, you know."
"We're five minutes late now," grunted the conductor uncompromisingly
and, to Madison, quite irrelevantly, as he passed on down the aisle.
Somehow, this inspired Madison to consult his timetable. He drew it from
his pocket, ran his eye down the long list of stations--and stopped at
"Needley." Needley had an asterisk after it. By consulting a block of
small type at the bottom of the page, he found a corresponding asterisk
with the words: "Flag station. Stops only on signal, or to discharge
eastbound passengers from Portland."
John Garfield Madison went into the smoking compartment of the car for a
cigar--several cigars--until Needley was reached some two hours later,
when the dusky attendant, as he pocketed Madison's dollar, set down his
little rubber-topped footstool with a flourish on a desolate and
forbidding-looking platform.
Madison was neither surprised nor dismayed--the parlor-car conductor,
the train conductor and the timetable had in no way attempted to deceive
him--he was only cold. He turned up his coat collar--and blew on his
kid-gloved fingers.
As far as he could see everything was white with a thin layer of
snow--he kicked some of it off his toes onto the unshovelled platform.
The landscape was disconsolately void of even a vestige of life, there
was not a sign of habitation--just woods of bare trees, except the firs,
whose green seemed out of place.
"I have arrived," said John Garfield Madison to himself, "at a
cemetery."
There was a very small station, and through the window he caught sight
of a harassed-faced, red-haired man. There was a thump, another one, a
very vicious one--and Madison stirred uneasily--the train, with its five
minutes' delinquency hanging over it, was already moving out, as his
trunks, from the baggage car ahead, shot unceremoniously to the
platform. Madison watched a man, the sole occupant of the platform apart
from himself, save the trunks from rolling under the wheels of the
train; then his eyes fastened on a rickety, two-seated wagon, drawn by a
horse that at first glance appeared to earn all it got.
The train left the platform--and left quite as uninviting a perspective
on the other side of the track as had previously greeted Madison's
restricted view. But now the man who had salvaged his baggage came down
the platform toward him. Madison inspected the approaching figure with
interest. The man ambled along without haste, his jaws wagging
industriously upon his tobacco, his iron-gray chin whiskers, from the
wagging, flapping like a burgee in a breeze. He wore a round fur cap,
quite bare of fur at the edges where the pelt showed shiny, and a red
woollen tippet was tied round his neck and knotted at the back with the
ends dangling down over his coat. The coat itself, a long one of some
fuzzy material, with huge side pockets into which the man's hands were
plunged, reached to the cavernous tops of jackboots where the nether
ends of his trousers were stowed away.
The man halted before Madison, and, reaching a mittened hand under his
chin, reflectively lifted his whiskers to an acute angle, while his blue
eyes over the rims of steel-bowed spectacles wandered from Madison to
Madison's dress-suit case and back to Madison again.
"Be you goin' to git off here?" he inquired.
Madison smiled at him engagingly.
"Well," he said, "I wouldn't care to have it known, but if you can keep
a secret--"
"Hee-hee!" tittered the other. "Now that's right smart, that be. Waren't
expectin' nobody to meet you, was you? I ain't heerd of none of the
folks lookin' for visitors."
"No," said Madison. "But there's a hotel in the town, isn't there?"
"Two of 'em," said the other. "The Waalderf an' the Congress, but the
Waalderf ain't done a sight of business since we got pro'bition in the
State an' has kinder got run down. I reckon the Congress'll suit you
best if you ain't against payin' a mite more, which I reckon you ain't
for I see you come down in the parler car."
"And what," asked Madison, "does the Congress charge?"
"Well," said the other, "ordinary, it's a dollar a day or five dollars a
week, but this bein' off season an' nobody there, 'twouldn't surprise me
if Walt'ud kind of shade the price for you--Waalderf's three an' a half
a week. Them your duds up the platform? I'll drive you over for forty
cents. What was it you said your name was?"
"Forty cents is a most disinterested offer, and I accept it heartily,"
said Madison affably. "And my name's Madison--John Garfield Madison,
from New York."
"Mine's Higgins," volunteered the other. "Hiram Higgins, an' I'm
postmaster an' town constable of Needley. An' now, Mr. Madison, I
reckon we'll just get these effects of your'n onto the wagon an' move
along--folks'll be gettin' kinder rambunctious for their mail."
Hiram Higgins backed the democrat around, roped the baggage onto the
tail-board, picked up the hungry-looking mail-bag from where the mail
clerk had slung it from the car to the platform, threw it down in front
of the dashboard, and got in after it. Madison clambered into the back
seat, and they bumped off along the road.
"Had a mite of snow night before last," observed Mr. Higgins, pointing
it out with his whip, as he settled himself comfortably. "Kinder
reckoned we'd got rid of it for good till next fall till this come
along, but you can't never tell. What was it you said brought you down
here, Mr. Madison?"
Madison smiled.
"Rest and quiet--complete change," he said. "Nervous breakdown,
according to the doctors--that's what they always call it, you know,
when they can't find any other name for it. I've been overdoing it, I
suppose."
"Be that so!" returned Mr. Higgins sympathetically. "I want to know!
Well, now, that's too bad! Lookin' for quiet, be you? Well, I reckon
mabbe folks don't scurry around here quite so lively as they do in some
of the bigger towns like Noo York, but there's a tolerable lot goin' on
most every week, church festivals, an' spellin' bees, an' such. Folks
here is right hospitable, but you ain't in no way obliged to join in if
you don't feel up to it. I'll explain matters to 'em, an'--" Hiram
Higgins stopped, excitedly gathered reins and whip into one hand, and
with the other smote his knee a resounding whack. "Well, I swan!" he
exclaimed. "An' I never thought of it until this minute! I reckon you've
come to just the right place, and just as soon as you get settled you go
right out an' see the Patriarch--you won't need no more doctor, an'
folks up your way won't know when you go back."
"The Patriarch?" inquired Madison, with a puzzled air. "Who is he?"
"Why," said Mr. Higgins, "he's--he's the Patriarch. Been curin' us folks
around here longer'n any one can remember--just does it by faith, too."
Madison shook his head slowly.
"I might just as well be frank with you, Mr. Higgins," he said. "I've
never taken much stock in faith cure and that sort of thing."
"Mabbe," suggested Mr. Higgins deeply, "you ain't had much experience."
"No," confessed Madison reflectively; "I haven't--I haven't had any."
"Well then, you just wait an' see," said Mr. Higgins, waving his
mittened hand as though the whole matter were conclusively settled. "You
just wait an' see."
"But I'm afraid I don't quite understand," prodded Madison innocently.
"What kind of cures does he perform?"
They turned a right-angled bend in the road, disclosing a straggling
hamlet in a hollow below, and, farther away in the distance, a sweep of
ocean.
"Most any kind," said Mr. Higgins. "There's Needley now. All you've got
to do is ask the first person you see about him."
"Yes," said Madison, "but take yourself, for instance. Did this
Patriarch ever do anything for you?"
"He did," said Mr. Higgins impressively. "An' 'twasn't but last week.
I'm glad you asked me. For two nights I couldn't sleep. Had the earache
powerful. Poured hot oil an' laud'num into it, an' kept a hot brick
rolled up in flannel against it, but didn't do no good. Then Mrs.
Higgins says, 'Hiram, why in the land's sake don't you go out an' see
the Patriarch?' An' I hitched right up, an' every step that horse took I
could feel it gettin' better, an' I wasn't five minutes with the
Patriarch before I was cured, an' I ain't had a twinge since."
"It certainly looks as though there were something in that," admitted
Madison cautiously.
Hiram Higgins smiled a world of tolerance.
"'Tain't worth mentionin' alongside some of the things he's done," he
said deprecatingly. "You'll hear about 'em fast enough."
"What's the local doctor say about it?" asked Madison.
"There ain't enough pickin's to keep a doctor here, though some of 'em's
tried," chuckled Mr. Higgins. "Have to have 'em for _some_ things, of
course--an' then he drives over from Barton's Mills, seven miles from
here."
"And do _all_ the people in Needley believe in the
Patriarch?"--Madison's voice was full of grave interest.
"Well," said Mr. Higgins, "to be plumb downright honest with you, they
don't. Folks as was born here an' are old inhabitants do, but the
Holmes, bein' newcomers, is kinder set in their ways. They come down
here eight years ago last August with new-fangled notions, which they
ain't got rid of yet. You can see the consequences for yourself--got a
little boy, twelve year old, walking around lame on a crutch--an' I
reckon he always will. Doctor looks at him every time he comes over from
Barton's Mills, but it don't do no good. Folks tried to get the Holmes
to take him out to the Patriarch's till they got discouraged. 'Pears old
man Holmes kinder got around to a common sense view of it, but the women
folks say Mrs. Holmes is stubborner than all git-out, an' that old man
Holmes' voice ain't loud enough to be heerd when she gets goin'. 'Tain't
but fair to mention 'em, as I dunno of any one else that's an
exception." Mr. Higgins pointed ahead with his whip. "See them woods
over there beyond the town?"
"Yes," said Madison.
"That's where the Patriarch lives," said Mr. Higgins. "On the other side
of 'em, down by the seashore. An' here we be most home. Folks'll be
glad to see you, Mr. Madison, and now you're here I hope you'll make a
real smart stay--we'll try to make you feel to home."
"Thank you," said Madison cordially. "I haven't any idea, of course, how
long I'll be here--it all depends on circumstances."
"No," said Mr. Higgins; "I don't suppose you have. Anyway, I hope you'll
take a notion to go out an' see what the Patriarch can do for you. An'
now you ain't told me yet which hotel you're goin' to."
"Oh!" said Madison gravely. "Well, since you recommend it, I guess we'd
better make it the Congress."
--IV--
THE PATRIARCH
"Bet you a cookie," shrilled Hiram Higgins, in what he meant to be a
breathless whisper, "that there's where he's goin' now--only he don't
want us to know he's give in."
"Shet your fool mouth, Hiram!" cautioned Walt Perkins, the proprietor of
the Congress Hotel. "He kin hear you."
"Get out!" retorted Mr. Higgins. "No, he can't neither. He ain't feelin'
no ways perky, any one can see that, an' I'm tickled most to pieces that
he's come 'round--I've took up with him consid'rable, I have.
Patriarch'll just make a new-born critter outer him--you watch through
the window where he goes. Bet you a quarter that's what he's up to!"
John Garfield Madison, outside on the veranda of the Congress Hotel,
smiled at the words, as he lighted his cigar and turned up his coat
collar. He stepped off the veranda, crossed the little lawn to the
village street, and began to saunter nonchalantly and indifferently
oceanwards. He did not look around--he had no desire to bring
consternation to the massed faces of the leading citizens flattened
against the window panes--but he chuckled inwardly as he pictured them.
There would be Hiram Higgins, postmaster and town constable, Walt
Perkins, hotel man and town moderator, Lem Hodges, selectman, assessor
and overseer of the poor, Nathan Elmes, likewise selectman, assessor and
overseer of the poor, and Cale Rodgers, school committee-man and
proprietor of the general store.
Madison sauntered slowly along.
"I have arrived," he said, "not at a cemetery, but at an El Dorado and a
land flowing with milk and honey."
There was a humorous pucker around the corners of Madison's eyes, as he
reviewed his two days' sojourn in Needley--spent mostly in the "office"
of the Congress Hotel beside the stove with his feet up on the wood-box.
He had never lacked company--the office stove and the spitbox filled
with sawdust was the admitted rendezvous of the chosen spirits who were
still gazing after him from the window. Morning, afternoon and evening
they congregated there, and he had been promptly admitted to membership
in the select circle. At each sitting they had discussed the spring
planting and the weather, and then inevitably, led by Hiram Higgins, had
resolved themselves into an "experience" meeting on the Patriarch--he,
Madison, as a minority leader of one, grudgingly conceding an occasional
point. The sessions had invariably ended the same way--Hiram Higgins,
with the back of his hand underneath his chin, would stroke earnestly
at his chin-whiskers, and remark:
"Well, now, Mr. Madison, 'twon't do you a mite of harm to go out there
an' see for yourself. We've kinder got to look on you as one of us, an'
there ain't no use in you sufferin' around with what ails you when there
ain't no need of it."
Madison's replies had been equally void of versatility--he would shake
his head doubtfully, while his cigar-case circulated around the group.
Madison sniffed luxuriously at his thoroughbred Havana. He had passed
out of sight of the hotel window now, and he swung into a brisk walk. It
was a mile to the Patriarch's by a wagon track through the woods, that
led off from the road to the left just across the bridge. He had not
needed to ask directions. With magnificent inadvertence Hiram Higgins
had mentioned the exact way to reach the Patriarch's a dozen times, if
he had once. Also, by now, Madison had learned all that the town knew
about the Patriarch--which after all, he reflected with some
satisfaction, wasn't much. The Patriarch was over eighty years of age,
and he had come, deaf and dumb, to Needley sixty years ago--nobody knew
from where, nor his previous history, nor his name. They had called him
the Hermit at first, for immediately on his arrival he had gone out to
the shore of the ocean, away from the village, and built a crude hut
there for himself--which, in the after years, he had made into a more
pretentious dwelling. The cures had come "kinder gradual-like an' took
the folks mabbe forty years to get around to believin' in him real
serious," as Hiram Higgins put it; and then, as the Hermit grew old, and
the local reverence for him had become more deep-seated, they had
changed his name to the Patriarch. That was about all--but it seemed to
suit Madison, for his smile broadened.
"I wonder," said he to himself, as he stepped onto the bridge to cross
the little river, "if I'm not dreaming--this is like being let loose in
the U.S. Treasury with nobody looking!"
"Hullo, mister!" piped a young voice suddenly out of the dusk.
"Hullo!" responded Madison mechanically--and turned to watch a small
figure, going in the opposite direction, thump by him on a crutch.
Madison stopped and stared after the cripple--and removed his cigar very
slowly from his lips. "That's that Holmes boy," he muttered. "I don't
know as he'd look well on the platform when the excursion trains get to
running. Wonder if I can't get a job for his father somewhere about a
thousand miles from here and have the family move!"
The cripple disappeared down the road, and Madison, with a sort of
speculative flip to the ash of his cigar, resumed his way. Just across
the bridge he found the wagon track, and turned into it. It ran through
a thick wood of fir and spruce, and here, apart from now being able to
see but little before him--he had elected to "steal" away in the
darkness after supper--he found the going far from good.
Half curiously, half whimsically, he tried to visualize the Patriarch
from the word pictures that had been painted around the stove in the
hotel office. The man would be old--of course. And to have lived alone
for sixty years, to have shunned human companionship he must have been
either mildly or violently insane to begin with, which would account for
his belief in himself as a healer--he would unquestionably, in some form
or other, "have bats in his belfry," as Pale Face Harry had put it.
Madison's brows contracted as he went along. A man living by himself
under such conditions, with no incentive for the care of his person, not
even the pride engendered by the association of others, erudite as the
standard might be in his vicinity, was apt to grow very shortly into a
somewhat sorry spectacle. Give him sixty years of this and add an
unbalanced mind, and--Madison did not like the picture that now rose up
suddenly before him--a creature, bent, vapid of face, deaf and dumb,
frowsy of dress, and a world removed from the thought of a morning bath.
It might be picturesque in a way--but it wasn't a way Madison liked.
Somehow, he'd have to jerk the old chap out of his rut and get him
rigged up a little more becomingly, before the trusting public, simple
as they were, were invited down to see the exhibit. Madison's dramatic
instinct, which was developed to a keen sense of what the public craved
for, rebelled against any _faux pas_ in the scenic effects. He fell to
designing a costume that would more appropriately expound the rôle.
"Got to give 'em something for their money," murmured John Garfield
Madison. "Some sort of long, flowing robe now, washed every day, sort of
Grecian effect with a rope girdle, bare feet and sandals--um-m--dunno
about the sandals--don't want to slop over, and besides"--Madison
grinned a little to himself--"he might kick!"
Still reflecting, but arrived at no conclusion other than first to size
up the Patriarch and see how best to handle him, Madison reached the end
of the wagon track--and halted.
It was a little lighter here, now that he had left the woods, and what
appeared to be a sweep of snow-covered lawn was before him. Around this,
forming a perfect square, was a row of full-grown, magnificent maples--a
regal hedge, as it were, bordering the four sides--planted sixty years
ago! Madison's imagination fired exhilarantly at the inspiring thought
of these in leaf--in another few weeks. He shook hands with himself
cordially.
"Behold the amphitheater!" he said. "This is where we stage the greatest
act of the century!"
Behind the row of trees, directly across the lawn in front of him,
loomed the dark shadow of a long, low, cottage-like building, and from a
window a light twinkled out between the tree trunks; while from beyond
again came the roll of surf, low, rhythmic, like the soft accompaniment
of orchestral music.
"Wonderful!" breathed Madison. "I feel," said he, "as though I had just
had a drink!"
He walked across the lawn, passed between the trees, and reached the end
of the cottage away from where the light showed in the window.
"The Patriarch being deaf," he remarked, "I might as well explore."
From the row of trees to the cottage was perhaps twenty feet. The door
of the cottage, porticoed with trellis-work, was in the center of the
cottage itself. Everywhere Madison turned were trellis-work frames for
flowers--the walls of the cottage were covered, literally covered, with
bare, slumbering shoots of Virginia creeper. In a little while now the
place would be a veritable paradise. Madison raised his hat reverently.
"Fancy this on a New York stage!" said he esthetically, invoking the
universe. "Could you beat it! I could play the Patriarch myself with
this setting, and everybody would fall for it. There's nothing to it,
nothing to it, but his make-up--and I'll guarantee to take care of that.
And now we'll have a look at Aladdin's lamp and see just what kind of
rubbing up will invoke the genii!"
Madison walked along the length of the cottage, past the door, and, as
he reached the lighted window, drew well away from the wall--and stared
inside. Surprise and incredulity swept across his features, and then his
face beamed and his gray eyes lighted with the fire of an artist who
sees the elusive imagery of the Great Picture at last transferred to
canvas, vivid, actual, transcending his wildest hopes. He was gazing
upon the sweetest and most venerable face he had ever seen.
Here and there within upon the floor were strewn old-fashioned, round
rag mats that would enrapture a connoisseur, and the floor where it
showed between the mats was scrubbed to a glistening white. The
furnishings were few and homemade, but full of simple artistry--a chair
or two, and a table, upon which burned a lamp. In a fireplace, made of
stones cemented together, the natural effect unspoiled by any attempt to
hew the stones into uniformity, a log fire glowed, sputtered, and now
and then leaped cheerily into flame.
Between the table and the fire, half turned toward Madison, sat the
Patriarch. He was reading, his head bent forward, his book held very
close to his eyes. Hair, a wealth of it, soft, silky and snow-white,
reached just below his coat collar--a silvery beard fell far below his
book. But it was the face itself, no single distinguishing feature,
neither the blue eyes, the sensitive lips, nor the broad, fine forehead,
that held Madison's gaze--it seemed to combine something that he had
never seen in a face before, and to look upon it was to be drawn
instantly to the man--there was purity of thought and act stamped upon
it with a seal ineffaceable, and there was gentleness there, and
sympathy, and trust, and a simple, unassuming dignity and
self-possession--and, too, there was a shadow there, a little of
sadness, a little of weariness, a background, a relief, as it were, a
touch such as a genius might conceive to lift the picture with his brush
into wondrous, lingering, haunting consonance.
Madison's eyes, slowly, as though loath to leave the Patriarch's face,
travelled over the gray homespun suit that clothed the man, the white
wristbands of the home-washed shirt, unstarched, but spotlessly
clean--and his fancy of flowing, Grecian robes with rope girdles seemed
to hold him up to mockery as a crude and paltry bungler before the
perfect, unostentatious harmony of reality.
"There's nothing to it!" whispered Madison softly to himself. "Nothing
to it! There isn't a thing left to do--not even a chance of making a
bluff at earning the money--it's just like _stealing_ it. Why, say, it
would get _me_ if I weren't behind the scenes--honest now, it would!"
Madison drew back from the window and walked toward the door of the
cottage.
"It should take me about fifteen minutes to establish myself on the
basis of a long-lost son with the Patriarch clinging confidingly around
my neck," he observed. "If it takes me any longer than that I'd feel
depressed every time I met myself in the looking-glass."
He reached the cottage door, and, lifting the brass knocker that shone
dimly in the darkness, knocked once, lifted it to knock again--and his
hand fell away as he smiled a little foolishly.
"I forgot the Patriarch was deaf," he muttered. "Wonder what you're
supposed to do? Walk right in, or--"
The door swung suddenly wide open, and upon Madison's face, usually so
perfectly at its owner's control, came a look of stunned surprise. The
Patriarch was standing on the threshold, and, with a gesture of welcome,
was motioning him to enter.
--V--
A STRANGE CONVERSATION
Madison, quite in command of himself again in an instant, stepped,
smiling, into the cottage. He took the Patriarch's extended hand in a
cordial grip and nodded understandingly as the other, with quick, rapid
motions, touched lips and ears to signify that he could neither hear nor
speak. But, inwardly puzzled, Madison searched the Patriarch's face--was
the other playing a part? Could he _hear_, after all--and perhaps speak
as well, if he wanted to! There was certainly no guile in the venerable,
gentle face--or was it guile of a very high order?
The Patriarch closed the door, and drawing his own armchair to the table
offered it to Madison with a courteous smile.
Madison refused by gently forcing the old man into it himself, pulled
another up to face the Patriarch, sat down--and his eyes fixed suddenly
on the ceiling above his head. Swaying slowly back and forth was a sort
of miniature punkah of waving white canvas. He studied this for a
moment, then his eyes shifted to the Patriarch, who was regarding him
humorously.
The Patriarch rose from his chair, walked to the door, opened it, moved
the knocker up and down--and pointed to the ceiling. The canvas was
waving violently now, and Madison traced the cord attachment, on little
pulleys, across the ceiling to where it ran through the door and was
affixed to the knocker without. It was very simple, even
primitive--every time the knocker was lifted the cord was pulled and the
canvas waved back and forth. Madison nodded his head and smiled
approvingly, as the Patriarch once more closed the door and resumed his
seat.
Madison leaned back in his chair and allowed his eyes to stray, not
impertinently but with pleased endorsement, around the room, to permit
an unhampered opportunity for the scrutiny of the blue eyes which he
felt upon him.
"And to think," he mused reproachfully, "that I could have doubted him
for a single instant--he certainly hung one on me that time."
The Patriarch reached into the drawer of the table beside him, took out
a slate and pencil, scratched a few words on the slate and handed both
pencil and slate to Madison.
"Your name is Madison, isn't it?" Madison read. "From New York? Hiram
told me about you."
"Hiram," said Madison to himself, "is a man of many parts, and the most
useful man I have ever known. Hiram, by reflected glory, will some day
become famous." On the slate he replied: "Yes; that is my name--John
Madison. It was good of Mr. Higgins to speak of me."
The Patriarch held the slate within a bare inch or two of his face, and
moved it back and forth before his eyes to follow the lines. As he
lowered it, Madison reached for it politely.
"I am afraid you do not see very well," he scribbled. "Shall I write
larger?"
Again the Patriarch deciphered the words laboriously; then he wrote, and
handed the slate to Madison.
"I am going blind," he had written. "Please write as large as possible."
"Blind!"--Madison's attitude and expression were eloquent enough not
only to be a perfect interpretation of his exclamation, but to convey
his shocked and pained surprise as well.
The Patriarch bowed his head affirmatively, smiling a little wistfully.
Madison impetuously drew his chair closer to the other, laid his hand
sympathetically upon the Patriarch's sleeve, and, with the slate upon
his knee, wrote with the other hand impulsively:
"I am sorry--very, very sorry. Would you care to tell me about it?"
The Patriarch's face lighted up while reading the slate, but he shook
his head slowly as he smiled again.
"By _and_ by, if you wish," he wrote. "But first about yourself. You are
sick--and you have come to me for help?"
The slate now passed from hand to hand quite rapidly.
"Yes," wrote Madison. "Can you cure me?"
"No," replied the Patriarch; "not in your present mental condition."
"What do you mean?" asked Madison.
"Your question itself implies that you are skeptical. While that state
of mind exists, I can do nothing--it depends entirely on yourself."
"And if I put skepticism aside?" Madison's pencil demanded. "Can you
cure me then?"
"Unquestionably," wrote the Patriarch, "if you really put it aside.
Faith is the simplest thing in the world and the most complex--but it is
fundamental. Without faith nothing is possible; with faith nothing is
impossible."
Madison's gray eyes rested, magnificently thoughtful and troubled, upon
the Patriarch.
"I have never thought much about it," he replied upon the slate, after a
tactful moment's pause. "But I believe that. There is something here,
about the place, about you that inspires confidence--I was prepared to
cling to my skepticism when I came in, but I do not feel that way now.
If only I knew you a little better, were with you a little more, I
believe I could have the faith you speak of."
"How long do you remain in Needley?" the Patriarch wrote.
Madison got up from his chair, went slowly to the fireplace, and, with
his back to the Patriarch, stood watching the crackling logs.
"The old chap's no fool," he informed himself, "even if he is gone a
little in one particular. He certainly does believe in himself for fair!
Wonder where he got his education--notice the English he writes? And,
say--_going blind_! Fancy that! Santa Claus, you overwhelm me, you are
too bountiful, you are too generous--you'll have nothing left for the
next chimney! Deaf and dumb--and blind. Really, I do not deserve this--I
really don't--let me at least tip the hat-boy, or I'll feel mean."
He turned gravely to the Patriarch; resuming his chair with an
expression on his face as one arrived at a weighty decision after a
mental battle with one's self.
"I will stay here until I am cured. I put myself in your hands. What am
I to do?" he wrote quickly--and held out his hand almost anxiously for
the other's assent.
The Patriarch smiled seriously as, after peering at the slate, he took
the outstretched hand and laid his other one unaffectedly upon Madison's
shoulder.
"Be sure then that I can help you," wrote the Patriarch cheerfully.
"There is no course of treatment such as you may, perhaps, imagine. My
power lies in a perfect faith to help you once you, in turn, have faith
yourself--that is all. It is but the practical application of the old
dogma that mind is superior to matter. You must come and see me every
day, and we will talk together."
"I will come--gladly," Madison replied; and, taking the slate, carefully
wiped off the writing--as he had previously wiped it off every time it
came into his hands--with a damp rag that the Patriarch had taken from
the table drawer when he had produced the slate and pencil.
"This slate racket is the limit," said Madison to himself, as his pencil
began to move and screech again; "but I've got to get a little deeper
under his vest yet."
He handed the slate to the Patriarch, and on it were the words:
"Won't you tell me something of yourself, how you came to live here
alone, and your name, perhaps? I do not mean to presume, but I am deeply
interested."
"There is never presumption in kindliness and sympathy," answered the
Patriarch. "But my name and story is buried in the past--perhaps when I
am gone those who care to know may know. I have not hurt you by refusing
to answer?"
"No, indeed!" said Madison politely to himself. "The element of mystery
is one of the best drawing cards I know--it's got Needley going strong.
Far, far be it from me to tear the veil asunder. I mentioned it only as
a feeler."
But upon the slate he wrote:
"Far from being hurt, I respect your silence. But your eyes--you were to
tell me about them."
The Patriarch's face saddened suddenly as he read the words.
"I have made no secret of it," he wrote. "I have been going blind for
nearly a year now. The end, I am afraid, is very near--within a few
days, perhaps even to-morrow. I think I should not mind it much myself,
for I am very old and have not a great while longer to live in any case,
but for the time that is left it will mar my usefulness. I have been
able to help the people here and they have come to depend upon me--that
is my life. I trust I am not boastful if I say my greatest joy has been
in helping others."
He had come to the bottom of the slate and held it out for Madison to
read; then wiped it off, and went on:
"I have dreamed often of a wider field, of reaching out to help the
thousands beyond this little town--but I have realized that it could be
no more than a dream. I have been successful here because the people
believe in me and have unquestioning faith in me--to go outside amongst
strangers would only have been to be received as a charlatan and faker,
or as a poor deaf and dumb fool at best."
Madison took the slate.
"But if these thousands of others came to you--what then?"
The Patriarch's face glowed.
"It would be a wondrous joy," he wrote. "Too wondrous to dwell
upon--because it could never be. If they came I could help them, for
their very coming would be an evidence of faith--and faith alone is
necessary. Think of the joy of helping so many others--it is the fulness
of life. But let us not dream any more, friend Madison."
"Of course," communed Madison, studying the illumined face, "he's
slightly touched in his upper story on the faith stunt; but he's in dead
earnest, and he's got the brotherhood-of-man bug bad. Come to think of
it, Hiram did say something about his 'sight failing,' but I didn't
think it was anything like this. If he's going to go finally blind in,
say, a week, perhaps it would be just as well to postpone the opening
night until he does."
Madison took the slate.
"Stranger things than that have happened," he wrote. "I never heard of
you before, yet I am one of the thousands beyond this little town and I
am here--why not the others?"
The Patriarch shook his head sadly.
"It is but a dream," he wrote.
Madison held the slate in his hands for quite a long time before he
wrote again; his attitude one of sympathetic hesitancy as his eyes
played over the form and face before him, while the Patriarch smiled at
him with gentle, patient resignation. Back in Madison's fertile brain
the germ of an inspiration was developing into fuller life.
"What will you do here alone when you are blind?" he asked--and his face
was disturbed and solicitous as he passed the Patriarch the slate.
"I need very little," the Patriarch wrote back. "You must not worry
about me. My garden supplies nearly all my wants, and there are many in
the village, I am sure, who will help me with that when the snow is
gone."
"I am quite certain of that," Madison's pencil agreed. "But here in the
house you cannot be alone--there are so many things to do, little things
that I am sure you have not thought of--some one must cook for you, for
instance. You will need a woman's hand here--have you no one, no
relative that you can call upon?"
The Patriarch lowered the slate from his eyes, shook his head a little
pathetically, and began to write.
"I do not think they would have cared to come, even if they were still
alive; but they are all gone many years ago--except perhaps a
grand-niece, and I do not know what has become of her."
"Why, that's just the thing," wrote Madison. "Suppose we try to find
her?"
Again the Patriarch shook his head.
"I am afraid that would be impossible. I do not even know that she is
alive. I know only of her birth, and that is twenty years ago."
"Even that is not hopeless," wrote Madison optimistically, and his face
as he looked at the Patriarch was seriously thoughtful. "Where was she
born?"
"New York," the Patriarch answered.
"And I never half appreciated the old town nor the fulness thereof until
I came to Needley!" said Madison plaintively to the toe of his boot,
while his hand scrawled the inquiry: "What is her name?"
"Vail," wrote the Patriarch. "That was her father's name. She is my
grand-niece on her mother's side. I do not know what they christened
her."
Madison once more, apparently deep in thought, sought refuge at the
fireplace, his hands plunged in his pockets, his shoulders drawn a
little forward, his back to the Patriarch.
"Fiction," he assured a crack in the cement between two stones, "was
never, never like this. It seems to me that I remember the occurrence.
It had grown a little dim with the lapse of time, it is true; but now
that I recall it, it comes back with remarkable clearness. I am quite
sure they christened her--Helena. Helena Vail! Now isn't that a
perfectly lovely name for a novel! And she'll be so good to the dear old
chap too--washing and ironing and cooking for him--and stealing out into
the woodshed for a drag on her cigarette--_not_. No, my dear, not even
that--this is serious business."
He turned, came back to his chair, picked up the slate, and wrote:
"I have the fortune, or misfortune perhaps, to be what is commonly
called a rich man. Money, they say, will do anything, and if it will
I'll find this niece for you."
The Patriarch's eyes grew moist as he read the words, and his hand
trembled a little with emotion as he held the pencil.
"I cannot let you do that," he protested. "You are very kind, and it
seems almost as though you had been brought to me providentially at the
end of long years of loneliness for a purpose, when my hour of
helplessness was near; but, indeed, I have no right to allow you to do
this."
"They tell me in the village," wrote Madison in reply, "that you have
always refused to accept a penny for anything you have ever done for
them. I have no doubt you would equally refuse to accept anything from
me for what you may do, and I should hesitate to offer it however much I
felt indebted, but this is something that you must let me do. It will
make me feel more--how shall I say it?--more as though I had a right to
the privilege of coming here."
The Patriarch wiped his still moist eyes before he answered.
"What can I say to you? It does not seem right that I should let a
stranger do so much, and yet it seems that I should not say no
because--"
Madison was bending over the slate, reading as the other wrote, and he
took the pencil gently from the Patriarch's hand.
"You must not look on me any longer as a stranger," he wrote. "Let us
just consider that it is all arranged--only I would strongly advise
making no mention of it until we make sure that she is alive."
"I think nothing should be said," agreed the Patriarch. "For even if you
found her she might not care to come--I have little here to offer a
young girl--few comforts--the care of a blind man who is deaf and dumb."
"We'll see about that when we find her"--Madison smiled brightly at the
Patriarch, as he wrote. "Now that's settled for the time being, isn't
it?"
The dumb lips moved and both hands reached out to Madison.
Madison took them in a firm, strong, reassuring clasp, then shook his
finger in a sort of playfully emotional embarrassment, excellently well
done, at the Patriarch--and picked up the slate again.
"It is getting late," he wrote, "and I must not tire you out. I am
afraid you will think I am far more inquisitive than I have any right to
be, but there is one more question that I would like to ask--may I?"
The Patriarch nodded his head, and laid his hand on Madison's sleeve in
a quaint, almost affectionate way.
"It is about your education. You came here sixty years ago, and you have
lived alone. You could have had but few advantages, with your handicap,
previous to that, and yet you write and use such perfect English."
"The answer is very simple," replied the Patriarch on the slate. "Until
within the last year, I have read largely. Would you care to look at my
books? They are there in the nook on the other side of the fireplace."
Madison, promptly and full of interest, rose from his chair, passed
around the fireplace, and halted before a row of shelves set in against
the wall.
"I pass," Madison admitted to himself after a moment, during which his
eyes roved over the well chosen classics. "I've heard of one or two of
these before--casually. I've an idea that if the Patriarch's got all
this inside his gray matter, it's just as well for the Flopper, for Pale
Face Harry, for Helena and yours truly that he's deaf and dumb--and will
be blind."
Madison came back to the Patriarch with beaming face, and picked up the
slate.
"I read a great deal myself," he wrote. "It is a pleasure to find _real_
books here. May I, during my stay in Needley, look upon them in a little
way as my own library?"
"You are very welcome indeed," the Patriarch answered.
"Thank you," wrote Madison. "And now, surely, I must go"--he smiled at
the Patriarch.
"Come to-morrow," invited the Patriarch. "I would like to show you all
around my little place here."
"Indeed, I will," Madison scratched upon the slate, "and do you know
that somehow, since I came here to-night, I feel a sense of relief, a
sort of guarantee that everything is going to be all right with me in
the future."
The Patriarch smiled quietly, almost tolerantly.
"I know that," he wrote. "Keep your mind free of doubt, be optimistic
and cheerful as regards yourself, nourish the faith that has already
taken root and that I feel responds to mine; keep in the open air and
take plenty of exercise."
Slowly, with an apparently abstracted air, Madison read the slate,
wiped it carefully, laid it down, and then held out his hand.
"Good-night!" he nodded warmly.
The Patriarch, still with the quiet smile upon his lips, rose from his
armchair, and, keeping his clasp on Madison's hand, led Madison to the
door, opened it, and with a gesture at once courtly and affectionate
bade his guest good-night.
Madison crossed the lawn at a thoughtful pace, turned into the wagon
track, and, in the shelter of the woods now, whimsically felt his pulse;
then, lighting a cigar, tramped on with a buoyant stride.
"There's only one answer, of course," he mused. "The Patriarch's got a
brain kink on faith--it's the natural outcome of living alone for sixty
years. Outside of that and his books, he's as simple and innocent and
trusting as a babe. I suppose the thing's kind of grown on him--Hiram
said it had taken forty years--which isn't sudden unless you say it
quick. Hanged if I don't like the old sport though, and if Helena isn't
the best ever to him I'll stop her chewing gum allowance." Madison
looked up through the arched, leafless branches overhead. "Beautiful
night, isn't it?" said he pleasantly.
A little later he reached the main road and paused a moment on the
bridge, as though to sum up the thoughts and imaginings that had
occupied him on the way along.
"It's a queer world," said John Garfield Madison profoundly to the
turbid little stream that flowed beneath his feet. "I wonder why some
of us are born with brains--and some are born just plain damned fools!"
He went on again, arrived at the Congress Hotel, and, discovering
through the window that the leading citizens of Needley were still in
session, negotiated the back entrance. On the way upstairs he
stumbled--quite inadvertently--and stopped to listen.
"There he be now," announced Hiram Higgins' voice excitedly. "Goin' up
to his room to meditate. Knew he'd come back feelin' like that. I be
goin' out there to-morrow to see the Patriarch myself."
Madison smiled, mounted the remaining stairs, entered his room, and
lighted his lamp.
"Having got my hand in at writing," he remarked, "I guess I'd better
keep it up and write Helena--Vail."
He extracted a pad of writing paper and an envelope from the tray of his
trunk, his fountain pen from his pocket, and, drawing his chair to the
table and laying down his cigar reluctantly at his elbow, began to
write. At the end of fifteen minutes, he tilted back his chair,
relighted the stub of his cigar, and critically read over his epistle.
"Dear Kid," it ran. "Do not be anxious about me--I am feeling better
already. Have had my first treatment, and am now eating fried eggs and
ham regularly three times a day. A Sunday-school picnic taking to
washboilers full of thin coffee and the left-over cakes kindly
contributed by Deacon Jones' household, is nothing to the way the boobs
will take to the Patriarch--who has kindly consented to go blind to make
our thorny paths as smooth as possible for us.
"Do you get that, Helena--he's going blind! In just a few days, my dear,
you will be with me, have patience. The meteorological bureau is a
little hazy yet on the exact date of the total eclipse, but it's due to
happen any minute. Now listen. Your name is Helena Vail. You're the
Patriarch's grand-niece, and you're coming to live alone with him and
soothe his declining years; but you can't come yet because I've got to
find you first, and besides, until he's blind, he'll stick to a nasty
habit he's got of asking questions on his little slate. You needn't have
any hesitation about coming on the score of propriety, I assure you it
is perfectly proper--he is running Methuselah pretty near a dead heat.
And, as far as the town is concerned, apart from the fact that you are a
grand-niece, orphaned, you don't have to know anything about yourself,
either--that's part of the Patriarch's dark, mysterious past, where the
lights go out and the fiddles get rickets.
"That's about all. I'll let you know when to come. Remember me to Mr.
Coogan and Harry, and keep my picture under your pillow. Ever thine,
J.G.M."
Madison picked up his pen again and added another line:
"P.S. Better buy a cook-book."
He folded the pages, inserted them in the envelope, sealed the envelope
and addressed it to Miss Helena Smith--street and number not far from
the tenderloin district of New York.
Then Madison yawned pleasantly, tucked the letter in his pocket--and
prepared for bed.
--VI--
OFFICIALLY ENDORSED
Ten days had passed, bringing with them many changes. The snow was gone,
and the warm, balmy airs of springtime had brought the buds upon the
trees almost to leaf. It seemed indeed a new land, and one now full of
charm and delight--the desolate, straggling hamlet, once so barren,
frozen and hopeless looking, was now a quaint, alluring little village
nestling picturesquely in its hollow, framed in green fields and
majestic woods. Quiet, restful, peaceful it was--like a dream place,
untroubled. Upon the farms about men plowed their furrows, calling to
each other and to their horses; in the homes the doors and windows were
thrown hospitably wide to the sweet, fresh, vernal airs, and the thrifty
housewives were busy at their cleaning.
And there had been other changes, too. The ten days had found Madison
more and more a constant visitor, and finally a most intimate one, at
the Patriarch's cottage--while to the circle in the hotel office his
voice no longer rose in even feeble protest, he was one of them. And,
perhaps most vital change of all, the Patriarch was nearly blind--so
nearly blind that conversation now was limited to but little more than
a single word at a time upon the slate.
It was morning, in the Patriarch's sitting-room, and Madison was seated
in his usual place beside the table facing the other. For upwards of an
hour, it had taken him that long, he had been engaged, having decided
that the time was ripe, in telling the Patriarch that his grand-niece
had been found and that now it was only necessary to write and ask her
to come to Needley.
The Patriarch's fine old face was aglow with pleasure as he finally
understood. Letter writing was beyond him now, a thing of the past, so
upon the slate he scrawled:
"You write."
Madison shook his head; and again with gentle patience explained that
perhaps it would be better if the letter came from some one holding an
official position in the village, rather than from one who, even in an
abstract way, would be unknown to her--the postmaster, for instance.
And the Patriarch, patting Madison's sleeve gratefully, agreed.
Out in the garden behind the cottage, where for the first time in sixty
seasons the work must be done by other hands, Hiram Higgins, the
volunteer for the moment, was busy at his "spell."
Madison stepped to the door and called him in.
"Mr. Higgins," he said, "the Patriarch has just told me that he has a
grand-niece living in New York, and he wants you to write to her and ask
her to come to him."
"Be that so!" exclaimed Mr. Higgins, gazing earnestly at the Patriarch.
"Well, 'tain't no surprise to me--always calc'lated he must have folks
somewheres. An' I'm right glad now he needs 'em he's made up his mind to
have 'em come. Wants me to write, does he?"
"He can't write any more himself," said Madison. "He seems to think that
you, as the postmaster, as well as the town police official, are the
proper person to do it--and I quite agree with him."
"So I be," declared Mr. Higgins importantly. "I'll write it on the town
paper, an' comin' from the postmaster there won't be no doubt in her
mind that it's any of them bunco games or the lurin' of young women away
such as I've read about, for I reckon perhaps she ain't never heerd of
him before--never knew _him_ to write a letter, an' I calc'late to see
most everything that goes out."
Mr. Higgins picked up the slate and wrote the word "grand-niece?" upon
it in enormous characters; then, amplifying his interrogation by many
gestures of his hands, deft from long practice, he held the slate up to
the Patriarch.
The Patriarch nodded, and Hiram Higgins nodded back encouragingly.
"Where be her address?" Mr. Higgins inquired of Madison.
Madison stepped to the bookshelves out of view of the Patriarch around
the fireplace, but in full view of Mr. Higgins, and, reaching down the
Bible from the topmost shelf, extracted from inside its cover the aged,
yellow slip of paper that he had deposited there when he had entered the
cottage that morning, and on which was inscribed Helena's name and
address in a stiff, old-fashioned, angular hand resembling the
Patriarch's--an effect that Madison had stayed up half the night to
produce.
"I guess this must be it," he said. "He said it was here--we'll make
sure though"--and he handed it to the Patriarch.
Long and painfully the Patriarch studied it, anxiously deciphering the
words that he had never seen before, anxious to know all and whatever
this might tell him about his niece--then again he nodded his head and
expressed his gratitude by, patting Madison's sleeve.
Madison's smile modestly disavowed any thanks, as he passed the slip to
Mr. Higgins.
"Reckon that be it," Mr. Higgins agreed. "An' now, I guess I'll go right
back to town an' write it--I allow that the sooner we get her down here
the better. Folks'll be glad to hear this--the women folks was figurin'
on takin' spells an' helpin' out in the house same as the men in the
garden--'pears now there won't be no need of it."
Madison accompanied Mr. Higgins outside and helped him to harness up.
"Look here, Mr. Madison," said Hiram Higgins, as he made ready to go and
climbed into the democrat, "would you allow that the Patriarch's goin'
blind was goin' to interfere any with his power of curin' folks? It'll
be a powerful blow to the town if it does."
"Why, of course not!" said Madison decisively. "Certainly not! Indeed, I
wouldn't be surprised if it enhanced his power--it's purely mental, you
know. They say that the loss of any one or more of the senses generally
tends to make the others only the more acute--it's the--er--law of
compensation."
"Glad to hear you say so," said Mr. Higgins, with a sigh of relief,
"'cause I got another letter to write 'sides this one for the Patriarch.
It come last night, an' I was figurin' on speakin' to you about it." Mr.
Higgins dropped the reins on the dashboard, and dove into first one
pocket and then another. "Shucks!" said he disgustedly. "Now if I ain't
gone an' left it to home after all. But I dunno as it makes much
difference. It was from a fellow up your way by the name of Michael
Coogan, an' was addressed to the postmaster. 'Pears he read a piece in
the papers about the Patriarch which he sent along with the letter.
Allows he's been ailin' quite a spell, though he don't say what's the
matter with him, an' wants to know if what's in that piece is all gospel
truth, 'cause if 'tis he's comin' down. That's why I'm right glad to
have heerd you say what you just said. Bein' postmaster an' writin'
'fficially, I got to be conscientious and pretty partic'lar."
"Yes, of course--naturally," said Madison. "And what are you going to
say to him?" "Why," returned Mr. Higgins, "there ain't no trouble about
it now. Goin' to tell him that if the Patriarch can't help him there
ain't nobody on earth can--thought of mentionin' your name, too."
"By all means," assented Madison cordially. "I feel like a new man since
I've come here. I only wish more people knew about the Patriarch--it
makes your heart ache to think of the suffering and sickness that people
endure so hopelessly when there isn't any need of it."
"Yes, so it do," said Mr. Higgins. He picked up the reins. "So it do,"
he said heartily.
Madison watched the democrat as it started off behind the ambling
horse--watched with a sort of fascination at the inebriate, sideways
stagger of the wheels, a sort of wonder that the rear ones didn't shut
up like a jack-knife under the body of the vehicle and the democrat
promptly sit down on its tail-board; then, smiling, he walked back into
the cottage. The Patriarch was still sitting in the armchair beside the
table. Madison halted before the other.
"Well," said he confidentially to the Patriarch, "that's settled and I
don't mind admitting that it's a load off my mind. I hate to think of
what we'd have done without Hiram Higgins--in fact, it distresses me to
think of it. Let us think of something else. Day after to-morrow
Helena'll be along. Helena is the one and only--but you'll find that out
for yourself. I don't mind telling you though that she wears a number
two shoe, and you can guess the rest without any help from me. Then a
day or so later the Flopper and Pale Face Harry'll be along--you'll
enjoy them--things aren't going to be a bit slow from now on. I expect
the Flopper will bring some friends with him, too, so's to make a nice
little house-party--I wrote him about it, and--" Madison stopped
abruptly.
The Patriarch, evidently catching a movement of Madison's lips, was
gesticulating violently toward his ears, while he smiled half
tolerantly, half protestingly.
Madison nodded quickly and smiled deprecatingly in return.
"By Jove!" he said apologetically. "I always keep forgetting that you
can't hear. I was suggesting that perhaps you might like to go for a
walk--Mr. Higgins says it's a fine day." Madison picked up the slate and
in huge letters that sprawled from one end of the slate to the other
wrote the word: "WALK?"
The Patriarch rose from his chair with a pleased expression, and Madison
helped him solicitously to the door.
They passed out into the sunshine and headed for the beach--the
Patriarch, erect and strong, guiding himself with his hand on Madison's
arm.
Reaching the beach, the Patriarch paused and turned his face toward the
ocean, while he drew in great breaths of the invigorating air--and
Madison involuntarily stepped a little aside to look at the other
critically, as one might seek a vantage ground from which to view a
picture in all its variant lights and shades. Against the crested,
breaking surf, the fume-sprayed ledges of rock, the Patriarch stood out
a majestic, almost saintly figure--tall, stately, grand with the true
grandeur of simplicity, simple in dress, simple in attitude and mien,
patience, sweetness and trust illumining his face, his silver-crowned
head thrown back.
"I can shut my eyes," said Madison softly, "and see the Flopper being
cured right now--and the Flopper couldn't help it if he wanted to!"
--VII--
THE PATRIARCH'S GRAND-NIECE
It was Hiram Higgins who introduced Helena Vail to Madison, two days
later. Madison had led the Patriarch outside the door of the cottage as
the sound of wheels announced the expected arrival, and was waiting for
her as Mr. Higgins drove up in the democrat. Helena, marvelously garbed,
in the extreme of fashion, was demurely surveying her surroundings;
while Mr. Higgins was very evidently excited and not a little flustered.
A huge trunk and two smaller ones occupied the rear of the democrat,
with the dismantled back seat lashed on top of them.
Madison, leaving the Patriarch, hastened forward politely.
"Mr. Madison," said Hiram Higgins importantly, "this be the Patriarch's
grand-niece come to stay with him."
From under a picture hat, Helena's eyes smiled down at Madison.
"Oh, I am so glad to meet you, Mr. Madison," she said cordially. "Mr.
Higgins has been telling me about you, and how good you have been to
my--my grand-uncle."
"You are very kind to say so, Miss Vail," responded Madison modestly.
"May I help you down?"
She gave him a daintily gloved hand, exposed a daintily stockinged ankle
as she placed her foot a little hesitantly on the wheel, and jumped
lightly to the ground.
"That," she said quickly and a little anxiously for Mr. Higgins' ears,
indicating the Patriarch, "that is my grand-uncle there, I am sure."
"Yes," said Madison, leading her toward the Patriarch. "And he has been
looking forward very anxiously all day to your arrival--it seemed as
though the afternoon would never come for him."
"Gee!" said Helena under her breath. "I had the rubes in the village on
the run--you ought to have seen them stare as the chariot drove along."
"I don't wonder," said Madison softly. "The sun's rather strong down
here, Helena, and if you're not careful you'll scorch your neck with
those burning-glasses you've got in your ears."
"Don't I look nice?" demanded Helena, with a pout.
"You bet you do!" said Madison earnestly. "You've got the swellest thing
on Broadway beaten from Forty-Second Street to the Battery. Now, here
you are"--they had halted before the Patriarch.
The venerable face was turned toward them, as though by instinct the
Patriarch knew that they were there--and his hands were held out in
greeting.
Helena clasped them firmly, and submitted sweetly as the Patriarch drew
her into his arms.
The Patriarch released her after an instant, and his hands, in lieu of
eyes, reaching out to search her face, came bewilderingly in contact
with the picture hat.
Helena, a little uncertainly, looked at Madison.
"Is he _all_ blind?" she whispered.
"Quite blind," said Madison sadly.
Helena's face clouded a little, and into the brown eyes crept a strange,
sudden, sympathetic look.
"Doc," she said, "it--it isn't fair. It's a shame--he can't fight back."
"One error to you, Miss Vail," said Madison pleasantly. "Eliminate the
'Doc.' Don't shed tears, you're down here to be sweet to him, aren't
you--well, get into the game."
Helena turned from Madison, and, impulsively taking the Patriarch's
groping hands, guided them to her cheeks and held them there.
"Lucky dog!" observed Madison; then, raising his voice: "I am sure you
would like to be alone together, Miss Vail--perhaps you will take him
into the cottage. If you will excuse me, I'll help Mr. Higgins with the
trunks."
Madison turned and walked over to where Mr. Higgins, beside the democrat
with a handful of chin whiskers, was observing the scene.
"Fine girl!" declared Mr. Higgins, as Helena, with the Patriarch's arm
in hers, disappeared inside the cottage. "'Pears she must have money,
an' I'm right glad 'count of the Patriarch--said her father an' mother
was dead an' she was alone in the world--them jewels she wore must have
cost a pile. Reckon she's been used to livin' kinder different from the
way folks down here do--hope 'tain't goin' to be so hard on her she
won't want to stay."
"I was thinking about that myself," said Madison gravely, knotting his
brows as he nodded his head. "There's no doubt it will be a big change
for her, but I imagine she had some sort of an idea what to expect--it
is certainly greatly to her credit that she would give up her own
interests unselfishly and come here to devote her life to the care of a
relative whom she had never seen before. I've an idea that the girl who
would do that is the kind of a girl who's got grit enough to see it
through."
"So she be," said Mr. Higgins heartily. "Ain't every one 'ud do it--not
by a heap!"
"I'll give you a hand with the trunks," said Madison thoughtfully.
They carried the large trunk between them into the cottage and, as
Helena called to them, down the little hallway past what Madison knew to
be the Patriarch's bedroom, and stopped before the next door, which was
open. Madison remembered the room, when nearly two weeks ago now the
Patriarch had shown him through the cottage, as a sort of store-room
full of odds and ends. Mr. Higgins, too, evidently had known it only in
that guise, for he whistled softly and reached for his whiskers.
"Well now, if that ain't right smart of the Patriarch!" he exclaimed.
"Real set he must have been on makin' you feel to home, Miss Vail--an'
never said a word to no one, neither."
"Yes," said Helena, "isn't it pretty? And did he really fix this up for
me all by himself?"--she was looking at Madison, as she stood in the
center of the room beside the Patriarch.
"Must have," said Madison, surveying the room.
It wasn't luxurious, the little chamber, nor was there over much of
furniture, nor was that even of a high order--there was a bed with a
red-checkered crazy-quilt; a washstand with severe, heavy white
crockery; a rocking chair, homemade, of hickory; a rag mat, round,
many-colored; and white muslin curtains on the windows. It wasn't
luxurious, the little chamber--it was fresh and sweet and clean.
Upon the Patriarch's face was a sort of pleased expectancy, and Helena
promptly took his arm and pressed it affectionately.
"Isn't it perfectly dear of him!" she said softly. "To think of him
going to all this trouble for me when he could scarcely see!"
"Well, 'tain't no more'n you deserve," said Mr. Higgins gallantly, as he
slewed the trunk around against the wall. "I'll lug them other trunks
in myself, ain't but small ones, they ain't"--and he hurried from the
room, as though fearful that Madison might secure a share in the honors.
"I guess you've made a hit with Mr. Higgins, Helena," observed Madison,
with a grin.
"Have I?" returned Helena absently; then abruptly: "This is a real nice
lay you've steered me into, John Madison."
"Yes; not bad," said Madison complacently. "Bring your uncle into the
front room, Helena; and then you can get Hiram to show you the well and
the old oaken bucket and where the pantries and cupboards are, he knows
more about them than I do--it's pretty near time for you to be thinking
about getting supper."
"Are you going to stay for it?" inquired Helena pertly.
"For the first attempt!" ejaculated Madison, with a wry face. "Good
Heavens, no! I'm just convalescing from a serious illness."
In the front room Madison settled himself to a study of the Patriarch's
beaming, happy face, while Helena under Mr. Higgins' attentive guidance
explored the cottage.
"D'ye know, old chap," he said, and leaned across the table to touch the
Patriarch's hand, "I feel like a blooming philanthropist. An outsider
might think I was playing you pretty low and taking advantage of you,
and even Helena's got a budding hunch that way it seems--but just think
of the mess you'd have been in if it wasn't for me, just think of the
good you're going to do, and just look at yourself and see how pleased
and happy you look."
The Patriarch smiled responsively to the touch upon his hand.
"Of course you are," said Madison affably.
Presently there came the sound of an axe busily at work, and a moment
later Helena came laughingly into the room.
"He's filling up the wood-box," she explained, and darting across to
Madison put her arms around his neck. "Aren't you going to tell me
you're glad to see me?" she whispered coyly. "Oh, I've been longing so
for you! Kiss me"--she held out tempting little red lips, invitingly
pursed up.
"Nix on that!" said Madison, smiling but firm, as he disengaged her
arms. "Soft pedal, Helena, my dear."
"But he can't see or hear," pouted Helena.
"I should hope not!" said Madison, with a gasp. "But you never know who
else might, or when they might--we begin right, and run no risks--see?
People have a charming habit of dropping around informally
here--everybody's at home."
"Don't you love me any more?" inquired Helena, unconvinced, and still
pouting.
"Of course, I do!" asserted Madison, laughing at her. "Don't be a goose,
Helena. You remember what I told you all in the Roost, don't you? Well,
I haven't been living in a Maine village ten days or two weeks for
nothing, and what I said then goes now more than ever. Now, don't get
sore, kid--there's a big stake up, and if we're going to play the game
we've got to play it to the limit. We live perfectly, ultra-proper,
decent lives, mentally, morally, physically, till we beat it out of here
for keeps."
"Ain't we going to have a nice time!" murmured Helena sarcastically.
"Oh, cheer up!" said Madison. "It may be quiet for a day or two--but not
much longer than that. Now tell me about the Flopper and Pale Face
before Higgins gets back--have they got things straight? And pat your
uncle's hand while you talk, Helena--get the habit."
"I don't have to get the habit," said Helena a little crossly, perching
herself on the arm of the Patriarch's chair and taking his hand. "I
think he's a perfect dear, and for us to sit here and take advantage of
him when he trusts us is--"
"Now cut that out," said Madison cheerfully. "Think of those gondolas in
Venice when we get through with this--that'll make you feel better. Go
on about the Flopper and Pale Face--can the Flopper speak any English
yet?"
Helena laughed in spite of herself.
"I've had a dream of a time with him," she said. "He's broken his neck
trying, at any rate; and he's not so bad as he was--quite."
"Good!" said Madison. "And?"
"I read them your last letter saying they were to come together and work
the train on the way down," she continued. "The Flopper got the
postmaster's letter, too."
"How did it size up as a testimonial?" inquired Madison.
Helena's dark eyes flashed with amusement.
"Lovely!"
"Too thick--fishy?" asked Madison.
"Oh, no," said Helena, "not if you have faith--just strong. It's all
right, though; I told him he could use it--it's a drawing card in
itself, for some of them would be curious enough to get off and see the
finish. Everything is all fixed--they'll be here to-morrow."
"Good girl!" said Madison approvingly. "We'll pull it off out there on
the lawn where all the multitude can see--you'll have to lead his nibs
out and guide him to the Flopper while the hush falls and you look kind
of scared--you know the lay. There's no one can touch you when it comes
to playing up to the house. And now, there's just one thing more--you'll
need some one around here to help you and keep an eye on the offerings
when they begin to come in. Well, that's the Flopper's rôle in the
second act--see? Overwhelmed with gratitude at his cure, he attaches
himself to the Patriarch with dog-like fidelity--beautiful thought!--get
the idea? And--"
"Hush!" cautioned Helena. "Here's Mr. Higgins coming."
"All right," said Madison, rising and moving to the door. "I'm going
now, then--guess you understand. See you in the morning for the final
touches. Tell Mr. Higgins I'm waiting outside for him to drive me home."
He raised his voice. "Good afternoon, Miss Vail," he said, and stepped
out onto the lawn.
--VIII--
IN WHICH THE BAIT IS NIBBLED
There was a group around the Flopper on the Portland platform beside the
Bar Harbor express; some wore pitying expressions, others smiled a
little tolerantly--Pale Face Harry, from the circle, sneered openly.
"Nutty!" he coughed, and touched his forehead. "Nothing doing in the
upper story--some one ought to look after him."
The Flopper, a crippled thing on the ground, fixed Pale Face Harry with
a pointed forefinger.
"Youse don't look like you had many weeps to spare for anybody but
yerself--yer fallin' to pieces," said the Flopper. "I didn't ask you nor
any of youse to butt in--I was talkin' to dis lady here"--he motioned
toward a young woman in a wheeled, invalid chair, who, between a trained
nurse on one side and a gentleman on the other, was regarding him with a
startled expression in her eyes.
She turned now and spoke to the gentleman beside her.
"Robert," she said, in a low, anxious tone, "do you think that--that
there can be anything in it?"
"Have you lost your head, Naida?" the man laughed. "The age of miracles
has passed."
"But he is so _sure_," she whispered.
"Poppycock!" said her companion contemptuously.
The Flopper, in good, if unfashionable and ready-made clothes, fresh
linen, and a clean shave, turned a bright, intelligent face on the man
at this remark.
"I guess youse are de kind," he said, with a grim smile, "dat ain't had
to kill yerself worryin' much about any kind of trouble, an' it ain't
nothin' to you to cut de ground of hope out from another guy's feet an'
let him slide. Mabbe you think I'm nutty too, because I know I'm goin'
to be cured--but it don't hurt you none to have me think so, does it?
Mabbe someday you might like to hope a little yerself, an' if--"
"'Board! All aboard!"--the conductor's voice boomed down the platform.
The young woman leaned forward in her chair toward the Flopper.
"I know what it is to hope," she said softly. "Will you come back into
our car after awhile? I'd like to have you tell me more about this.
Please do."
"Sure," said the Flopper amiably. "Sure, mum, I will, if youse wants me
to."
The crowd broke up, hurrying for the train; and the Flopper, dragging a
valise along beside him, jerked himself toward the steps.
"Swipe me, if I ain't got a bite already!" said the Flopper to himself.
"An' outer a private car, too--wouldn't dat bump you! An' say, wait till
you see de Doc t'row up his dukes when he listens to me handin' out me
sterilized English!"
The brakeman and a kindly-hearted fellow passenger helped the Flopper
into the train--and thereafter for an hour or more, in a first class
coach, the Flopper held undisputed sway. The passengers, flocking from
the other cars, filled the aisle and seriously interfered with the
lordly movements of the train crew, challenging the conductor's
authority with passive indifference until that functionary, exasperated
beyond endurance, threatened to curtail the ride the Flopper had paid
for and put him off at the next station--whereat the passive attitude of
the passengers vanished. The American public is always interested in a
novelty, and on occasions is not to be gainsaid--the American public, as
represented by the patrons of the Bar Harbor express, was interested at
the moment in the Flopper, and they passed the conductor from hand to
hand--it was the only way he could have got through the car--and
deposited him outside in the vestibule to tell his troubles to the
buffer-plate.
The Flopper was in deadly, serious earnest; there was no doubt, no
possible room for doubt on that score--one had but to look at the flush
upon his cheeks and note the ring of conviction in his voice. Even Pale
Face Harry's gibes and sneers melted before the unshakable assurance,
and he became, with reservations, noticeably impressed.
A metropolitan newspaper man was struck with the idea of a humorous
series of articles to pay for his vacation, entitled, "Characters I Have
Met In Maine"--and forthwith, perched on the back of the seat behind the
Flopper, proceeded to sketch out the first one, with the mental
determination to get off at Needley for the local color necessary to its
climax.
A soap drummer nudged a fellow drummer whose line was lingerie.
"Ever do Needley?" he grinned.
The lingerie exponent had a sense of humor--he grinned back.
"My house is everlastingly rubbing it into me to open up new territory,"
said the soap salesman.
"Me too," responded the white-goods man.
"Needley," said he of the soap persuasion, "would be virgin soil for any
drummer."
"I'd like to see the finish," said the lingerie man--still grinning.
"Well?" inquired the soap man--still grinning. "What do you say?"
"You bet!" said the man with eight trunks full of daintiness in the
baggage car ahead. "It's Needley for ours--you're on!"
The Flopper was an artist--and he was in his glory. Where his position
was indubitably weak, he side-stepped with the frank admission that he
knew no more than they. He knew only one thing, and that was the only
thing he cared about, the rest made no odds to him, he was going down to
Needley to be cured--and he let them see Mr. Higgins' letter.
A porter from the rear car squirmed and wriggled his way down to the
seat occupied by the Flopper.
"Mistah Tho'nton, sah," he announced importantly, "would like to see you
in his private car, if you could done make it convenient, sah."
"Sure!" said the Flopper.
The passengers crowded up, standing on the seats and arm-rests, to make
room for the Flopper to crawl down the aisle, while the porter preceded
him to open the doors.
Through the car in the rear of the one he had occupied, the regular
parlor car, the Flopper, a piteous spectacle, made his way--chairs
turned, the occupants craned their necks after the deformed and broken
creature, while smothered exclamations and little cries of sympathy from
the women followed him along. The Flopper's eyes never lifted from the
strip of carpet before him, but his lips moved.
"Gee!" he muttered. "Dis has de gape-wagon skun a mile. Wish I could
pass de hat--I'd make de killin' of me young life. Pipe de hydrogen hair
on de gran'mother wid de sparkler on her thumb an' weeps in her eyes,
an' look at de guy wid de yellow gloves rolled back on his wrists to
heighten de intelligint look on his face, dat she's kiddin'--I could
play dem to a fare-thee-well if I only had de chanst. Oh, gee!"--the
Flopper sighed--"an' I got to let it go!"
With regret still poignantly affecting him, the Flopper passed on into
the private car, and the porter ushered him into a sort of combination
observation and sitting-room compartment. The Flopper's eyes lifted and
made a quick, comprehensive tour of his surroundings. The young woman
who had spoken to him on the platform was reclining on a couch; the
nurse sat on the foot of the couch; and the man was tilted back in an
armchair against the window.
The young woman raised herself to a sitting posture and held out her
hand.
"I am Mrs. Thornton," she said, with a smile. "This is my husband, and
this is Miss Harvey, my nurse. It was very good of you to come, Mr.--?"
she paused invitingly.
"Coogan," supplied the Flopper. "Michael Coogan."
"Let me offer you a chair, Mr. Coogan," said Thornton, a little
ironically, pushing one toward the Flopper. "Or would you be more
comfortable on the floor?"
The Flopper's eyelids fell--covering a quick, ugly glint.
"T'anks!" he said--and swung himself, by his arms, into the chair.
"I want you to tell me all about this strange man in Needley, and how
you came to hear of him and believe in him," said Mrs. Thornton. "I was
only able to get just the barest outline of it out there on the
platform with the crowd around."
"Dat's easy," said the Flopper earnestly. "Sure, I'll tell you. I saw a
piece about dis Patriarch in one of de Noo Yoik papers, so I writes to
de postmaster of de town to find out if he was on de level--see?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Thornton. "And what did the postmaster say?"
The Flopper took Hiram Higgins' letter from his pocket and handed it to
Mrs. Thornton.
"Youse can read it fer yerself, mum," he said, with an air of one
delivering a final and irrefutable argument.
Mrs. Thornton read the letter carefully, almost anxiously.
"If only a part of this is true," she said wistfully, passing it to her
husband, "it is perfectly wonderful."
Mr. Thornton read it--with a grin.
"I don't know, I am sure," he observed caustically, handing the letter
to Miss Harvey, "how the medical profession would stand on this--would
your school endorse it, nurse?"
Miss Harvey read it with her back to the others--then she glanced at
Mrs. Thornton--and checked herself as she was about to speak. She folded
the letter slowly and returned it to the Flopper without comment.
Robert Thornton, master of millions, hard-headed and practical for all
his youth, leaned forward in his chair toward the Flopper.
"Look here," he said bluntly, "you don't mean to say that you believe
this seriously, do you?"
"Oh, no!" said the Flopper softly. "Nothin' like dat! Of course I don't
believe it! I'm only guyin' myself--see? I'm just goin' dere fer
fun--an' spendin' me last red to get dere. Say"--his voice snapped--"wot
do youse t'ink I am, anyway?"
"Surely, Robert," said Mrs. Thornton gently, "it is evident enough that
he believes it."
Thornton did not look at her--he was still gazing at the Flopper, his
brows knitted.
"How long have you been like this?" he demanded sharply.
"All me life," said the Flopper. "I was born dat way."
"And you expect to go down here and by some means, which I must confess
is quite beyond my ability to grasp, be cured in a miraculous
manner!"--Thornton smiled tolerantly.
"Sure, I do!" asserted the Flopper doggedly. "If he's done it fer de
crowd dere, why can't he do it fer me? Didn't de postmaster say all yer
gotter have is faith? Well, I got de faith--an' I got it hard enough to
stake all I got on it. Dis time to-morrow--say, dis time to-morrow I
wouldn't change places wid any man in de United States."
Thornton's tolerant smile deepened.
"I guess you're sincere enough," he said; "and I'm not trying to cut the
ground of hope out from under your feet, as you put it out on the
platform--but it seems to me that it is only the kindly thing to do to
warn you that the more faith you put in a thing like this the worse you
are making it for yourself--you are laying up a bitter disappointment in
store that can only make your present misfortune the more unbearable."
The Flopper shook his head.
"If he's done it fer others, he can do it fer me," he repeated, with
unshaken conviction. "An' dat goes--I can't lose."
Thornton tilted his chair back again, and stared at the Flopper with
pitying incredulity.
There was silence for a moment; then Mrs. Thornton spoke.
"Robert," she said slowly, "I want to stop at Needley."
The front legs of Thornton's chair came down on the heavy carpet with a
dull thud, and he whirled around in his seat to stare at his wife.
"You don't mean to say, Naida," he gasped, "that you've got faith in
this thing, too!"
"No; not faith," she answered pathetically. "I hardly dare to _hope_. I
have hoped so much in the last year, and--"
"But this is sheer nonsense!" Thornton broke in with irritable
impatience. "I can understand this man here, in a way--he has the
superstition, if you like to call it that, due to lack of education, if
he'll pardon my saying so in his presence; but you, Naida, surely you
can't take any stock in it!"
She smiled at him a little wanly.
"I have told you that I didn't even dare to hope," she said. "But I want
to see--I want to see. I have tried sanatoriums and consulted
specialists until it has all become a nightmare to me and I am no
better--I sometimes think I never shall be any better."
"But," exploded Thornton, rising from his chair, "that's nothing to do
with this--this is rank foolishness! Nurse, you--"
Miss Harvey, too, had risen, and was regarding Mrs. Thornton anxiously.
"It is better to humor her than to excite her," she said in a low voice.
Mrs. Thornton had dropped back on the couch and her face was turned away
from the others, but she stretched out her hand to her husband.
"I am not asking very much, Robert, dear--am I?" she said. "Not very
much. Won't you do this for me?"
Thornton bit his lips and scowled at the Flopper.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he muttered--and moving to the side of the car
pushed a bell-button viciously. "Sam," he snapped, as his colored man
appeared, "go and tell the conductor that I want my car put off on the
siding at Needley."
"Yes, sah," said Sam.
Thornton sat down again heavily.
"Mabbe," announced the Flopper tactfully, "mabbe I'd better be gettin'
back to me valise--we're most dere, ain't we?"
Mrs. Thornton turned toward him.
"No; please don't go, Mr. Coogan--it's too hard for you to get through
the train. Sam will get your things as soon as he comes back. Do stay
right where you are until we get to Needley."
"No; don't think of going, Mr. Coogan," said Thornton savagely.
The Flopper looked at Mrs. Thornton gratefully, and at Mr. Thornton
thoughtfully.
"T'anks!" said the Flopper pleasantly--and wriggled himself into a more
comfortable position in his chair.
Half an hour later, the train, that stopped only on signal to discharge
eastbound passengers from Portland, drew up at Needley--and Hiram
Higgins, on the platform, stared at a scene never before witnessed in
the history of the town.
It was not one passenger, or two, or three, that alighted--they streamed
in a bewildering fashion from every vestibule of every car. It is true
that the majority got back into the train later, but that did not lessen
the effect any on Mr. Higgins. Mr. Higgins' jaw dropped, and he grabbed
at his chin whiskers for support.
"Merciful daylights!" he breathed heavily. "Now what in the land's sakes
be it all about?" His eyes, following the hurrying passengers, fixed on
the twisted shape of the Flopper, being helped to the platform from the
private car.
"Three cheers for Coogan!" yelled some excitable passenger.
The cheers were given with a will.
"Good luck to you, Coogan!" shouted another--and the crowd took it up
in chorus: "Good luck to you, Coogan!"
"_Coogan!_"--Mr. Higgins' face paled, and he took a firmer grip on his
whiskers. "Now if you ain't gone an' put your fool foot in it, Hiram
Higgins," he said miserably. "If that there's the fellow that you writ
to, you've just laid out to make a plumb fool of the Patriarch, 'cause I
reckon the Almighty knew His own mind when He made a critter like that,
an' didn't calc'late to have His work upsot much this side of the
grave--not even by the Patriarch."
--IX--
THE PILGRIMAGE
Faith is an inheritance common to the human race; and the human race in
its daily life, in its daily dealings, man to man, could not go on
without it--but faith is a matter of degree. Faith, in the abstract, the
element of it, is inborn in every soul; and while dormant, until put to
a crucial test along any given line, is boundless and unlimited--a sort
of tacitly accepted, existing state, unquestioned. Faith in many is a
sturdy, virile thing--to a certain point. It is the fire that proves.
Needley had faith in the Patriarch--a faith that never before had been
questioned. But Needley had more than that--Needley held the Patriarch
in affection, as a cherished thing, almost sacredly, almost as an idol.
Faith the simple people of Needley had always had--to a certain
point--but it faltered before this grotesque, inhuman, twisted shape
that squatted in the road before the Congress Hotel like a hideous
caricature of an abnormal toad. Their faith failed to bridge the span
that gave the Patriarch power over such as this, and they saw their idol
shattered in their own eyes, and held up to mockery before the eyes of
these strangers who had so suddenly and tempestuously swarmed upon them.
Hiram Higgins, seeking out Doc Madison inside the hotel, was in a state
bordering on distraction.
"I druve him over from the station 'cause he couldn't walk, him an' a
man, an' two women, an' a wheel-chair," Mr. Higgins explained. "But
what's to be done now? He wants me to drive him out to the Patriarch's.
I got faith in the Patriarch, but I never said he could work
miracles--there ain't no one on earth could straighten that critter out.
Don't stand to reason that the Patriarch's to be made a fool of."
"Certainly not," agreed Madison emphatically. "It's most unfortunate. I
suppose all of us here in Needley"--he looked around at the assembled
group of leading citizens--"feel the same way, too?"
"Of course we do," said Mr. Higgins helplessly. "Couldn't feel no ways
else."
Madison laid his hand suddenly, impressively, upon Mr. Higgins' shoulder
and looked meaningly into Mr. Higgins' eyes--and into the eyes of the
selectmen, the overseers of the poor, the general-store proprietor, and
the school committee.
"Don't drive him over, then," he said significantly. "Don't any of the
rest of you do it either--and tell everybody else not to. Make him
_crawl_. If he's determined to go, let him get there by himself if he
can, make him crawl--he'll never be able to do it."
"That's so," said Mr. Higgins, brightening, while the others nodded;
then, dubiously: "But s'pose he _does_ get there--how be we goin' to
stop him?"
"If he can get there by himself you can't stop him," said Madison
seriously. "You can't do anything like that. To use force would be
carrying things too far, and would only place the Patriarch in a worse
light. If this fellow--what's his name?--Coogan?--can crawl there, let
him--that's his own business. None of _us_ are encouraging him, the
Patriarch didn't ask him to come, and no one has a right to expect
miracles--so it can't hurt the Patriarch seriously under those
conditions. Besides, if this Coogan has got faith enough to crawl that
mile, who knows what might happen--make him crawl."
Mr. Higgins, with a grim nod, headed a determined exodus from the hotel
office--and Madison strolled out onto the veranda.
Needley was in a furor. The news spread like an oil-fed conflagration.
The farmers left their work in the fields and hurried into the village;
from the houses and cottages came the women and children to cluster
around the Congress Hotel; from the station, scarcely of less interest
to the inhabitants than the Flopper himself, straggled in those curious
enough to have left the train, nearly a dozen of them--and amongst them
Pale Face Harry coughed, as he trudged laboriously along.
Larger and larger grew the circle around the Flopper, filling and
blocking the road, overflowing into front yards, and massing on the
little lawn of the hotel clear up to the veranda--until fields and
houses were deserted, and to the last inhabitant Needley was there.
Upon the ground squatted the Flopper, his eyes sweeping the ring of
faces that was like a wall around him--the grinning faces of his fellow
passengers from the train; the stony, concerned and rather sullen faces
of the men of Needley; the anxious, excited faces of the women; the
bewildered, curious and somewhat frightened faces of the children, who
pushed and shoved their elders for better vantage ground.
The Flopper licked his lips, and renewed the appeal he had been making
for nearly five minutes.
"Ain't no one goin' to drive me out to de Patriarch's?"
"Horses are all busy in the fields," said a voice, uncompromisingly.
"Yes," said the Flopper, with bitter irony, "drivin' each other around,
while youse are here starin' at me an' won't help."
His eyes caught Doc Madison's from the veranda and held an instant to
read a message and interpret the almost imperceptible, but significant,
movement of Madison's head.
"Gee!" said the Flopper to himself, as his eyes swept the faces around
him again. "Dis is a nice game de Doc's planted on me--he wants me to
do de wiggle out dere fer de rubes! Ain't dey a peachy lot--look at de
saucer eyes on de kids!"
Mrs. Thornton, in her wheel-chair on the inner edge of the circle,
turned to her husband.
"It's very strange that no one seems willing to drive him," she said.
"Oh, not very," responded Thornton, with a short laugh. "I don't blame
them--they don't want this healer of theirs made a monkey of."
"If no one will drive him, he shall have my wheel-chair," announced Mrs.
Thornton impulsively. "I think it is a perfect shame--the poor man!"
"Nonsense!" said Thornton gruffly. "You'll do nothing of the kind."
"Yes, Robert, I will," declared Mrs. Thornton with determination. She
leaned forward and called to the Flopper. "Mr. Coogan," she said
anxiously, "if you can't find any other way of getting out there, I want
you to take this chair of mine--you'll be able to manage with it, I am
sure."
The Flopper looked at her with gratitude--but shook his head--mindful of
Doc Madison.
"T'anks, mum," he said, "but I couldn't t'ink of it--you needs it more'n
me."
"Please do," she insisted.
"T'anks, mum," said the Flopper again, "but I couldn't. You needs it,
an' I can get along widout it. Dey're stallin' on me, but I can get dere
by myself if any one'll show me de way."
"I'll show you, mister," piped a shrill voice--and young Holmes on his
crutch hopped into the circle. "I'll show you, mister--an' 'tain't fur,
neither."
"Swipe me!" muttered the Flopper, as he surveyed the lad. "Dis is de
limit fer fair!" Perturbed and uncertain what to do, he tried to catch
Doc Madison's eye again, but a movement in the crowd had hidden Madison.
Some one in the crowd, the lingerie drummer, getting the grim humor of
the situation, laughed--and the laugh came like a challenge, taunting
the quick-tempered, turbulent soul of the Flopper.
"Come on, mister!" urged the boy excitedly. "'Tain't fur--I'll show
you."
"God bless you, son," said the Flopper, while he flung an inward curse
at the man who had laughed. "Son, God bless you fer yer good heart--go
ahead--I'll stick to you."
The crowd opened, making a lane through which the boy stumped on his
crutch, his face flushed and eager, and through which the Flopper
followed, slowly, rocking from side to side as he helped himself along
with the palm of his left hand flat in the dust of the road, trailing
his wobbling leg behind him.
The crowd closed in behind and moved forward.
Mrs. Thornton's face was fever-flushed, her eyes bright; in her weak
state she was on the verge of nervous hysteria.
"I want to go, Robert," she cried. "I must go."
"But, my dear," protested Thornton harshly, "this is simply the height
of absurdity. For Heaven's sake be sensible, Naida. Just imagine what
people would say if they saw us here with this outfit of idiots--they'd
think we'd gone mad."
"I don't care what they'd think," she returned feverishly, her frail
fingers plucking nervously at the arms of her chair. "I must go--I
must--I must."
Thornton glanced at the nurse, then stared at his wife--Miss Harvey's
meaning look was hardly necessary to drive home to him the fact that
Mrs. Thornton was in no condition to be denied anything.
Red-faced, Thornton strode to the back of the chair and began to push it
along.
"Of all the damned foolishness that ever I heard of," he gritted
savagely, "this is the worst!" His face went redder still with
mortification. "If this ever leaks out I'll never hear the last of it.
Look at us--bringing up the rear of a gibbering mob of yokels! We're fit
for a padded cell!"
In the crowd, Madison rubbed shoulders for a moment with Pale Face
Harry.
"Who's the party with the wheel-chair behind?" he asked.
"Millionaire--Chicago--private car--Flopper's got the wife going
hard--rode down with them," coughed Pale Face Harry behind his hand.
"I guess I'll get acquainted," said Madison. "Circulate, Harry, and
cough your head off--don't hide your light under a bushel--circulate."
And Madison fell back to scrape acquaintance with the man of millions.
Close-packed upon the road, the procession spread out for a hundred
yards behind the Flopper--bare-footed children; women in multi-colored
gingham and calico; men in the uncouth dress of the fields, the
uncouthness accentuated by the sprinkling of more pretentious clothing
worn by those who had come from the train. And slowly, very slowly, this
conglomerate human cosmorama moved on, undulating queerly with the
variant movements of its component parts, snail-like, for the Flopper's
pace was slow--as strange a spectacle, perhaps, as the human eye had
ever witnessed, something of grimness, something of humor, something of
awe, something of fear exuding from it--it seemed to contain within
itself the range, and to express, the gamut of all human emotion.
On the procession went--so slowly as to be almost sinister in its
movement. And a strange sound rose from it and seemed to float and hover
over it like a weird, invisible, acoustic canopy. Three hundred voices,
men's, women's and children's, rose and fell, rose and fell--at first in
a medley of scoffings, laughter, sullen murmurs, earnest dispute and
children's prattle--a strange composite sound indeed! But as the
minutes passed and the mass moved on and stopped as the Flopper paused
to rest, and moved on and stopped and moved on again, gradually this
changed, very gradually, not abruptly, but as though the scoffings and
the laughter were dying away almost imperceptibly in the distance. For
as the Flopper stopped to rest, those near him gazed upon his face,
distorted, full of muscular distress, sweat pouring from his forehead,
pain and suffering written in every lineament--and drew back whispering
into the crowd, giving place to others until all had seen. And so the
strange sound from this strange congregation grew lower, until it was a
sort of breathless, long-sustained and wavering note, a prescience, a
premonition of something to come, a ghastly mockery or a tragedy to
befall, until it was an awe-struck murmuring thing.
Some spoke to him now and in pity offered to get him a horse and wagon,
offered even to carry him--but the Flopper shook his head.
"'Tain't goin' to be but a few minutes now," he panted in an exalted
voice, "before I'm cured--I got de faith to know dat--I got de faith."
And the crippled lad upon the crutch beside him urged him on. The boy's
face was strained and eager, full of mingled emotions--pride in the
leading part he played, wonder and expectancy.
"Come on, mister, come on!" he kept saying, impatiently accommodating
his own restricted pace to the Flopper's still slower one.
Through the wagon track, through the woods beneath the trees, the dead,
slow, shuffling tread went on--and now even the murmuring sound was
hushed. Men and women stared into each other's faces--children sought
their elders' hands. What did it mean? Faith--yes, they had had
faith--but never faith like this. They looked at the awful deformity
over one another's heads, crawling inch by inch along before
them--watched the stubborn, bitter struggle of pain and suffering of the
wretched man who led them, spurred on by a faith cast in a heroic mold
such as none there had ever dreamed of before--and they spoke no more.
There was only the sound of movement now--and that curiously subdued.
Men seemed to choose their footing, seeking to tread noiselessly, as
though in some solemn presence that awed them and held them in an
intangible, heart-quickening suspense.
Onward they went--following the lurching, wriggling, reeling, broken
thing before them--following the Flopper, his right hand and arm curved
piteously inward to his chin, his neck thrown sideways, his sagging leg
seeming to hold only to his body by spasmodic jerks to catch up with the
body itself, like the steel when detached from the magnet that bounds
forward to re-attach itself again, his eyes starting from his head, his
face bloodless with exertion and twisted as fearfully as were his limbs,
but upon his lips a smile of resolution, of indomitable assurance.
Onward they went--a huddled mass of humanity, literate and illiterate,
of all ages, of all conditions, and none laughed, none grinned, none
smiled, none spoke--all that was past. They stopped, they moved
again--as the Flopper stopped and moved. Occasionally a child cried
out--occasionally there came a discordant, racking cough--that was all.
Tenser grew the very atmosphere they breathed--heavier upon them fell
the sense of something almost supernatural, beyond the human and the
finite. Skeptic and faint believer, sinner, Christian and scoffer, they
were all alike now in the presence of a faith whose evidence was before
them in harrowing vividness, in the torment and agony of a fellow
creature who sought again through faith a restoration to the image of
his kind. There was no creed, no school of ethical belief, no
conflicting orthodoxy to quibble over, no ground on which atheist and
theologian even might stand apart--there was only _faith_--a faith whose
trappings none might take issue with, for it was naked faith and the
trappings were stripped from it--it was faith in its very essence,
boundless, utter, simple, limitless, staggering, appalling them.
Its consummation? That was another thing--a thing that in the presence
of such faith as this brought human pity, sympathy and sorrow to its
full, brought dread and terror. Faith such as this they had never
conceived; faith such as this, if it was to prove a shattered thing, was
for its exponent to drink the very dregs of misery and despair--and
yet, rising above that possibility, flinging grim challenge at their
doubts, stood this very faith, mighty in itself, perfect in its
confidence, heroic in its agony, that all might gaze upon from a common
standpoint and know--as faith.
No whispering breeze stirred the young leaves in the trees; in the
stillness of the afternoon came only the heavy, pulsing throb of
Nature's breathing. One hundred, two, three hundred, they moved along,
slow, sinuous, troubled, their eyes straight before them or upon the
ground at their feet--only the children looked with frightened, startled
eyes into their parents' faces, and clung the closer.
Out upon the wagon track they debouched and spread in a long, thin line
beneath the maples on either side of the Flopper--and waited.
--X--
THE MIRACLE
There was utter silence now--the tread of shuffling feet was gone--no
man moved--it seemed as though no man _breathed_--they stood as carven
things, inanimate, men, women and children strained forward, their faces
drawn, tense and rigid. In the very air, around them, everywhere,
imprisoning them, clutching like an icy hand at the heart, something
unseen, a dread, intangible presence weighed them down and lay heavy
upon them. What was to come? What drear tragedy was to be enacted? What
awful mockery was to fall upon this maimed and mutilated creature within
whose deformed and pitiful body there too was a human soul?
From the cottage door across the lawn came two figures--a girl in
simple, clinging white, her head bowed, the sun itself seeming to caress
the dark brown wealth of hair upon her head, changing it to glinting
strands of burnished copper; and beside her walked the Patriarch, his
hand resting lightly upon her arm, a wondrous figure of a man, majestic,
simple, grand, his silvered-hair bared to the sun, his face illumined.
"There he is, mister!" whispered young Holmes hoarsely. "There he is! Go
on, mister, go on--see what he can do for you!"
There came a sound that was like a great, gasping intake of breath, as
men and women watched. Out toward the Patriarch, alone now, the Flopper
began to wriggle and writhe his way along. God in Heaven have pity! What
was this sight they looked upon--this poor, distorted, mangled thing
that grovelled in the earth--that figure towering there in the sunlight
with venerable white beard and hair, erect, symbolic of some strange,
mystic power that awed them, his head turned slightly in a curious
listening attitude, the sightless eyes closed, upon the face a great
calm like a solemn benediction.
Fell a stillness that was as the stillness of death; came a hush until
in men's ears was the quick, fierce pound and throb of their own hearts.
On, on toward the Patriarch slithered and twisted that frightful
deformity that they had followed over that long, torturing mile--on, on
he went, and they watched scarce drawing breath, their faces white,
their very limbs held as in a palsied, fearsome spell--and then, sudden,
abrupt, terrifying, there rose a shriek, wild, hysterical, prolonged, in
a woman's voice, the cadence wavering from guttural to shrill and ending
in a high-pitched, broken scream.
The Flopper halted and turned himself about, while his left hand swept
his livid face, brushing from it the spurting drops, sweeping back the
damp, tangled hair from his eyes--faced them till they saw an agony on
human countenance that struck, stabbing, to their souls--faced them
while his eyes traversed the long, long line of ghastly white faces
before him, out of which eyes everywhere, row on row of them, straining,
fixed, fascinated, seemed to burn like living fires as they held him in
their focus.
He had not gone far, perhaps ten yards--no more. By the group around the
wheel-chair, almost in the center of the line, stood Madison, his chin
in his hand in a meditative, thoughtful attitude, the single soul who
watched the scene from under lowered lids; Thornton had involuntarily
edged a little forward from behind the chair until he stood now at its
side in a strange, abashed way as though his own personality were
over-ruled, obliterated, his face with a white sternness upon it, his
eyes, like all other eyes, agleam with an unnatural fire; Mrs. Thornton
had pulled herself forward in the chair, one hand clutching at her
breast, the frail fingers of the other woven in a grasp so tight around
the arm of the chair that the flesh was bloodless; a little way off, a
group of three, the two salesmen and the metropolitan newspaper man,
seemed as though stricken into stone, stripped of all assurance, all
complacence, awed, tense, palpitant, as the patched, bare-legged
tatterdemalion of ten from the fields, that stood beside them, was awed
and tense and palpitant.
And away on either side stretched the line of white, rigid faces, the
never-ending, burning eyes--but the silence with that shriek was gone
now, for another woman and another, overwrought, needing but that sudden
shock to unnerve them utterly, shrieked in turn--and through the line
seemed to run a shudder, and it moved a little though no foot stirred,
moved with a strange, sinuous, rocking, swaying movement, from the hips,
backward and forward and to either side. Men raised their eyes, stole
frightened, questioning glances at their neighbors--and fixed their eyes
on the Flopper again--on the Flopper and that majestic figure in the
center of the lawn, so calm of mien, of attitude and pose.
Once again the Flopper's eyes swept the scene. A few feet in advance of
the crowd, as though drawn irresistibly forward, young Holmes hung upon
his crutch. The boy's soul seemed in his face--hope, a world of it, as
he gazed at the Patriarch, sickening fear as he looked at the Flopper;
his lips moving without sound, his body trembling with emotional
excitement. Still once again the Flopper's eyes swept the line of men
and women and children, fast reaching toward a common ungovernable
hysteria--and then he turned with an unbalanced, impotent, broken
movement, flung out his good arm toward the Patriarch in piteous
supplication, and, jerking himself forward, went on.
Slowly, very slowly at first, he resumed his way, crawling it seemed by
no more than a painful inch on inch, in mortal pain, in mortal agony and
struggle--then gradually his movements began to quicken, as though
growing upon him were a mad, elated haste that he could not
control--quicker and quicker he went, pitching and lurching wildly; from
a pace that was beyond him.
A strange, low, moaning sound rose from behind him, fluttering,
inarticulate, that voiceless utterance that seeks to find some vent for
human emotion when human emotion sweeps with mighty surge to engulf the
soul. It rose and died away and rose again--and died away--and children
began to whimper with a fear and terror that they did not understand,
and seeking solace in their elders' faces found added cause for fear
instead.
Nearer to that saintly figure who stood so calm, so quiet, the massive
white-locked head still turned a little in that curious listening
attitude, beside whom, close drawn now, was that white-clad girlish
form, whose eyes were lowered, whose sweet face seemed to hold a heaven
of pity and infinite compassion, upon whose lips there was a smile of
divine tenderness, drew that piteous mockery of the image of a man,
whose every movement appeared one of agony beyond human power to
endure--and the agony found echo in the watchers' souls, and a low,
muffled groan as of men in pain and hurt, ran tremulously along the
line.
Still nearer to the Patriarch drew the Flopper. More heart-rending was
his every movement, for with his quickened pace he sought to move
without the aid of the only member that was as other men's, his left
hand and arm that, in pleading, yearning supplication, was stretched out
before him to the Patriarch.
The extreme ends of the long line of watchers curled a little inward,
almost imperceptibly, a half step taken without volition. The crippled
boy, swaying upon his crutch, his lips parted, trembling in every limb,
edged forward hesitantly, fearfully, now a foot, now another, now the
bare space of a single inch. And now down the entire length of the line
from end to end that wavering, rocking movement in swaying, pregnant
unison grew stronger--men knew not what they did--it seemed the very air
they breathed must smother them--and, in that dull, weird, lingering
note, rose again the sound of moaning that seemed to beat in consonance
with the distant mournful rhythm of the endless beat of surf on shore.
Women clutched at their breasts now; men's knuckles went white beneath
the tight-drawn skin; the children drew behind their mothers' skirts
and, terror-stricken, cried aloud. Surcharged, on the edge, the bare and
ragged edge of frenzy now was every man and woman in the crowd. It was a
sight, a spectacle that racked them in every fibre of their beings, that
stirred them to pity, to hope, to fear, until the awful misery of this
blighted and crawling thing was their own in its every twitch of
agony--that struck them with a terror, the greater because it was
indefinable, a prescience, a reaching out beyond human realm, the
invoking of a supernal power--the thought of which very power, once
loosed, chilled them with panic-dread.
Yet still they watched--it was beyond their power to turn their
eyes--enthralled, a moaning, swaying, rocking mob, they watched. Madness
was creeping upon them rampant. Like a mighty tide, the ocean weight
behind it, hurling itself against flood-gates that could never stand, it
mounted higher and higher; and already, as the water first seeps between
the gates, grim forecast of what was to come, it showed itself now in
that long, sobbing, convulsive inhalation, in that strange, sinuous,
restless movement.
On went the Flopper. There was still a yard to go--two feet--_one_.
Stopped in a sudden deathless hush was all sound. The Flopper flung
himself forward upon his face at the Patriarch's feet. Stopped was all
movement, haggard and tense every face, strained every eye. For a moment
that seemed to span eternity, in a huddled heap, that crippled, twisted
thing lay there before them motionless, without sign of life--the
venerable face above it, still intent, still listening, turned slowly
downwards. Then there was a movement, a movement that blanched the
watching faces to a more pallid white--that dangling, wobbling leg drew
inward slowly, very slowly, and hip and knee, as though guided by some
mighty power, immutable, supreme, came deliberately into normal form.
A shriek, a cry, a wail, a sob, a prayer--it came now
unrestrained--hysteria was loosed in a mad ungovernable orgasm--men
clutched at each other and cowered, hiding their faces with their
hands--women dropped to their knees and, sobbing, screaming, prayed.
Loud it rose, the turmoil of human souls aghast and quailing before a
manifestation that seemed to fling them face to face, uncovered, naked,
before the awful power and majesty and might of Heaven itself.
They looked again--fearfully. The twisted thing was standing now,
standing but still deformed--with crooked neck, with curved, bent,
palsied arm. And nearer had drawn little Holmes, his head thrust
forward, shaking as with the ague as he gazed on the group before him,
oblivious to all else around him.
A twinge of frightful torture swept the Flopper's face--and with that
same slow, awful deliberation the misshapen arm straightened out. Men
cried aloud again and again--a woman fainted, another here, another
there--children wailed and ran, some shrieking, some whimpering, for the
woods.
Again the spasm crossed the Flopper's face, a shuddering, muscular
contortion--and from the shoulder rose his head.
Inward drew the ends of the line of paroxysm-stricken people--not far,
not near to that hallowed group for something held them back; but inward
gradually until the line, no longer straight, was half a circle,
crescent shaped. Louder came that harrowing medley of sounds, its
component parts voicing the uttermost depths of the soul of each
separate individual man and woman there--some moaned in terror; some
prayed, mumbling, still upon their knees; some laughed hoarsely,
wildly, their senses for the moment gone; and some were dumb; and some
shrieked their prayers in frenzy. Louder it grew--the end had come--that
deformed thing stood erect, a perfect man--he turned his face toward
them--he stretched out his arms--and they answered him with their wails,
their sobs, their moans, their cries--they answered him in their terror,
in their shaken senses, clutching at each other again--answered him from
their knees, their voices hoarse--answered him with trembling lips and
tongues that would not move.
And then suddenly, as though riven where they stood and kneeled and
crouched, all movement ceased--and every heart stood still as ringing
clear above all else, shocking all else to stunned, petrified silence,
there came a cry--a cry in a young voice. It rang again and again,
trembling with glad, new life, vibrant, a cry that seemed to thrill with
chords of happiness and ecstasy immeasurable. Again it came, again,
exultant, pulsing with a mighty joy--young Holmes had _flung his crutch
from him_, and, with outstretched arms, was running toward the Patriarch
across the lawn.
For an instant more that stunned, awed silence held. All eyes were
riveted and fixed upon the scene--none looked at Madison--if any had
they would have seen that his face had gone an ivory white.
--XI--
THE AFTERMATH
"I am cured, Robert! Robert! Robert! See, I too am cured! Oh, Robert,
what wondrous joy!"--Mrs. Thornton had left her wheel-chair and was
standing beside her husband, standing alone, unaided for the first time
in many months.
"Naida!"--it was a hoarse cry from Thornton. Then his hand passed
heavily across his face as though to force his brain to coherent action,
to lift the spell of what seemed a wild phantasm in all around him.
"Naida!"--he sought now to control his voice--"Naida, get back into your
chair again."
She laughed--a little hysterically--but in the laugh too was the uplift
of a soul enraptured.
"But I am cured, Robert. See, dear, can't you understand?" She shook his
arm. "See--I am cured. I can walk just as I could before I was ill. Oh,
Robert, Robert! See! See!"--she went from him, walking a little, running
a little--and laughing in a low, rippling, glorious laugh that was like
the music of silver chimes ringing out in glad acclaim.
He stared at her, both hands now to his temples; then he turned to look
strangely at the empty chair--but it was not empty. Miss Harvey, the
nurse, on her knees, had flung herself across it and, with buried head,
was sobbing unrestrainedly.
And now upon the lawn was a scene indescribable. The long line was
broken. Men and women ran hither and thither, for the most part
aimlessly, as though in some strange state of coma where the mind
refused its functions. They talked and cried and shouted at each other
in frenzy without knowing what they said--some with tears raining down
their faces, others with blank countenances, no sign of emotion upon
them other than in their wild, dilated eyes. Here and there they rushed
without volition, their throat-noises rising above them, floating
through the still air in a sound that no ear had ever heard before,
weird, terrifying, without license, beyond control. Like mad creatures
rushing against each other in the dark they were, stupified by a sight
that was no mortal sight, a sight that blinded them mentally because it
was no _human_ sight.
Faith? Faith is a matter of degree, is it not?
Or is it at its full in power and efficacy at moments when hysteria in
paroxysm is at its height? Who shall define faith? Who shall say what it
is, and who shall place its limitations upon it?
Out in the center of the lawn young Holmes was in his mother's arms, the
father pathetically trying to wrap both mother and child in his own.
Around them, attracted in that strange uncertain way, the crowd
constantly grew larger. Further out again, Helena was leading the
Patriarch toward the cottage, the Flopper close behind her--the
Patriarch walking with a slow tread, his head still turned a little in
that listening attitude--and at a distance followed a straggling crowd.
Then the cottage door was shut--and Helena, the Patriarch and the
Flopper disappeared from view.
A dozen yards from the wheel-chair stood Madison, riveted to the spot,
motionless save for a nervous twitching of the lips, his eyes, now upon
the invalid who walked about, now on the little lad who had thrown away
his crutch. Some one plucked at his sleeve, but Madison gave no
heed--again his arm was pulled, and he turned to look into Pale Face
Harry's face. The other's countenance was gray, the eyes full of a
shrinking, terrified light.
"Doc, for God's sake, Doc, what's it mean?" whispered Pale Face Harry
shakily, moistening his dry lips with his tongue. "Doc, this ain't no
bunk--there's something in it."
The words seemed to rouse Madison--to leadership. He stared at Pale Face
Harry for a moment, then a grim smile flickered across his face.
"Something in it!" he repeated with an ironic laugh--and suddenly
grabbed Pale Face Harry's arm and shook him. "There's so much in it that
I'm drunk with it, crazy with it--but I'm trying to make myself believe
it isn't too good to be true. Get that? Get a grip on that, and hang on.
Don't lose your nerve, Harry!"
"I guess I ain't much worse than you," mumbled Pale Face Harry. "You're
whiter than a sheet."
"You're right," admitted Madison frankly. "I'm queer, but I'm coming
around. Helena seems to be the only one who never lost her grip--she's
got the Patriarch and the Flopper out of the way and under cover. Brace
up, Harry--what I thought we'd get in the Roost that night is
counterfeit money to what'll come from this." His eyes fastened on a
figure that, separating itself from the group around young Holmes, now
dashed frantically, hatless, and with dishevelled hair to Mr. and Mrs.
Thornton. "Who's that, Harry? He came down on the train with you--know
him?"
"He's only some newspaper guy or other," answered Pale Face Harry
mechanically, his eyes still roving wildly over the scene around him.
"Oh, is that _all_!" ejaculated Madison with a little gasp. "I've
already exhausted my thanks to Santa Claus and here he comes with
another package done up in dinky pink paper tied with baby ribbon--and
the gold platter it's on goes with it!"
"What d'ye mean?" asked Pale Face Harry heavily.
The newspaper man, the instinct of his calling now rising paramount to
all else, had left the Thorntons and was tearing for the wagon track on
his way to the station and the telegraph office like one possessed.
"By to-morrow morning," said Madison softly, "the missionaries will be
explaining this to the Esquimaux at Oo-lou-lou, the near-invalids in
California will be packing their trunks, likewise those in the languid
shade of the Florida palms; they'll be listing it on the stock exchange
in New York, and the breath of Eden will waft itself o'er plain and
valley until--" he stopped suddenly, as Mrs. Thornton's voice reached
him.
"I am going to _walk_ back, Robert."
"Yes; but, Naida," Thornton protested, "you're not strong enough yet."
"Don't you understand?" she cried, half laughing, half sobbing. "There
is no 'yet'--I am cured, dear--_all_ cured. I'm well and strong. Try to
understand, Robert--oh, I'm so happy, so--so thankful. I know it's
miraculous, that it's almost impossible to believe--but try to
understand."
"I am trying to," said Thornton numbly, watching her as she moved about.
"And it seems as though I were in a dream--that this isn't real--that
you're not real."
"It's not a dream," she said. "Oh, I'm so strong again. Why, Robert, it
would be just as absurd for me to be wheeled back in that chair as for
you to be--and besides I have no right to do that now. It would be a
sacrilege, profaning the gratitude in my heart--I am cured and these
poor people here must see that I am cured--Robert, we must leave that
wheel-chair here that others, poor sufferers who will come now, will see
and believe and be cured too. And, Robert, in some way, I do not know
just how, we who are rich must do something to help people to get here."
"Naida," said Thornton, his voice low, shaken, "I feel as though I were
in another world. I have seen what I can hardly make myself believe that
I have seen. I can't explain--I am speaking, but my very voice seems
strange to me. I feel as you do about helping others--how could I feel
otherwise? What we could do I do not know as yet, either--but I will do
anything. I was a scoffing fool--and you were cured before my eyes--a
boy was cured--and that other, deformed as no creature was ever deformed
before, was cured"--Thornton's lips quivered, and he hid his face in his
hands.
"While the iron is hot--strike," murmured Madison. He gazed a moment
longer at the group--Mrs. Thornton's hand was on her husband's shoulder
now--then his eyes roved over the frenzied scenes still being enacted
everywhere upon the lawn. "I wonder?" he muttered. The frown on his
forehead cleared suddenly. "Of course!" said he to Pale Face Harry.
"It's a cinch--it's as good as done!"
Pale Face Harry stared at him queerly.
"No, Harry," smiled Madison, "my pulse is quite normal now, thank you.
Listen. This is where we call the first showdown on cold hands--and the
dealer slips himself an ace." He drew a key from his pocket and put it
in Pale Face Harry's hand. "That's the key of the small trunk in my
room at the hotel--front room, right hand side of the hall. There's a
check-book in the tray--and I'll give you twenty minutes to get back
here with it. You'll find me somewhere around here, but you needn't let
the whole earth in on the presentation--see? Now beat it!"
As Pale Face Harry hurried away, Madison, seemingly as aimless, as
hysterical as the hundreds about him, moved here and there, but
unostentatiously he kept nearing the upper end of the lawn, and,
finally, hidden by the woodshed at the further end of the cottage, he
slipped quickly around to the rear. Here the garden stretched almost to
the edge of the sandy beach--not a soul was in sight--and the beat of
the surf deadened the sound from the front lawn to little more than a
low, indistinct murmur.
Quickly now, Madison stepped to where one of the old-fashioned windows,
that swung inward from the center like double doors, was open, and,
reaching in his hand, tapped sharply twice in succession with his
knuckles on the pane. The sill was not quite on a level with his
shoulders and he could see inside--it was Helena's room, and the door to
the hall was open. Again he knocked. Came then the sound of
footsteps--and from the hall the Flopper's face peered cautiously around
the jamb of the door.
"Tell Helena to come here," called Madison softly.
The Flopper turned his head, called obediently, and in a dazed sort of
way came himself to the window. His face was haggard, and he shivered
as he licked his lips.
"I pulled de stunt," said the Flopper in a croaking voice, "but de
kid--Doc--did youse see de kid? I got de shakes--it's like de whole of
hell an' de other place was loose, an' Helena's gone batty, an'--pipe
her, dere she is."
Into the room came Helena, her face like chalk--all color gone from even
her lips. She clutched at the window beside the Flopper for support.
"I'm frightened," she whispered. "We've gone too far--it's--it's--John
Madison, I'm frightened."
Madison did not speak for a moment--Madison was a consummate leader. He
looked, smiling reassuringly, from one to the other--and then leaned
soothingly, confidentially, in over the sill.
"I know how you feel--felt just the same myself for a bit," said he
quietly. "But now look here, you've got to pull yourselves
together--there's nothing to be afraid of. It's natural enough. It's
faith, Helena--and that's what we were banking on--only not quite so
hard. That kid and Mrs. Thornton annexed the real brand, that's all--and
when the genuine thing is on tap I cross my fingers and yell for
faith--there's nothing to stop it. And that's the way it's got both of
you too, eh? Well, that only makes our game the safer and the more
certain, doesn't it? So, come on now, pull yourselves together."
"In de last act when I was gettin' me head into joint," mumbled the
Flopper, "was when de kid yelled--I can hear it yet, an'--"
"Forget it!" Madison broke in a little sharply; then, tactfully, his
voice full of unbounded admiration: "You're an artist, Flopper--a
wonder. You pulled the greatest act that was ever on the boards, and you
pulled it as no other man on earth could have pulled it. Flopper, you
make me feel humble when I look at you."
"Swipe me!" said the Flopper, brightening. "D'ye mean it, Doc--honest?"
"Mean it!" ejaculated Madison. "You're the whole thing, Flopper--you
win. Come on now, Helena, buck up--we've got another little act due in
about fifteen minutes--don't let a lot of yowling rubes get your goat.
Why, say, we've got the whole show on the stampede--and we've got to
rush our luck."
"Sure!" said the Flopper. "Dat's de way to talk--leave it to de Doc
every time--. I ain't feazed half de way I was."
"I'm all right," said Helena a little tremulously. "What is it we're to
do?"
"Good!" said Madison, smiling at her approvingly. "That sounds better.
Now listen--and listen hard. From this minute this cottage is the
Shrine. Get that?--Shrine. You've got to keep the hush falling here, and
keep it falling all the time--a sort of holy, hallowed silence,
understand? Lay it on thick--make the crowd stand back--make the guy
that comes in here feel as though he ought to come in on his knees and
as if he'd be struck dead if he didn't. Get the slow music and the low
lights working. And keep the Patriarch well back of the drop except when
he's on for a turn. Get me? He's no side-show with a barker in front of
the tent--don't forget that for a minute. The harder it is to see the
Patriarch and the less he's seen, the bigger he plays up when he's on.
He goes to no man under any conditions, and the only man or woman that
gets to him is through faith and supplication, and a double order of it
at that. Keep the solemn, breathless tap turned on all the time."
Helena looked at him with a strange little smile quivering on her lips.
"It's a good thing I've got a sense of humor," she said slowly, "or else
I think I'd--I'd--"
"No, you wouldn't," said Madison cheerfully. "But time's flying. You're
going to have visitors in a few minutes, and here's where the Patriarch
gets tucked away out of sight behind the veil for a starter, leaving his
presence hovering and throbbing all around in the air--you stay with
him, Flopper, in a back room somewhere and hold his hand. Where is he
now?"
"In his armchair in the sitting-room," said Helena. "And he's still
listening in that queer way he did out on the lawn. I think he knows in
a little way what's happened."
"That's good," said Madison; "it'll make him happy. Well, lead him
gently into retirement. I guess that's all--now hurry."
"Who is it that's coming?" interposed Helena quickly, as Madison
started away from the window.
Madison grinned.
"Some friends of the Hopper's. Mr. and Mrs. Thankoffering--you'll like
them immensely, Helena. The lady walks quite well now, and--"
"Walks!" exclaimed the Flopper, who evidently had not assimilated
Madison's previous reference to Mrs. Thornton. "De lady dat I come wid
in de private car--_walks_?"
"Of course," said Madison pleasantly.
"Cured? All cured?" gasped the Flopper.
"Of course," said Madison again--complacently.
"Say," said the Flopper, "say, I'm goin' dippy. Another one de same as
de kid, Doc?"
"Same as the kid, Flopper--faith."
"Swipe me!" said the Flopper helplessly.
--XII--
"SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY"
By the wheel-chair, Mrs. Thornton, her husband and Doc Madison were in
earnest conversation--and around them was a mass of people. The crowd
had divided into two, or, rather, was constantly coming and going
between two points--young Holmes and Mrs. Thornton--and still the
hysteria was upon men and women, still that wavering, moanlike sound
floated over the lawn.
"I am stunned and stupified," Madison was saying, and his hand trembled
visibly in its outflung gesture. "I am not, I am afraid, a man of deep
sensibilities, but I cannot help feeling that I have been permitted,
been chosen even, to witness this sight, a sight that will stay with me
till I die, for some great, ulterior purpose. It's as though this place
were hallowed, set apart; that here, if only one has faith, that man's
miraculous power is boundless--that I should help someway. I--I'm afraid
I don't explain myself well."
"I know what you mean," Mrs. Thornton returned eagerly. "It is what I
was saying to my husband--to make this place known, to help to bring
suffering people here."
Madison nodded silently.
"And if you, who have no personal cause for gratitude, feel like that,
how much more should we who--who--oh, there are no words to tell it--my
heart is too full"--Mrs. Thornton smiled through tears. "Robert, you
said you would do anything."
"Yes, dear," Thornton answered gravely. "But what? We cannot do things
in a moment. If money--"
Madison shook his head.
"It's beyond money," he said. "Money is only a secondary consideration.
It's the needs of the place that are paramount. It's not so much the
bringing of people here--they will hear of what has taken place and will
come of their own accord, they will flock here in numbers as time goes
on. But then--what? What can be done with them in this little village?
For a time perhaps they could be accommodated--but after that they must
be turned away."
"Turned away!" exclaimed Mrs. Thornton, in a hurt cry. "Turned away from
hope--to bitterness and misery again! No, no, they must not I Why"--she
grasped her husband's arm agitatedly--"why couldn't we buy land and put
little houses upon it where they could stay?"
Madison leaned suddenly toward her.
"I believe you've hit on the idea, Mrs. Thornton," he said excitedly.
"Why not? It would be the finest thing that was ever done in the world.
But why not go further--this should not be a private enterprise with
the burden on the few." He turned abruptly to Mr. Thornton. "What a
monument from grateful hearts, what a tribute to that saintly soul a
huge sanatorium, built and properly endowed, would be! And it is
feasible--purely from the voluntary contributions of those who come here
and have money--free as the air to the poor who are sick--free to _all_,
for that matter--no one asked to give--but the poorest would gladly lay
down their mites."
"Yes--oh, yes!" cried Mrs. Thornton raptly.
"Yes," admitted Mr. Thornton thoughtfully; "that might be done."
"There is no doubt of it," asserted Madison enthusiastically. "It needs
but the initiative on the part of some one, on our part, and the rest
will take care of itself. But we must, of course, have the endorsement
of the Patriarch--why not go to the cottage now, at once, and talk it
over?"
"Can we see _him_?" asked Mrs. Thornton wistfully. "Oh, I would like to
kneel at his feet and pour out my gratitude. But see how all these
people go no nearer than that row of trees, as though love or fear or
reverence kept them from going further, as though it were almost
forbidden, holy ground, as though they were held back by an invisible
barrier in spite of themselves."
"True," said Madison; "and I sense that very thing myself--all men must
sense it after what has taken place, all must feel the presence of a
power too majestic, too full of awe for the mind to grasp. This
faith"--he threw out his hands in an impotent gesture--"we can only
accept it unquestioningly, as a mighty thing, an actual, living,
existent thing, even if we cannot fully understand. But I feel that with
what we have in mind we have a right to go there now--and we should take
that little lad who was cured as well--and his parents, they should come
too."
"And shall we see _him_?" Mrs. Thornton asked again tensely.
"Why, I do not know," Madison replied; "but at least we shall see his
niece, Miss Vail, and it is with her in any case that we would have to
discuss the plan, for the Patriarch, you know, is deaf and dumb and
blind."
"You know them, don't you?" Thornton inquired.
Madison smiled, a little strangely, a little deprecatingly.
"If one can speak of 'knowing' such as they--yes," he answered. "When I
came two weeks ago, the Patriarch was not wholly blind, and he was very
kind to me. I learned to love the gentle soul of the man, and in a way,
skeptical though I was, I felt his power--but I never realized until
this afternoon how stupendous, how immeasurable it was."
"Let us go to the cottage, then," said Thornton. "Naida, dear, let me
help you; it is quite a little distance and--"
She put out her hands in a happy, intimate way to hold him off.
"You can't realize it, Robert, can you? That dear, practical business
head of yours makes it even harder for you than it is for me--and I can
hardly realize it myself. But I _am_ cured, dear, and I'm well and
strong, and I don't need any help--why, Robert, I am going to help you
now, instead of always being a source of worry and anxiety to you. Come,
let us go."
"If you will walk slowly," suggested Madison, "I'll speak to the little
Holmes boy and his parents, and bring them with us."
He moved away as he spoke--in the direction of a racking cough, that
rose above the confused, murmuring, whispering, shaken voices on every
hand; and in a little knot of people he was, for a moment, pressed close
against Pale Face Harry.
"All right," whispered Pale Face Harry, "it's in your pocket now--but,
say, no more runs like that for me, I'm all in. I thought sure I was
cured myself--I hadn't coughed for--"
"Never mind about that now," said Madison rapidly. "I want the crowd
kept away from the doors of the bank vault if they show any tendency to
get too close, though I don't think that'll happen--they're too numbed
and scared yet. But you know the game. Keep the awe going and the 'holy
ground' signs up. Anybody that steps across that stretch between the
trees and the cottage on and after the present date of writing does it
with bowed head and his shoes off--get the idea?"
Pale Face Harry grinned.
"That's easy," he said. "Anything'd steer 'em now--they're like sheep.
Leave it to me to keep the soft pedal on."
With a nod, Madison turned away, the tense expression on his face
assumed again--and presently he was talking to Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, and
patting the boy's head in a clumsy, overwrought way.
"I--I don't dar'st to go," said Mrs. Holmes, clutching wildly at the
boy, still sobbing, still beyond control of herself.
"But Mrs. Thornton is going," said Madison gently, "and I know your
gratitude is no less than hers--it couldn't be less with this little lad
restored to you. I am sure you want to show it--don't you?"
"I think we'd orter go, ma," said Mr. Holmes uneasily.
The boy put his hand in Madison's.
"I want to go, mister," he choked. "Take me, mister, won't you?"
"Yes, I think we'd orter go," repeated Mr. Holmes. "Come along, ma," he
said, taking his wife's arm.
It was a strange group--the Thorntons, rich, refined, to whom luxury was
necessity; the Holmes, poor, uncultured, coarsely dressed; and Madison,
who walked with set face, head lowered a little, his pace slowing
perceptibly, humbly it seemed, the nearer he came to the cottage door.
Neither Thornton, nor Holmes, nor Holmes' wife spoke. Mrs. Thornton's
arm was flung around the boy's shoulder, and he kept looking up into her
tearful face--there was a bond between them that, young as he was, held
him in its thrall. Out across the lawn, dotted here and there, in knots
and groups and little crowds, men and women stopped where they stood and
watched, making no effort to follow--and some, at the renewed evidence
of the miraculous, once more so vividly before their eyes, dropped again
to their knees.
They reached the door, and Madison drew back a little and with the
others waited silently after he had knocked. Then the door opened
slowly, and Helena, slim and girlish in her simple white dress, appeared
upon the threshold. Her great dark eyes travelled slowly from one to
another, and then her face lighted with a gentle smile.
"Miss Vail," said Madison diffidently, "this is Mrs. Thornton and her
husband, and the little lad, with his parents, who owes so much to the
Patriarch, and they have come to--"
"To try and say a little of what is in their hearts"--Mrs. Thornton
stepped impulsively forward and held out her hands to Helena--and then,
breaking down suddenly, she began to sob, and the two were in each
other's arms, Mrs. Thornton's head buried on Helena's shoulder, Helena's
face lowered, her brown hair mingling with the gold of the other's, her
arms about the frail form that shook convulsively.
Doc Madison shot a covert glance at the three behind him--Thornton, and
Holmes, and Mrs. Holmes. Holmes, with downcast eyes, was shuffling
awkwardly from foot to foot; Mrs. Holmes, her woman's instinct touched,
was watching the scene with face aglow, her eyes moist anew; Thornton
was staring fascinated at Helena, a sort of breathless, wondering
admiration in his eyes.
Madison involuntarily followed Thornton's look; then stole a glance back
at Thornton again--Thornton was still gazing intently at Helena.
"Say," observed Madison to himself, "the longer you live the more you
learn, don't you? That's the kind of stuff Helena wears from now on, the
clinging white with the bare throat effect and all that. Why, say, like
that she's what the poets call radiantly divine--eh, what?"
Mrs. Thornton raised her head, and her hands creeping to Helena's face
brushed the brown hair tenderly back from the white forehead.
"Oh, how good and sweet and pure you are!" she murmured brokenly.
A quick, sudden flush, passing to all but Madison as one of demure and
startled modesty, swept in a crimson tide to Helena's face.
"You--you must not say that," she faltered, shaking her head. "I--you
must not say that."
Mrs. Thornton smiled at her--and slipped her arm affectionately around
Helena's waist.
"I could not help it, dear," she whispered. "It came spontaneously. And
it makes me so happy to find you like this, and it makes it so much more
a joy in doing what we have come to talk to you about."
"What you have come to talk to me about?"--Helena, steadying herself,
repeated the words almost composedly.
"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Thornton, an eagerness in her voice again.
"But--may we come in? Is it--"
"All may come in here," Helena answered softly, "and"--her eyes met
Thornton's fixed gaze and dropped quickly--"please come in," she ended
abruptly.
--XIII--
REAL MONEY
The two women passed inside the cottage, Mrs. Thornton holding out her
hand again to the little lad; while Holmes and his wife followed
hesitantly, awed. In the rear, Thornton grasped Madison's arm suddenly.
"I never saw such a beautiful face," he whispered tensely. "It's
wonderful."
"Yes," assented Madison. "But everything here seems full of a rare,
strange beauty, a hallowed something--it lifts one beyond material
things. You _feel_ it--a great, calm solemnity all about you."
He closed the door softly behind him.
Mrs. Thornton's eyes swept questioningly, anxiously and a little timidly
about the plain, simple, quiet room; and then she spoke, her voice
unconsciously hushed:
"He--he is not here?"
Helena shook her head, as she led Mrs. Thornton to a chair.
"Not now," she said in a low voice. "The strain of this afternoon has
left him very weary and very tired--much has gone out of him in response
to the faith he felt but could not see."
"But he knows?" said Mrs. Thornton eagerly, reaching for Helena's hand.
"He knows?"
"Yes," Helena replied quietly, "he knows. He always knows." She nodded
gravely to the others. "Please sit down," she said.
Madison quietly took the chair nearest the table; Thornton one a little
in front of Madison and nearer his wife and Helena, who were close by
the big, open fireplace; the two Holmes sat down on the edges of chairs
a little behind Madison; while young Holmes knelt, his arms in Mrs.
Thornton's lap, his head turned a little sideways, his chin cupped in
one hand, as he stared breathlessly around him.
It was the boy who broke the momentary silence.
"Ain't that other fellow here, neither--the fellow that was worse'n me?"
he whispered.
Helena leaned toward him.
"Yes; he is here," she answered, smiling sweetly. "He is with the
Patriarch." She lifted her head to include the others in her words. "It
is very wonderful, his gratitude. He will not leave the Patriarch--he
says he will not leave him ever, that all he has to give for the debt he
owes is the life that the Patriarch gave back to him, and he will listen
to nothing but that he should devote that life to the Patriarch's
service."
"I'd like to, too," said young Holmes, with a quick flush on his face.
"Can I, miss--can I?"
"Perhaps," said Helena gently. "Who knows what there may be that you can
do?"
"Dear boy," said Mrs. Thornton, stroking the lad's head. She looked
quickly at Helena. "We, too, are grateful, more than there are words to
tell, and we, too, would like to show our gratitude. We are rich and
money--"
"Money!" the word came in shocked, hurt interruption from Helena, as a
signal flashed from Madison's eyes. "The Patriarch does not do these
things for money--it would be a bitter grief to him to be misjudged in
that way, even in thought. It is the love in his heart for the suffering
ones, and his power goes out to all who ask it freely, with no thought
of recompense or gain, and his joy and happiness is the joy and
happiness of others."
"And right off the bat too!" said Madison admiringly to himself. "Now,
wouldn't that get you! Say, could you beat it--could you beat it!"
"Oh, I did not mean that," said Mrs. Thornton almost piteously. "Please,
please do not think so, for I know so well that money in a personal
sense could have no place here, that it would indeed be sacrilege. It is
in quite another way--Robert, Mr. Madison, you explain what we would
like to do."
It was Madison who explained.
"It is Mrs. Thornton's idea, Miss Vail," he said earnestly; "and it is
one that I know will realize the Patriarch's dearest wish--to extend
his sphere of helpfulness to others, to reach out to all who are
stricken and have faith to come. I remember his writing that on the
slate, which he used for conversation before his sight was completely
taken from him. I remember the words as though they were before me now:
'I have dreamed often of a wider field, of reaching out to help the
thousands beyond this little town--it would be wondrous joy.'"
"Yes?" said Helena in a suppressed voice.
"In a way," Madison went on gravely, "his dream is already realized.
What has happened here this afternoon will in a few hours be known to
the whole civilized world, and there will be no room for incredulity or
doubt--on whatever ground people see fit to base their belief, they must
still believe; and, believing, they will come here in ever increasing
numbers--but this little village is totally inadequate to accommodate
them. At first, yes, as I said to Mrs. Thornton; but afterwards--no.
Mrs. Thornton's idea, Mr. Thornton's idea and my own, if I may say so,
is to build and endow a great sanatorium that, in consonance with the
Patriarch's ideals, shall be free to all--and we feel that the money for
this purpose will come gladly and spontaneously, as it so appropriately
should come, from those who find joy and peace and health again at the
Patriarch's hands."
Helena half rose from her chair, as she stole a veiled glance at
Madison.
"It would be wonderful," she said, with a little catch in her voice.
"And he--it would be the one thing in the world for him. But--but it
would take a great deal of money."
"Yes," said Madison slowly; "at least half a million."
Thornton turned toward Madison.
"As much as that?" he asked tentatively.
"I should say so," replied Madison thoughtfully. "You see, it's the
endowment after all that is the most important. Say that the building
and equipment cost only a hundred thousand, that would only leave an
income, from the other four hundred thousand at six per cent., of
twenty-four thousand dollars--not enough in itself even, but it would be
augmented of course by the contributions that would still go on."
Thornton nodded his head.
"That is so," he agreed; "but there is the time to consider--it would
take a long time to raise that amount."
"No," said Madison. "A few months at the outside. Thornton"--he reached
out and laid his hand impressively on the other's sleeve--we are not
dealing with ordinary things here--we have witnessed this afternoon a
sight that should teach us that. Here, in this very room, beside us now,
your wife, that little boy, is evidence of power beyond anything we have
ever known before. Have we not that same power to count on still? It
would be an ingrate heart indeed that, owing all, returned nothing."
"Yes," murmured Mrs. Thornton. "Mr. Madison is right. I know it, I feel
it--the money will come faster than we have any idea of."
Madison smiled at her quietly.
"It will come," he said. "People will give their money, their jewels,
anything, and give joyfully--and until the amount in hand is large
enough to warrant beginning operations, Miss Vail naturally will be its
guardian."
"I?" said Helena hesitatingly. "I--I am only a girl, I would not know
what to do."
"You would not have to do anything, Miss Vail," Madison informed her
reassuringly. "When the time comes for advice, the making of plans and
the carrying of them out, the brightest minds in this country will be
offered freely and voluntarily, you will see."
"And meanwhile," inquired Thornton--he had been studying Helena's
profile intently, "would you propose keeping the contributions here?"
"Of course!" said Madison. "And not only here, but openly displayed as
an added incentive for others to give--if added incentive be needed.
Here, for instance"--he rose as he spoke, went to the mantel over the
fireplace and lifted down a quaint, japanned box, fashioned in the shape
of a little chest, which he placed upon the table. "And here, too"--he
crossed to the bookshelves in the alcove, and took down a very old,
flexible-covered book. "Once," he said, "the Patriarch showed me this.
It was a blank book originally, half of it is blank still; but in the
front, in the Patriarch's own writing, is an essay he wrote in the years
gone by on 'The Power of Faith'--what could be more fitting than that
the remaining pages should be filled with a record of the contributions
to that faith?" He laid the book on the table beside the little chest,
and sat down again. "There is no display, no ornamentation, no attempt
at anything of that kind--it is simplicity, those things serving which
are first at hand--as it seems to me it should be--those who give record
their names and gifts in this book--the little chest to hold the gifts
is open, free to the inspection of all."
"But is that wise?" demurred Thornton. "So large a sum of money as must
accumulate to be left openly about? Would it not be a temptation to some
to steal? Might it not even endanger Miss Vail and the Patriarch
himself--subject them, indeed, to attack?"
"I get your idea," said Madison to himself--while he gazed at Thornton
in pained surprise; "but there'll never be more than the day's catch in
the box at a time, though of course you don't know that. You see, we'll
empty it every night, and start it off fresh every morning, with a
trinket or two put back for bait. I'm glad you mentioned it though, it's
a little detail I mustn't forget to speak to the Flopper about." But
aloud he said, and there was a sort of shocked awe in his voice:
"Steal--_here_! In this sacred place! No man would dare--the most
hardened criminal would draw back. Why do even we who sit here speak as
we have been speaking with hushed and lowered voices?--that very sense
of a presence unseen around us, that hovers over us, is a mightier
safeguard than the strongest bolts and locks, than the steel-barred
vaults of any bank. It would seem indeed to profane our own faith even
to entertain such an idea--to me this place is a solemn shrine, and
there is only purity and faith and stillness here, the dwelling place of
a power as compassionate as it is mighty."
Madison stopped abruptly--and a silence fell. Each seemed busy with
their own thoughts. About them was quiet, stillness, peace--twilight was
falling, and a soft, mellow light was in the room.
"No one would dare"--the words came from Mrs. Thornton in almost
breathless corroboration, almost of their own accord it seemed, as
though heavy upon her lay the solemnity of her surroundings.
Madison's hand went to his pocket--slowly he drew out his check-book and
laid it upon the table.
"I am not a rich man"--his voice was very low, very earnest--"but I feel
that this is something deeper, grander, bigger than anything the world
perhaps has ever known before; something higher and above one's own
self; it seems as though here were the chrysalis that, once developed to
its perfect state, would sweep pain and sorrow from suffering humanity;
it is as though a new, glad era had dawned for all mankind. I am glad
to give and humbly proud to have a part in this." He took out his
fountain pen, opened the check-book, and began to write.
Thornton leaned forward a little, watching him.
Silence fell again--there was no sound save the almost inaudible
scratching of Madison's pen. Upon Mrs. Thornton's face was a happy,
radiant smile; Helena's face was impassive, but in the dark eyes lurked
a puzzled light; the two Holmes sat awkwardly, still upon the edges of
their chairs, gazing at their son across the room, incredulously, as
though they still could not believe--and occasionally Mrs. Holmes wiped
her eyes.
Madison's pen moved on: "Pay to the order of Miss Helena Vail the sum of
ten thousand dollars." He carefully inscribed the amount in numerals in
the lower left-hand corner. "Honest," he confided to himself, as he
signed the check, "I feel so philanthropic I could almost make myself
believe I had this money in the bank." He tore the check from its stub,
and, standing up, handed it to Helena. "I am not a rich man, Miss Vail,
as I said," he smiled gravely, "but I can give this, and I give it with
great joy in my heart."
Helena took the check, glanced at it, gasped a little, lifted her eyes,
an instant's mocking glint in them, and veiled them quickly with her
long lashes.
"No"--Madison's hand, palm up, went out protestingly--"no, do not thank
me--it is little enough." He sat down again, drew the Patriarch's blank
book toward him, and, on the line beneath the one where the Patriarch
had ended his essay with the words, "such is the power of faith," wrote
his name and set down the amount of his contribution after it.
"Ten thousand dollars!"--it was Mrs. Thornton speaking, as she took the
check from Helena. She turned quickly to her husband. "Robert, have you
your check-book here?"
Thornton shook his head.
"No, dear," he said. "I'm afraid I haven't."
"Well, it doesn't matter," said Mrs. Thornton brightly. "You can use one
of Mr. Madison's checks and write the name of your own bank on
it--you've often done that, you know."
"A suggestion," said Madison to himself, "for which I thank you, Mrs.
Thornton--it sounds so much less crude coming from you than from me."
But aloud he said courteously, "Take my pen, Mr. Thornton."
"Thank you," said Thornton, as Madison placed it in his hand.
Mrs. Thornton and her husband had their heads together now, and were
whispering--Thornton with his eyes on Helena, who sat with lowered head,
twirling Madison's check in her hands. Then Thornton drew the check-book
toward him, scratched out the printed name of the bank that it bore,
wrote in another, and went on filling out the check.
"Eeny-meeny-miny-mo," said Madison to himself. "The suspense is awful.
How much does he raise the ante? Next to the miracle, this is the first
real thrill I've had--I feel like an elevator starting down quick."
As Madison had done, Thornton tore out the check and handed it to
Helena. Helena stared at it, lifted her eyes to Thornton, flushed--and
looked down at the check again.
"_Fifty thousand_," she murmured breathlessly.
"Splendid!" cried Madison enthusiastically, rising from his chair and
pushing the newly established record of contributions toward Thornton.
"Splendid! There's sixty thousand of the five hundred already.
Splendid!"
Young Holmes ran toward his parents.
"I want to give too, dad," he whispered. "I want to give too."
"Reckon so," said Holmes, getting up heavily. "Reckon so--an' I was
a-goin' to. I ain't got much though," he added timorously, as his hand
went into his pocket.
There was a little exclamation from Helena, and she moved a step forward
as though to interpose. Madison looked at her quickly--and quietly
stepped around the table, placing himself between her and Holmes; and,
facing Holmes, leaned over the table from the far side toward the other.
"It's not the amount, Holmes," he said kindly. "In the broad, true sense
the amount counts for nothing--all cannot give the same."
"Yes," said Holmes. "Reckon that's the way I feel." He counted the bills
in his hand, and dropped them into the little japanned box; then
scrawled his name in the book beneath Thornton's, adding the
amount--eight dollars.
Madison looked around the group benignantly.
"I think they should know out there what we have done," he said,
pointing toward the lawn. "Let us go and tell them, not in any set
speech, but just simply--each of us speaking to a few--the few will tell
others. Shall we go?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Thornton. "Yes; let us tell them." She turned to Helena
and kissed her. "Try and come often to see me, dear--we shall be here
now for a little while at least. Is it asking too much? Robert will
bring you back and forth from the village. And perhaps, if I may, I will
come out here to see you--may I?"
"I shall be very glad to do as my wife suggests," said Thornton, holding
out his hand. "You will come, Miss Vail?"
"You are very good, both of you," Helena answered simply. She raised her
eyes to Thornton--her hand was still in his. "Yes, I will try to come."
"Oh, break away!" muttered Madison impatiently--but silently. He stepped
to the door and opened it. "Will you lead the way, Mrs. Thornton?" he
said calmly.
Thornton and his wife passed out; and the Holmes, with clumsy, earnest
words upon their lips to Helena, followed. Madison hung back--then
stepped quickly to Helena.
"Tear up that check of mine so small you can't find the pieces, Helena,"
he said hurriedly; "and send Thornton's right off to any old bank you
like in New York. Endorse it, and write them a note saying you wish to
open an account. Enclose your signature, and tell them to mail back the
bank-book, a check-book, deposit slips and all that. They'll know by the
newspapers that Thornton's subscribed fifty thousand before they get the
check, and they'll feel honored to be your depository. Do it to-night,
understand?"
"Yes," said Helena, nodding her head. "I'll see to it all right." Then,
a little perturbed: "But those poor Holmes and their eight dollars, Doc,
I--"
"Now don't be greedy, Helena," said Madison cheerfully. "You mustn't
expect everybody to hand out ten and fifty thousand, just because
Thornton and I did--try and appreciate the little things of life too."
"Oh!" exclaimed Helena angrily. "Doc Madison, I'd like to--"
"Yes, all right, of course," interrupted Madison, grinning. "Good-by,
that's all--I'm off--see, they're waiting for me"--and leaving Helena
with an outraged little flush upon her cheek, he hurried through the
door after the others.
--XIV--
KNOTTING THE STRINGS
It is a very old saying, and therefore of course indisputably true, that
some have greatness thrust upon them. True of men, it is, in one
instance at least, true of places--Needley, from an unheard of, modest,
innocuous and unassuming little hamlet, leaped in a flash into the focus
of the world's eyes. In huge headlines the papers in every city of every
State carried it on their front pages. And while the first astounding
despatch from the metropolitan newspaper man was being copied by leading
dailies everywhere, there came on top of it, clinching its veracity
beyond possibility of doubt, the news that Robert Thornton, the well
known Chicago multi-millionaire, had given fifty thousand dollars to the
cause. A man, much less a multi-millionaire, does not give fifty
thousand dollars for a bubble, so the managing editors of the leading
dailies rushed for their star reporters--and the star reporters rushed
for Needley--and the red-haired, sorrowful-faced man in the Needley
station grew haggard, tottered on the verge of collapse, and, between
the sheafs of flimsy that the reporters fought for the opportunity of
pushing at him, wired desperately for a relief.
Needley awoke and came to life--as from the dead. There was bustle,
activity, and suppressed and unsuppressed excitement on every hand--the
Waldorf Hotel once more opened its doors--the Congress Hotel was already
full.
The reporters interviewed everybody with but one exception--the
Patriarch.
They interviewed Madison--and Madison talked to them gravely, quietly, a
little self-deprecatingly, a little abashed at the thought of personal
exploitage.
"I wouldn't be interviewed at all," he told them, "if it were not that
mankind at large is entitled to every bit of evidence that can be
obtained. Yes; I gave what I could afford, but it was Holmes, a poor
man, who gave most of all--have you seen him? Myself? What does that
matter? I am unknown, my personality, unlike Mr. Thornton's, can carry
no weight. I am, I suppose, what you might call a rolling stone, a world
wanderer. My parents left me a moderate fortune, and I have travelled
pretty well and pretty constantly all over the world during the last
twelve or fifteen years. How did I come to Needley? Well, you can call
it luck, or something more than that, whichever way it appeals to you. I
was feeling seedy, a little off-color, and I started down for a rest and
lay-off in Maine. I happened to ask a man in Portland if he knew of a
quiet place. He meant to be humorous, I imagine. He said Needley was the
quietest place he knew of. I took him at his word."
"But how do you account for these miraculous cures?" they asked.
"You have seen them--the results," Madison replied. "You know the cures
to be living, vital, irrefutable facts--don't you?"
"Yes," they agreed.
"Then," said Madison, "there can be but one answer--faith. There is no
other--faith. Are we not, in view of what has happened, of what exists
before our very eyes, forced to the belief that faith is the greatest
thing, the most potential factor in the world?"
"And do you believe then that all who come here will be cured?"
Madison shook his head.
"Ah, no," he said; "far from it. Many will come with but the semblance
of faith, and for those there can be no cure--that is evident on the
face of it, is it not?"
They interviewed Thornton--and Thornton, too, talked to them, but the
very presence of Mrs. Thornton was weightier far than words.
They interviewed the Holmes, and they interviewed Needley individually
and collectively; and they interviewed Helena--but they did not
interview the Patriarch. Here Helena barred their way--they were free to
enter the cottage, to copy the names, the record of gifts inscribed in
the book, already a long list for Needley had required no other
incentive to give than the example that had been set--but that was all.
Quietly, with demure simplicity, Helena, prompted by Madison, like a
priestess who guards some holy, inner shrine, told them that sensational
notoriety had no place there--and the notoriety for that very cause
became the greater! Not that they were denied a sight of the Patriarch's
venerable and saintly form--they were permitted to catch glimpses of him
on the beach, on the lawn, walking with bowed head in meditation, a
figure whose simple majesty inspired words and columns of glowing
tribute--but from personal contact, Helena and the Flopper, always in
attendance, warded them off; retreating always to the privacy of the
cottage, to the inner rooms.
All this had taken four days; and now, on the fourth day, there came to
Needley the vanguard of those who sought this new healing power--just a
few of them, two or three, like far, outflung skirmishers evidencing the
presence of the army corps to follow. With the reporters, as far as
Madison was concerned, it was simple enough; he had but to let them go
their way, to let them revel in the stories that were on every tongue,
to let them view with their own eyes _facts_, while he, modestly and
diffidently, full of quiet earnestness, effaced himself, never thrusting
himself forward, talking to them only when they pressed him--but the
handling of the sufferers who would flock to Needley in response to a
newspaper publicity and endorsement that had been beyond his wildest
dreams, was quite another matter. Madison viewed the first
arrivals--brought in from the station on cot beds to the Waldorf
Hotel--and retired to his room in the Congress Hotel to wrestle with the
niceties and minutiæ of the problem.
"You see," said Madison to the tip of his cigar, as he tilted back his
chair and extended his legs full length with his heels comfortably up on
the table edge, "you see, I believe in faith all right--and that's no
josh. But the trouble with faith is that it's about the scarcest article
on earth--and I haven't got any more Floppers to lead the way." Madison
adroitly sent the cigar ash through the window with a tap of his
forefinger on the body of the cigar--he frowned, and for a long time sat
musingly silent. Then he spoke again; this time addressing the toes of
his boots: "With the house sold out for the season, the box-office doing
itself proud and the audience crazy over the first two acts, how about
Act Three--h'm?--how about Act Three? Kind of a delicate proposition,
the staging of Act Three--and it's time for the curtain to go up. I can
hear 'em stamping out front now. I can't pull off any more orgies like
last Monday afternoon, even if I wanted to--but everybody's got to have
a run for their money. Say, how about Act Three?"
Madison burned up quite a little tobacco in the interval before supper,
and quite a little more afterward before the setting for his perplexing
"Third Act" appeared to unfold itself satisfactorily before his
mind--indeed, it was close onto half past ten when, by a roundabout
way, he very cautiously and silently approached the Patriarch's cottage.
In the front of the cottage, the Shrine-room, as he christened it, and
the Patriarch's sleeping room were both dark. Madison passed around to
the beach side--here, Helena's room was dark too, but in the Flopper's
window, the end room next to the kitchen and woodshed, there was a
light. The night was warm, and, though the shade was drawn, the window
was open. Madison whistled softly, and the Flopper stuck out his head.
"Hello, Flopper," said Madison; "come out here--I want to have a talk
with you. Helena in bed?"
"No; she's out," replied the Flopper.
"Well, hurry up!" said Madison. "Come around in front by the trellis
where we can see the other fellow first if anybody happens to be
strolling about."
Madison withdrew from the window and walked around to the front of the
cottage. Here, a few yards from the porch, by the trellis, already
beginning to be leafy green, was a rustic bench on which he seated
himself. The moon was not full, but there was light enough to enable him
to see across the lawn through the interposing row of maples, and,
hidden by the shadows himself, the seat strategetically met his
requirements.
Presently, the Flopper came out of the front door and joined him.
"Say, Doc," announced the Flopper abruptly, "de Patriarch's been askin'
fer youse yesterday an' to-day."
"Asking?" repeated Madison.
"Sure," said the Flopper. "He can scrawl if he is blind, can't he? He
scrawls yer name on de slate. We can't tell him nothin', an' he's kinder
got de fidgets like he t'inks youse had flown de coop."
"That's so," said Madison. "It is rather difficult to communicate with
him, isn't it? I guess we'll have to get him some raised letters."
"What's them?" inquired the Flopper.
"I don't know exactly," Madison answered. "I never saw any, but I
believe they have such things. Been asking for me, has he? Well, I'll
fix it to see him to-morrow. Where did you say Helena had gone?"
"I said she was out," said the Flopper. "If you ask me where, I'd say de
same place as last night an' de night before--down to dat private car
wid his nibs. Say, dere's some class to dat guy all right, an' I guess
Helena ain't got her eyes shut."
"Hey!" ejaculated Madison. "What do you mean?"
"Well, he's got de rocks, ain't he?" declared the Flopper. "Why
shouldn't she be after him? Dat's wot we're here fer, ain't it, de whole
bunch of us?--an' she ain't t'rowin' us, is she, if she sees a chanst to
pick up somet'ing on her own?"
Madison turned quickly on the Flopper.
"You mean," he said sharply, "that there's something going on between
Helena and Thornton--already?"
"Aw, stop kiddin'!" said the Flopper. "Already! Wot's 'already' got to
do wid it? We ain't none of us church members, are we? Say, where'd you
pick up Helena yerself--and how long did it take youse? I don't know
whether dere's anyt'ing goin' on or not--mabbe she's only gettin'
lonely--youse ain't hung around her much lately, Doc."
Madison laughed suddenly.
"You're talking through your hat, Flopper," he said shortly. "You don't
know Helena."
"It's a wise guy dat knows skirts," said the Flopper profoundly; then,
with something approaching a sigh: "Say, Doc, dere's a lalapazoozoo, a
peach down here."
"Hullo!" exclaimed Madison, shooting a hurried and critical glance at
the Flopper in the moonlight. "What's this, Flopper--what's this? What
have you been up to? You're supposed to be attending strictly to
business."
"An' you needn't t'ink I ain't," asserted the Flopper. "But I can't stop
de town fallin' over itself to bring de whole farmyard, an' eggs, an'
butter, an' flour, an' everyt'ing else out here every mornin', can I?
She's blown in twice wid cream fer de Patriarch."
"What's her name?" inquired Madison quizzically.
"Mamie Rodgers," said the Flopper. "She says her old man keeps a store
in de village."
"I know her," nodded Madison. "Pretty girl and all right, Flopper. But
mind what you're doing, that's all. I don't want any complications to
queer things around here--understand? But let's get down to the business
that I came out about--the lay from now on. You can put Helena wise."
"Sure," said the Flopper earnestly.
"Well then, listen," said Madison. "The patients have begun to
arrive--there were three of them in to-day. There's no more circus
parades--everything's under the tent after this. I want you to wean the
Patriarch entirely from that front room--that's to be free for anybody
to enter so's they can drink in atmosphere--and see the contribution
box. But they don't see the Patriarch. Get his armchair into his own
room, make him comfortable there--get the idea? Now, there's no
consultation hours--the Patriarch can't be seen just by asking for
him--the only chance they get at the Patriarch is by an exercise of
patience that'll work their faith up to a pitch that'll do them some
good. The harder it is to get a thing, the more it's worth and the more
you want it--that's the principle. See?"
"Sure," said the Flopper, licking his lips.
"Sometimes," Madison went on, "you're to keep the Patriarch under cover
for two or three days, while they hang around working themselves into a
frenzy. And when they do see him they have to scramble for it. You don't
lead him out to them--ever. Make them waylay him when you take him for
a walk--make them crawl and hop and show they've got faith, make them
believe they've got faith themselves--we'll get some more cures, or
near-cures anyway, that way, and we won't get them any other way, and
we've got to have some sort of cures coming along fairly regularly. Do
you get me, Flopper? If there's a party on a cot a hundred yards away
and he begs you to bring the Patriarch to him, say him nay. Everybody
has got to get into the reserved paddock by themselves--tell them that
no man can be cured who has not got the faith to reach the Patriarch by
himself--tell them to get up and _walk_ to him--tell them what you did."
"Swipe me!" said the Flopper. "Say, Doc, youse are de one an' only. I
gotcher--put it up to _dem_ everytime."
"Exactly," said Madison. "It's their move every minute--make them feel
that if they don't get what they're after it's their own fault--that
it's their own lack of faith that's to blame. And the longer they have
to wait to see the Patriarch, the more they become impressed that faith
is necessary, and--oh, well, psychology is the greatest jollier of them
all."
"Eh?" inquired the Flopper. "I ain't on dere, Doc."
"It's very simple," smiled Madison, "They'll want to convince themselves
that they _have_ got faith, that it's all bottled up and ready to have
the cork drawn when called for, and they'll prove it to themselves by
laying an offering upon the shrine as evidence of faith _before_ the
goods are delivered."
"I gotcher!" said the Flopper enthusiastically. "Why say, Doc, dat's de
way I'd do meself--swipe me, if I wouldn't!"
"That's the way nearly everybody would do," said Madison, laughing.
"There's at least a few similar kinks common to our noble race--we're
busy most of the time trying to fool ourselves one way or another. Well,
that's about all. I can't lay out a programme for every minute of the
day--you and Helena have got to use your heads and work along that
general idea. You play up your gratitude strong. And, oh yes--keep the
altar box well baited. Let Helena put some of her near-diamond rings and
joujabs in until we collect some genuine ones--and then keep the genuine
ones going--change every day for variety, you know. And take the silver
money out every time you see any in--not that we scorn it in the great
aggregate, far from it--it's just psychology again, Flopper. I went to
church once and sat beside a duck with a white waistcoat and chop
whiskers, who wore the dollar sign sticking out so thick all over him
that you couldn't see anything else; and when it came time for
collection he peeled a bill off a roll the size of a house, and waited
for the collection plate to come along. But he got his eye on the plate
a couple of pews ahead and it was full of coppers and chicken feed, and
he did the palming act with the bill slicker than a faro dealer--and
whispered to me to change a quarter for him."
"And did you?" asked the Flopper anxiously.
"Oh, wake up, Flopper!" grinned Madison; then, suddenly: "Hullo! Who's
that?"
Across the lawn, coming through the row of maples from the direction of
the wagon track, appeared two figures.
"Dat's who," said the Flopper, after gazing an instant. "It's Helena an'
Thornton."
"So it is," agreed Madison. "Get behind the trellis here then--it
wouldn't do for him to see me out here at this time of night."
They rose noiselessly from the bench, and slipped quickly behind the
trellis. Toward them, walking slowly came the two figures, Helena
leaning on Thornton's arm. Thornton was talking, but in too low a tone
to be overheard. Then a silence appeared to fall between the two, and it
was not until they reached the porch, close to Madison and the Flopper,
that either spoke again.
Then Thornton held out his hand.
"Good-night, Miss Vail--and good-by temporarily," he said. "I suppose I
shall be gone four or five days; I'm going up on the morning train, you
know. I wish you'd go as often as you can to see Naida in the car while
I'm away--will you? Her condition worries me, though she insists that
she is completely cured, and she will not listen to any advice. I have
an idea that she has overtaxed herself--apart from her hip disease, her
heart was in a very critical state. You'll go to her, won't you?"
"Yes," said Helena, "of course, I will."
Their voices dropped lower, and for a moment only a murmur reached
Madison; and then, with another "Good-night, Miss Vail," Thornton
started back across the lawn.
Madison could hear Helena fumbling with the door latch, and by the time
she had succeeded in opening the door the retreating figure of Thornton
was a safe distance away. Madison called in a whisper:
"Here, Helena! Wait a minute!"
There was a quick, startled little exclamation from the doorway, and
Helena came out hurriedly from the porch.
"Who's there?" she cried in a low voice. "Oh"--as they stepped into
view--"you, Doc, and the Flopper! What were you doing behind that
trellis?"
"Keeping out of Thornton's road," said Madison. "So he's going away, eh?
What for?"
"Business," replied Helena. "Has to go to some meeting in Chicago--he's
leaving his wife and the private car here. What did you come at this
hour for?"
"Lines for the next act," said Madison; "but the Flopper's got it all,
and he'll put you on." He stepped toward Helena and slipped his arm
around her waist. "Come on, it's early yet, let's go for a little walk.
The Flopper'll excuse us, and I--"
"I thought you said," Helena interrupted, disengaging herself quietly,
"that we had to play the game to the limit and take no chances."
"Well, so I did," admitted Madison, and his arm crept around her again;
"but I guess we've earned a little holiday and--"
"'Nix on that,' I think was what you said," said Helena with a queer
little laugh, drawing away again. "And I really think you were right,
Doc--we ought to play the game without breaking the rules, and
so--good-night"--and she turned and ran from him into the cottage.
Madison stared after her in a sort of helpless state of chagrin.
"Mabbe," said the Flopper, "mabbe she's lonely."
--XV--
A MIRACLE OVERDONE
Helena sat in the Patriarch's room, and her piquant little face was
pursed up into a scowl so daintily grim as to be almost ludicrous. The
Patriarch, in his armchair, had been scrawling words upon the slate all
evening--and she had been wiping them off! He scrawled another now--and
mechanically, without looking at it, by way of answer she pressed his
arm to appease him.
She had been restless all day, and she was restless now. What had
induced her to treat Madison the way she had the night before? Pique,
probably. No; it wasn't pique. It was just getting back at him--and he
deserved it. He hadn't seemed to mind it much, though--he had only
laughed and teased her about it that morning when he had joined the
Patriarch and herself in their walk along the beach.
With her chin in her hands, she began to study the Patriarch through
half closed eyes--deaf and dumb and blind--and somehow it all seemed
excruciatingly funny and she wanted to laugh hysterically. He seemed to
sense the fact that she was looking at him, and, with quick, instant
intuition, he smiled and reached out his hand toward her.
Unconsciously, involuntarily, she drew back--then, recovering herself
the next instant, she took his hand. Now, why had she done that? What
was the matter with her? Again she felt that sudden impulse to scream,
or laugh, or shout, or make some noise--it seemed as though she were
penned in, smothered somehow, imprisoned. What _was_ the matter? Nerves?
She had never known what nerves were in all her life! Couldn't she play
the game and act her part without making a fool of herself? She had
played a part all her life, hadn't she? Maybe it was quite a shock to
her system to take a place amongst really good and simple folk!
She laughed a little shortly--then rose abruptly from her chair, and
began to walk up and down the room. The trouble was that the soft pedal
was getting unbearable. That air of awed hush and solemnity, morning,
noon and night, without anything to relieve it, was just a trifle too
drastic and sudden a change in life for her to accept calmly and swallow
in one dose without feeling any effects from it! If she could be
transported now for an hour, say, to the Roost, or Heligman's and the
turkey trot, or the Rivoli, or any old place--except Needley, Maine!
"Gee!" said Helena to herself. "If I don't break loose and kick the
traces over for a minute or two, I'll be clawing the bars of a dippy
asylum before I'm through--and just listen to the sweet, girlish
language I'm using--I'd like to bite something!"
She turned impulsively to the door, stepped out into the hall, and
called the Flopper from his room.
"Flopper, you go in there and stay with the Patriarch for awhile," she
ordered curtly. "I'm going down on the beach to yell."
"Yell?" inquired the Flopper, blinking helplessly.
"I'm going outside to yell--_yell._ You know what 'yell' means, don't
you?" she snapped.
"Swipe me!" observed the Flopper, gazing at her anxiously. "Skirts is
all de same--youse never know wot dey'll do next. Wot you wanter yell
fer?"
"You mind your own business and do as you're told!" said Helena tartly.
"Go in there and stay with the Patriarch."
"Sure," said the Flopper, grinning a little now. "Sure t'ing--but youse
needn't get on yer ear about it. Cheer up, mabbe de Doc'll be out
to-night, an' if he don't hear youse yellin' himself will I tell him
youse are out on de beach t'rowin' a fit?"
"No," Helena answered sharply; "tell him nothing--I'm out." Then, quite
as quickly, changing her mind: "Yes; tell him I'm down there--or come
and get me yourself"--and she walked abruptly into her own room.
"Now wot do youse t'ink of dat?" demanded the Flopper of the universe.
He blinked at the door she had closed in his face. "Say," he asserted,
with sublime inconsistency, "if Mamie Rodgers was like all de rest of
dem, I'd t'row up me dukes before de gong rang." The Flopper went into
the Patriarch's room, and took the chair beside the other that Helena
had vacated. "Swipe me, if I wouldn't!" he added fervently, by way of
confirmation.
Helena, in her own room, opened one of her trunks, lifted out the tray,
worked somewhat impatiently down through several layers of yellow,
paper-covered literature, that would have made the classics on the
Patriarch's bookshelves shrivel up and draw their skirts hurriedly
around them in righteous horror could they but have known or been
capable of such intensely human characteristics, and finally produced a
daintily jewelled little cigarette case and match box. She slammed the
tray back, slammed the cover of the trunk down, snatched up a wrap,
flung it over her head and shoulders--and left the cottage.
She ran down to the beach at top speed, as if she couldn't get there
fast enough.
"And now I'm just going to yell and go crazy as much as ever I like!"
panted Helena to the rollers.
Instead, she sat down with her back to a rock, and opened her cigarette
case. She took out a cigarette, extracted a match from the match box,
lighted the match--and flung both cigarette and match from her.
"I don't want to be crazy--I don't know what I want," said Helena
petulantly. Her chin went into her hands, and she stared wide-eyed at
the breaking surf. "I wonder what it all means?" she murmured, with a
mirthless little laugh.
Her thoughts began to run riot. What _did_ it all mean? What was this
faith? There was, there _must_ be something in it. There was the Holmes
boy--suppose it _was_ only some nervous disorder--well, something had
risen superior to whatever it was and had _cured_ him. There was Naida
Thornton--true, she was ill again--her heart, Mr. Thornton had said--but
she could still walk, a thing she had not been able to do for a long
time until she came to Needley.
Helena laughed again--oh, it was a good game! The Doc had made no
mistake about that--but then, when it came to planting anything the Doc
rarely did make a mistake. Fancy fifty thousand dollars in one haul!
_Fifty thousand in one haul!_ The bank had sent her a passbook with that
amount to her credit. And that was only the beginning--hardly anybody
had come yet, and already there was several hundred dollars more in real
money that she had handed over to Madison from the offering box.
Money! They'd have more money than they'd know what to do with before
they got through--there was nothing the matter with the game--all there
was to do was to play it to a finish. And there wasn't the slightest
risk about it--everything was given voluntarily. Oh, the game was all
right--but somehow she wasn't happy--not nearly so happy as she had
been in New York, even in lean periods when she and the Doc had been
pressed for money. But, anyway, then they had been together, and fought,
and laughed, and loved, and quarrelled through flush times and bad.
Maybe that was it! The Doc! Of course, she loved him--she had loved him
ever since she had known him. There was no secret about that--she loved
him fiercely, passionately, more than she loved anything else in the
world, with all the love she was capable of--more than he loved her--he
seemed to accept her, too often, so casually, so indifferently, so much
as a matter of course. He was so confidently and complacently sure of
her--and she was not at all sure of him. She was only sure that he was
quite right in being sure--she couldn't help loving him if she tried.
She had hardly seen anything of him since that night in the Roost before
he had left for Needley--and he hadn't seemed to care much whether she
did or not. That talk about playing the game and taking no chances was
all bosh--there had been plenty of chances where it wouldn't have hurt
the game any. Perhaps the little jolt she had given him last night,
turning the tables a little, would wake him up a bit. Perhaps, as the
Flopper had said, he would come out to-night, and--
"Helena! Helena!"
Helena sat suddenly upright--the noise of the surf muffled the sound of
the voice, but that was probably Doc now--she could hear footsteps
running from the direction of the cottage. Deliberately, Helena leaned
back again against the rock, took out a cigarette and with no attempt to
shade the flame of the match, rather to use it as a challenging beacon,
held it to the cigarette--but for the second time she flung both match
and cigarette hurriedly away. It wasn't Madison at all--it was only the
Flopper.
"Say!" gasped the Flopper, blowing hard. "Why can't youse answer when
yer called? Wot you tryin' ter do--light a bonfire ter save yer voice?
Say, youse wanter get a wiggle on--beat it--quick! Dey're after you."
"What?" cried Helena sharply, jumping to her feet. "After me? Who? What
do you mean?"
"I dunno," said the Flopper with sudden imperturbability--and evidently
quite pleased with the agitation he had caused. "He talks like his mouth
was full, an' he's got a scare t'rown inter him so's his teeth have got
de jiggles."
Helena caught the Flopper's arm and shook him angrily.
"What are you talking about--what is it?" she demanded fiercely.
"It's de porter from de private car," said the Flopper, wriggling away
from her. "He drove out here. De lady's on de toboggan--sick. She's
askin' fer youse an'--"
Helena waited for no more. She raced to the cottage and around to the
front. A wagon was standing before the porch; the negro porter on the
seat.
"What is it, Sam?" she called anxiously, as she came up. "Is Mrs.
Thornton seriously ill?"
"Yas--yas'um, miss," Sam answered excitedly. "I done feel in mah bones
she's gwine to die. Miss Harvey she done tole me to get a team an' drive
foh you-all like de debbil."
Without waste of words, Helena clambered in beside him.
"Then drive," she said shortly. "Drive as fast as you can."
At first, as they drove along, Helena plied Sam with questions--and then
lapsed into silence. The man did not know very much--only that Mrs.
Thornton had been taken suddenly ill, and that the nurse had sent him on
the errand that had brought him to the cottage. A turmoil of conflicting
emotions filled Helena's mind, obtruding upon her anxiety, for she had
grown to care a great deal for Naida Thornton--this was a complication
that Doc Madison must know about--Thornton had left that morning and was
already far away--the newspaper men, or some of them at least, were
still in the town--and there were so many things else--they all came
crowding upon her, as she clung to her seat in the jolting wagon. But
Doc must know--that rose a paramount consideration. It seemed an age, an
eternity before they stopped finally at the station.
She sprang out and turned to Sam.
"Sam," she directed hurriedly, "you go back to the Congress Hotel and
get Mr. Madison. Mr. Madison is a friend of Mr. Thornton's, you know. Go
about it quietly--you needn't let any one know what you came for. You
can tell Mr. Madison what the trouble is--and tell him that I sent you,
and that I am here. Do you understand?"
"Yas'um, mum," said Sam impressively. "Just you done leab all that to
me, missy."
Across the track on the siding, the private car was dimly lighted, the
window curtains down. Helena crossed the track and mounted the steps. As
she reached the platform, Miss Harvey, who had evidently heard her
coming, opened the door and drew her quietly inside.
A glance at the nurse's face brought a sudden chill to Helena's heart.
Miss Harvey, capable, controlled, grave, smiled at her a little sadly.
"I sent for you, Miss Vail," she said in a low tone, "because Mrs.
Thornton has been asking for you incessantly ever since the attack came
on three-quarters of an hour ago."
"You mean," said Helena, "that--that there is--"
"No hope," the nurse completed. "I am afraid there is none--it is her
heart. The condition has been aggravated by her activity during the last
few days since she has been able to walk--though I have done everything
within my power to keep her quiet." Miss Harvey laid her hand on
Helena's arm. "There is one thing, Miss Vail, I feel that I must say to
you, in justice both to you and to myself, before you see her. Whatever
my personal ideas may be of what has taken place here, my professional
duty as a nurse demanded that I send for a doctor at once, and I want
you to know that is what I did, though I have not been successful in
getting one. There is no doctor here, so I telegraphed; but the doctor
at Barton's Mills is away."
"Yes," said Helena mechanically.
"I just wanted you to understand," said Miss Harvey. "Will you come and
see Mrs. Thornton now?"
"Does she know," whispered Helena, as she followed the nurse down the
corridor of the car, "does she know that--how ill she is?"
"Yes," Miss Harvey answered simply. She stopped before a compartment
door, opened it softly, and, stepping aside, motioned Helena to enter.
A little cry rose to Helena's lips that she choked back somehow, and a
mist for a moment blinded her eyes--then she was kneeling beside the
brass bed, and was holding in both her own the hand that was stretched
out to her.
"Helena--dear--I am so glad you came," said Mrs. Thornton faintly. "I--I
am not going to get better, and there are some things I want to say to
you."
"Oh, but you are," returned Helena quickly, smiling bravely now. "You
mustn't say that."
Mrs. Thornton shook her head.
"Dear," she said, "I know. And I know that what I have to say I must
say quickly." Her voice seemed to grow suddenly stronger with a great
earnestness. "Listen, dear. This must not make any difference to this
wonderful work that has just begun here. I was cured of my hip
disease--perfectly cured--no one can deny that--this is my own fault, I
have overdone it--I would not listen to reason--to do what I have done
in the last few days, when for a year and a half I had never moved a
step, was more than my heart could stand. I should have been more
quiet--but I was so glad, so happy--and I wanted to tell everybody--I
wanted all the world to know, so that others could find the joy that I
had found."
She paused--and Helena sought for words that, somehow, would not come.
The nurse was bending over the bed on the other side, and Mrs. Thornton
turned her head toward Miss Harvey now. She smiled gently, as though to
rob her words of any possible hurt.
"Nurse, I want--to be alone with Miss Vail for just a moment."
Miss Harvey, doubtful, hesitated.
"Only for a moment," pleaded Mrs. Thornton. "You can stay just outside
the door."
Reluctantly, Miss Harvey complied, and left the room.
Mrs. Thornton pressed Helena's hand tightly.
"Listen, dear--this must not make any difference. It--it is the one
thing that will make me happy now--to know that. I--I have written a
little note to Robert about it, to be given to him. Oh, if I could only
have lived to help--I should have tried so hard to be worthy to have a
part in it. Not like you, dear, with your sweetness and nobleness, for
God seems to have singled you out for this--but just to have had a
little part. How wonderful it would have been, bringing peace and health
and gladness where only sorrow and misery was before, and--and--"
Mrs. Thornton's eyes closed, and she lay for a moment quiet.
A blackness seemed to settle upon Helena--and how cold it was! She
shivered. Her dark eyes, wide, tearless now, stared, startled, dazed, at
the white face on the pillow crowned with its mass of golden hair. Her
sweetness! Her nobleness! Helena's lips half parted and her breath came
in quick, fierce, little gasps--it seemed as though she had been struck
a blow that she could not quite understand because somehow it had numbed
her senses--only there was a hurt that curiously, strangely seemed to
mock as it stabbed with pain.
"There is Robert"--Mrs. Thornton spoke again--"I am sure he will do as I
have asked him to do about this, but--you can have a great deal of
influence with him. It--it perhaps may seem a strange thing to say, but
I pray that you two may be brought very close to each other. Robert
needs a good, true woman so much in his life--and I--we--we--my
illness--we have never had a home in its truest sense. Yes, it is
strange for me perhaps to talk like this--but it is in my heart. I would
like to think of you both engaged in this wonderful work together."
Again, through exhaustion, Mrs. Thornton stopped--and Helena, from
gazing at the other's pallid countenance in a sort of involuntary,
frightened fascination, dropped her head suddenly upon the bed-spread
and hid her face.
Mrs. Thornton's hand found Helena's head and rested upon it.
"I would like to see Robert happy," she murmured, after a little
silence. "Riches do not make happiness--they are so sad and empty a
thing when the heart is empty. I know he would be happy with you--he has
spoken so much of you lately--perhaps--perhaps--"
Mrs. Thornton's voice was very faint--the words reached Helena plainly
enough as words, but they seemed to reach her consciousness in an
unreal, unnatural, blunted way, coma-like--pregnant of significance, yet
with the significance itself elusive, evading her.
"A good woman," whispered Mrs. Thornton, "I have tried to be a good
woman--but--but my life, our wealth, our position has made it so
artificial. You have never known these things, dear--and so you are just
as God made you--good woman, so pure, so wonderful in your freshness and
your innocence. Robert's life has been so barren--so barren. I would
like to know that--that it will not always be so. Oh, if it could only
be that you and he should carry on this great, glad work together--and
love should come into his life--and yours--and sunshine--promise me,
dear, that--"
The voice died away. Helena, with head still buried, waited for Mrs.
Thornton to speak again. It seemed she waited for a great length of
time--and yet there was no such thing as time. It seemed as though she
were transported to a place of great and intense blackness where it was
miserably cold and chill, and she stood alone and lost, and strove to
find her way--and there was no way--only blackness everywhere,
immeasurable. She lifted her head suddenly, desperately, to shake the
unreality from her--and her eyes fell upon the gentle face, peaceful,
smiling, calm, and so _still_--and a startled, frightened cry rang from
her lips.
There was the quick, hurried rush of some one coming into the room, and
the nurse brushed by her and bent instantly over the bed--after that,
quite soon after that it seemed, and yet it might have been quite a
little while, she found herself outside in the corridor and the nurse
was speaking to her.
"Sam is still out there," said Miss Harvey gently. "I told him to keep
the team. You cannot help me, and I want you to go home, dear. And will
you ask Sam to go for Mr. Madison at the hotel on the way back--I do not
know who else I can call upon for advice."
"I've sent for him already," said Helena numbly.
"Have you, dear?" Miss Harvey said. "That was very thoughtful of
you--I'm sure he'll be here presently then. And now, dear, it is much
better that you should go."
There were no tears in Helena's eyes as she stepped down from the car
vestibule to the tracks--only a drawn misery in her face. That was Doc
over there, pacing up and down on the platform in the darkness--wasn't
it weird the way his cigar glowed bright and then went out and then
glowed bright again--like a gigantic firefly!
She was across the tracks before he saw her, then, hurrying forward, he
helped her to the platform.
"Well?" he asked quickly.
Helena did not answer.
Madison took the cigar from his lips, leaned forward, and peered into
Helena's face--then drew back with a low whistle.
"Dead?" he said.
Helena nodded.
"Miss Harvey wants to see you," she said.
"Say," said Madison slowly, "first crack out of the box this looks bad,
don't it? If this gets around here without a muffler on it, it might
make the railroad companies hang fire with those circulars for excursion
rates to Needley--what?"
"I--I think I hate you!" Helena cried out suddenly, passionately.
"She's--she's dead--and that's all you think about!"
Madison stared at Helena for a moment calmly.
"Now, look here, Helena," said he quietly, "don't get excited. Of
course I'm sorry--I'm not a brute and I've got feelings--but I can't
afford to lose my head. Something's got to be done, and done quick. We
don't want this headlined in every paper in the United States to-morrow
morning--Thornton wouldn't want it either. You say Miss Harvey wants to
see me? Well, that'll help some--she'll probably do as she's told,
and--"
Madison paused abruptly, gazed abstractedly at the private car across
the tracks on the siding, and pulled at his cigar.
Helena watched him in silence--a little bitterly. That quick, clever,
cunning brain of his was at work again--scheming--scheming--always
scheming--and Naida Thornton was dead.
"I'll tell you," said Madison, speaking again as abruptly as he had
stopped. "It's simple enough. There's a westbound train due in an hour
or so--we'll couple the private car onto that and send it right along to
Chicago. What the authorities don't know won't hurt them. There's no
reason for anybody except Thornton to know what's happened till she gets
there--I'll wire him. The main thing is that the car won't be here in
the morning, and that'll take a little of the intimate touch of Needley
off. It might well have happened on her way home--journey too much for
her--left too soon--see? Thornton'll see it in the right light because
he's got fifty thousand dollars worth of faith in what's going on
here--get that? He won't want to harm the 'cause.' There'll be some
publicity of course, we can't help that--but it won't hurt much--and
Thornton can gag a whole lot of it--he'd want to anyway for his own
sake. Now then, kid, there's Sam over there--you pile into the wagon and
go home, while I get busy--and don't you say a word about this, even to
the Flopper."
And so Helena drove back to the Patriarch's cottage that night, a little
silent figure in the back seat of the wagon--and her hands were locked
tightly together in her lap--and to her, as she drove over the peaceful,
moonlit road, and under the still, arched branches of the trees in the
wood that hid the starlight, came again and again the words of one who
had gone, who perhaps knew better now--"you are as God made you."
--XVI--
A FLY IN THE OINTMENT
The days passed. And with the days, morning, noon and night, they came
by almost every train, the sick and suffering, the lame, the paralytics
and the maimed--a steady influx by twos and threes and fours--from north
over the Canadian boundary line, from the far west, and from the
southernmost tip of the Florida coast. No longer on the company's
schedule was Needley a flag station--it was a regular stop, and its
passenger traffic returns were benign and pleasing things in the
auditor's office. And it was an accustomed sight now, many times a
day--what had once been a strange, rare spectacle--that slow procession
wending its way from the station to the town, some carried, some limping
upon crutches, all snatching at hope of life and health and happiness
again. Needley, perforce, had become a vast boarding house, as it
were--there were few homes indeed that did not harbor their quota of
those who sought the "cure."
But there were others too who came--who were not sick--who had not
faith--who came to laugh and peer and peek. Pleasure yachts dropped
their anchors in the cove around the headland from the Patriarch's
cottage--and their dingeys brought women decked out _de rigeur_ in middy
blouses and sailor collars, and nattily attired gentlemen whose only
claim to seamanship was the clothes, or rather, the costumes that they
wore.
They came laughing, supercilious, tolerant, contemptuous, pitying the
inanity of those they held less strongly-minded than themselves who
should be taken in by so apparent, glaring and monstrous a fake. They
came because it was the rage, the thing to do, quite the thing to do,
quite a necessary part of the summer's itinerary. But that they, should
they have been sick, would ever have dreamed of coming there was too
perfectly ridiculous an idea for words. How strange a thing is the human
animal!
They came in their rather cruel, merciless gaiety--and they left sobered
and impressed; the ladies holding their embroidered parasols at a less
jaunty angle; the men with lightened pockets, their names enrolled in
the contribution book in that quiet, simple room, whose door was open,
whose cash-box was unguarded, where none asked them to either enter or
withdraw. They came and found no air of charlatanism such as they had
looked for--only a peaceful, unostentatious, patient air of sincerity
that left them remorseful and abashed. They came and went, a source of
revenue not counted on or thought of before by Madison; but a source
that swelled the coffers, brimming fuller day by day, to overflowing.
In three weeks from the night of Mrs. Thornton's death, which had had at
least no visible effect on Needley, Needley was metamorphosed--with a
spontaneity, so to speak, that astounded even Madison himself--into
something that approximated very closely in reality the word-picture he
had drawn of it that night in the Roost. Madison looked upon his work
and saw that it was pleasing beyond his dreams. Money was pouring in--no
single breath of suspicion came to disquiet him. Even the cures were
working satisfactorily--even Pale Face Harry, who had become great
friends with the farmer at whose house he boarded, and who now spent
most of his time in the fields, was showing an improvement--Pale Face
Harry coughed less. The Flopper was as happy as a lark--and Mamie
Rodgers blushed now at mention of the name of Coogan. Helena, demure,
adored by all who saw her, went daily about her housework in the
cottage, and waited upon the Patriarch with gentle tenderness; while the
Patriarch, docile, full of supreme trust and confidence in every one,
radiant in Helena's companionship, was as putty in their hands. And so
Madison looked upon his work and saw no flaw--but with the days he grew
ill at ease.
"It's too easy," he told himself. "I guess that's it--it's too easy. The
whole show runs itself. Why, there's nothing to do but count the cash!"
And yet in his heart he knew that wasn't it--it was Helena. Helena was
beginning to trouble him a little. She was playing the game all
right--playing it to the limit--and making a hit at every performance.
Her name was on every tongue, and men and women alike spoke of her
sweetness, her goodness, her loveliness. Well, that was all right,
Helena was a star no matter where you put her--but something was the
matter. Helena wasn't the Helena of a month ago back in little old New
York. He hadn't managed to get a dozen words with her since that night
on the station platform, without taking chances and gaining admission to
the cottage through the Flopper's window after dark--and then she had
held him at arm's length.
"The matter with me?" she had said. "There isn't anything the matter
with me--is there? I'm--I'm playing the game."
It certainly couldn't be grief over Mrs. Thornton's death--she had begun
to act that way before Mrs. Thornton died--that night when she came home
with Thornton, and he and the Flopper were behind the trellis. Thornton!
Had Thornton anything to do with it, after all? No--Madison had laughed
at it then, and he had much more reason to laugh at it now. Thornton was
still in Chicago, and hadn't been back to Needley.
For three weeks this sort of thing occupied a considerably larger share
of Madison's thoughts than he was wont to allow even the most vexing
problems to disturb his usually imperturbable and complacent self--and
then one afternoon, he smiled a little grimly, and, leaving the hotel,
started along the road toward the Patriarch's cottage.
"What Helena needs is--a jolt!" said Madison to himself. "I guess her
trouble is one of those everlasting feminine kinks that all women since
Adam's wife have patted themselves on the back over, because they think
it's a dark veil of mystery that is beyond the acumen of brute man to
understand. That's what the novelists write pages about--wade right in
up to the armpits in it--feminine psychology--great! And the women smile
commiseratingly at the novelist--the idea of a man even pretending to
understand them--kind of a blooming merry-go-round and everybody happy!
Feminine psychology! I guess a little masculine kick-up is about the
right dope! What the deuce have I been standing for it for? I don't have
to--I don't have to go around making sheep's-eyes at her--what? She
wants grabbing up and being rushed right off her feet _à la_ Roost,
and--hello, Mr. Marvin, how are you to-day!"--he had halted beside a
middle-aged man who was sitting on the grass at the roadside.
"Better, Mr. Madison, better," returned the man, heartily. "Really very
much better."
"Fine!" said Madison.
"We all saw the Patriarch to-day--God bless him!" said Marvin. "We've
been waiting out there two days, you know--that woman with the bad back
got up off her stretcher."
"Splendid!" exclaimed Madison enthusiastically. "And the glorious thing
about it is that there's no reason why everybody can't be cured if
they'll only come here in the right spirit."
"That's so!" agreed Marvin. "None are so blind as those who won't
see--they're in utter blackness compared with the physical blindness of
that grand and marvelous man. I'm going home myself in another
week--better than ever I was in my life. It was stomach with me, you
know--doctors said there wasn't any chance except to operate, and that
an operation was too slim a chance to be worth risking it." He got up
and laughed, carefree, joyous. "God-given place down here, isn't it?
Clean--that's it. Clean air, clean-souled people, clean everything you
see or do or hear. Say, it kind of opens your eyes to real living,
doesn't it--it's the luxuries and the worries and the pace and the
damn-fooleries that kill. Well, I'm going along back now to get some of
Mrs. Perkins' cream--clean, rich cream--and homemade bread and
butter--imagine me with an appetite and able to eat!"
He laughed again--and Madison joined him in the laugh, slapping him a
cordial good-by on the shoulder.
Madison started on once more--but now his progress was slow, frequently
interrupted, for he stopped a score of times to chat and exchange a few
words with those whom he passed on the road. There were cheery faces
everywhere--even those of the sufferers who straggled out along the
road coming back from the Patriarch's cottage. It was a cheery
afternoon, warm and balmy and bright--everything was cheery. The
farmers, their vocations for the moment changed, waved their whips at
him and shouted friendly pleasantries as they drove by with those who
were unable to make the trip from the Patriarch's unaided.
Madison began to experience a strange, exhilarating sense of uplift upon
him, a sort of rather commendatory and gratified feeling with himself.
Marvin had hit it pretty nearly right with his "clean-wholesomeness"
idea--it kind of made one feel good to be a part of it. Madison, for the
time being, relegated Helena and his immediate mission to a secondary
place in his thoughts.
Young girls, young men, middle-aged men, elderly women, all ages of both
sexes he passed as he went along; some alone, some in couples, some in
little groups, some on crutches, some in wheel-chairs, some walking
without extraneous aid--he had turned into the woods now, and he could
see them strewn out all along the wagon track under the cool,
interlacing branches overhead.
Now he stepped aside to let a wagon pass him, and answered the farmer's
call and the smile of the occupants in kind; now some one stopped to
tell him again the story of the afternoon--there had been cures that day
and the Patriarch had come amongst them. Some laughed, some sang a
little, softly, to themselves--all smiled--all spoke in glad, hopeful
words, clean words--there seemed no base thought in any mind, only that
cleanness, that wholesomeness that had so appealed to Marvin--that
somehow Madison found he was taking a delight in responding to, and,
because it afforded him whimsical pleasure, chose to pretend that he was
quite a genuine exponent of it himself.
He reached the end of the wagon track, and paused involuntarily on the
edge of the Patriarch's lawn as he came out from the trees. Like low,
lulling music came the distant, mellowed noise of waters, the breaking
surf. And the cottage was a bower of green now, clothed in ivy and
vine--upon the trellises the early roses were budding--fragrance of
growing things blended with the salt, invigorating breeze from the
ocean. And upon the lawn, flanked with its sturdy maples, all in leaf,
that toned the sunshine in soft-falling shadows, stood, or sat, or
reclined on cots, the supplicants who still tarried though the Patriarch
had gone. And now one came reverently out of the cottage door from that
room that was never closed; now another went in--and still another.
Madison smiled suddenly, broadly, with immense satisfaction and
contentment--and then his eyes fixed quite as suddenly on the
single-seated buggy that was coming toward him on the driveway across
the lawn. That was Mamie Rodgers driving--and that was Helena beside
her.
Madison recalled instantly the object of his visit--and instantly he
whistled a rather surprised little whistle under his breath. How
alluringly Helena's brown hair coiled in wavy wealth upon her head;
there wasn't any need of rouge for color in the oval face; the dark eyes
were soft and deep and glorious; and she sat there in a little white
muslin frock as dainty as a medallion from a master's brush.
"Say," said Madison to himself, "say, I never quite got it before. Say,
she's--she's lovely--and that's my Helena. It's no wonder
Thornton stared at her that day we touched him for the fifty,
and"--suddenly--"damn Thornton!"
But the buggy was beside him now, and he lifted his hat as Mamie Rodgers
pulled up the horse.
"Good afternoon, Miss Rodgers," he said. "Good afternoon, Miss Vail--how
is the Patriarch to-day?"
"He is very well, thank you," Helena answered--and being custodian of
the whip brushed a fly off the horse's flank.
"I was just coming out to pay you a little visit," remarked Madison,
trying to catch her eye.
"Oh, I'm _so_ sorry!" said Helena sweetly, still busy with the fly.
"Mamie is going to take me for a drive--and afterwards we are going to
her house for tea."
"Oh!" said Madison, a little blankly.
Helena smiled at him, nodded, and touched the horse with the whip--and
then she leaned suddenly out toward him, as the buggy started forward.
"Oh, Mr. Madison," she called, "I forgot to tell you! I had a letter
from Mr. Thornton to-day--and he's coming back to-morrow."
--XVII--
IN WHICH HELENA TAKES A RIDE
The wind kissed Helena's face, bringing dainty color to her cheeks,
tossing truant wisps of hair this way and that, as the car swept onward.
But she sat strangely silent now beside Thornton at the steering wheel.
It seemed to her that she was living, not her own life, not life as she
had known and looked upon it in the years before, but living, as it
were, in a strange, suspended state that was neither real nor unreal, as
in a dream that led her, now through cool, deep forests, beside clear,
sparkling streams where all was a great peace and the soul was at rest,
serene, untroubled, now into desolate places where misery had its birth
and shame was, where there was fear, and the mind stood staggered and
appalled and lost and knew not how to guide her that she might flee from
it all.
At moments most unexpected, as now when motoring with Thornton in the
car that he had brought back with him on, his return to Needley, when
laughing at the Flopper's determined pursuit of Mamie Rodgers, when
engaged in the homely, practical details of housekeeping about the
cottage, there came flashing suddenly upon her the picture of Mrs.
Thornton lying on the brass bed in the car compartment that night, every
line of the pale, gentle face as vivid, as actual as though it were once
more before her in reality, and in her ears rang again, stabbing her
with their unmeant condemnation, those words of sweetness, love and
purity that held her up to gaze upon herself in ghastly, terrifying
mockery.
It stupified her, bewildered her, frightened her. She seemed, for days
and weeks now, to be drifting with a current that, eddying, swirling,
swept her this way and that. How wonderful it was, this life she was now
leading compared with the old life--so full of the better things, the
better emotions, the better thoughts that she had never known before!
How monstrous in its irony that she was leading it to _steal_, that she
might play her part in a criminal scheme for a criminal end! And yet,
somehow, it did not all seem sham, this part she played--and that very
thought, too, frightened her. Why was it now that Madison's
oft-attempted, and as oft-repulsed, kiss upon her lips was something
from which she shrank and battled back, no longer from a sense of pique
or to bring him to his knees, but because something new within her,
intangible, that she did not understand, rose up against it! Why did she
do this--she, who had known the depths, who had known no other guide or
mentor than the turbulent, passionate love she had yielded him and in
her abandonment had once found contentment! Was her love for him gone?
Or, if it was not that--what was it?
What was it? A week, another, two more, a month had slipped away since
Thornton had returned, and there had been so much of genuineness crowded
into this sham part of hers that it seemed at times the part itself was
genuine. She had come to love that little room of hers, love it for its
dear simplicity, the white muslin curtains, the rag mat, the patch-quilt
on the bed; those daily duties of a woman, that she had never done
before, that she had at first looked at askance, brought now a sense of
keen, housewifely pride; the gentle patience of the Patriarch, his love
for her, his simple trust in her had found a quick and instant response
in her own heart, and daily her affection for him had grown; and there
was Thornton--this man beside her, whose companionship somehow she
seemed to crave for, who, in his grave, quiet manliness, seemed a sort
of inspiration to her, who seemed in a curious way to appease a new
hunger that had come to her for association, for contact with better
thoughts and better ideals.
What was it? Environment? Yes; there must be something in that. It was
having its effect even on Pale Face Harry and the Flopper. What was it
that Harry, a surprisingly lusty farmhand now, had said to her a week or
so ago: "Say, Helena, do you ever feel that while you was trying to kid
the crowd about this living on the square, you was kind of getting
kidded yourself? I dunno! I ain't coughed for a month--honest. But it
ain't only that. Say--I dunno! Do you ever feel that way?"
Yes; there must be something in environment. The old life had never
brought her thoughts such as these, thoughts that had been with her now
almost since the first day she had come to Needley--this disquiet, this
self-questioning, these sudden floods of condemnatory confusion; and,
mingling with them, a startled thrill, a strange, half-glad,
half-premonitory awakening, a vague pronouncement that innately it might
be true that she was not what she _really_ was--but what all those
around her held her to be--what Mrs. Thornton had said she was--and--
Her fingers closed with a quick, fierce pressure on the arm-rest of her
seat--and she shifted her position with a sudden, involuntary movement.
Thornton, a road-map tacked on a piece of board and propped up at his
feet, raised his head, and, self-occupied himself, had apparently not
noticed her silence, for he spoke irrelevantly.
"I hope you won't mind if the road is a bit rougher than usual for a few
miles," he said; "but you know we decided we didn't like the looks of
the weather at tea-time, and according to the map, which labels it
'rough but passable,' this is a short cut that will lop off about ten
miles and take us back to Needley through Barton's Mills."
"Of course, I don't mind," Helena answered. "How far are we from
Needley?"
"About thirty-five miles or so," Thornton replied. "Say, an hour and a
half with any kind of going at all. We ought to be back by nine."
Helena nodded brightly and leaned back in her seat. Rather than
objecting to the short cut that Thornton had begun to negotiate, the
road, now that she gave her attention to it, she found to be quite the
prettiest bit she had seen in the whole afternoon's run, where, in the
rough, sparsely settled north country, all was both pretty and a
delight--miles and miles without the sign of even a farmhouse, just the
great Maine forests, so majestic and grand in their solitude, bordering
the road that undulated with the country, now to a rise with its
magnificent sweep of scenery, now to the cool, fresh valleys full of the
sweet pine-scent of the woods. They had explored much of it together in
the little 'run-about,' nearly every day a short spin somewhere; to-day
a little more ambitious run--the whole afternoon, and tea, a picnic tea,
an hour or more back, in a charming glade beside a little brook.
"Oh, this is perfectly lovely!" she exclaimed; and then, with a
breathless laugh, as a bump lifted her out of her seat: "It _is_
rough--isn't it?"
Thornton laughed and slowed down.
"I don't fancy it's used much, except in the winter for logging. But if
the map says we can get through, I guess we're all right--there's about
an eight mile stretch of it."
It was growing dusk, and the shadows, fanciful and picturesque; were
deepening around them. Now it showed a solid mass of green ahead, and,
like a sylvan path, the road, converging in the distance, lost itself in
a wall of foliage; now it swerved rapidly, this way and that, in short
curves, as though, like one lost, it sought its way.
A half hour passed. Thornton stopped the car, got down and lighted his
lamps, then started on again. The going had seemed to be growing
steadily worse--the road, as Thornton had said, was little more indeed
than a logging trail through the heart of the woods; and now, deeper in,
with increasing frequency, the tires slipped and skidded on damp, moist
earth that at times approached very nearly to being oozy mud.
Silence for a long while had held between them. It was taking Thornton
all his time now to guide the car, that, negotiating fallen branches
strewn across the way, bad holes and ruts, was crawling at a snail's
pace.
"'Rough but passable'!" he laughed once, clambering back to his seat
after clearing away a dead tree-trunk from in front of them. "But
there's no use trying to go back, as we must be halfway through, and it
can't be any worse ahead than it's been behind. I'd like to tell the
fellow that made this map something!"
And then upon Helena, just why she could not tell, began to steal an
uneasiness that frightened her a little. It had grown suddenly,
intensely dark--quicker than the slow, creeping change of dusk blending
softly into night. Sort of eerie, it seemed--and a wind springing up and
rustling through the branches made strange noises all about. They seemed
to be shut in by a wall of blackness on every hand, except ahead where,
like great streaming eyes of fire, the powerful lamps shot out their
rays making weird color effects in the forest--huge tree-trunks loomed a
dead drab, like mute sentinels, grim and ominous, that barred their way;
now, in the full glare, the foliage took on the softest fairy shade of
green; now, tapering off, heavier in color, it merged into impenetrable
black; and, with the jouncing of the car, the light rays jiggling up and
down gave an unnatural semblance as of moving, animate things before
them, a myriad of them, ever retreating, but ever marshalling their
forces again as though threatening attack, as though to oppose the car's
advance.
What was there to be afraid of? She tried to laugh at herself--it was
perfectly ridiculous. A little bit of rough road--the forest that she
loved around her--even if it was very dark. They would come out
eventually somewhere on the trunk-road to Barton's Mills--that was all
there was to it. Meanwhile, it was quite an experience, and she had
every confidence in Thornton. She glanced at him now. It was too dark to
get more than an indistinct outline of the clean-cut profile, but there
was something inspiriting in the alert, self-possessed, competent poise
of his body as he crouched well forward over the wheel, his eyes never
lifting from the road ahead.
They appeared to be going a little faster now, too--undoubtedly the road
was getting better. What was there to be afraid of? It didn't make it
any more pleasant for Thornton, who was probably reproaching himself
rather bitterly for having been tempted by the "short cut," to have her
sit and mope beside him!
She began to hum an air softly to herself--and then laughingly sang a
bar or two aloud.
Thornton shot a quick, appreciative glance at her and nodded, joining in
the laugh.
"By Jove!" he said approvingly. "That sounds good to me. I was afraid
this beastly stretch, bumping and crawling along in the dark, was making
you miserable."
"Miserable!" exclaimed Helena. "Why, the idea! What is there to be
miserable about? We'll get through after a while--and the road's better
now than it was anyhow, isn't it?"
"Better?"
"You're running faster."
"Oh--er--yes, of course," said Thornton quickly. "I wasn't thinking of
what I said. I--"
He stopped suddenly, as Helena lifted her hand to her face.
"Why, it's beginning to rain," she said.
"Yes; I'm afraid so," he admitted. "I was hoping we would get out of
here before it came."
"Oh!" said Helena.
"And the worst of it is," he added hurriedly, "there's no top to the
car, and you've no wraps."
"Perhaps it won't be anything more than a shower," said Helena
hopefully.
"Perhaps not," he agreed. "Anyway"--he stopped the car, and took off his
coat--"put this on."
"No--please," protested Helena. "You'll need it yourself."
"Not at all," said Thornton cheerily. "And that light dress of yours
would be soaked through in no time."
He held the coat for her, and she slipped it on--and his hand around her
shoulder and neck, as he turned the collar up and buttoned it gently
about her, seemed to linger as it touched her throat, and yet linger
with the most curious diffidence--a sort of reverence. Helena suddenly
wanted to laugh--and, quick in her intuition, as suddenly wanted to cry.
It wasn't much--only a little touch. It didn't mean love, or passion, or
feeling--only that, unconsciously in his respect, he held her up to gaze
upon herself again in that mocking mirror where all was sham.
They started on--Thornton silent once more, busy with the car; Helena,
her mind in riot, with no wish for words.
The rain came steadily in a drizzle. She could feel her dress growing
damp around her knees--and she shivered a little. How strangely
wonderful the rain-beads looked on their background of green leaves
where the lamps played upon them--they seemed to catch and hold and
reflect back the light in a quick, passing procession of clear,
sparkling crystals. But it was raining more heavily now, wasn't it? The
drops were no longer clinging to the leaves, they were spattering dull
and lustrelessly to the ground. And Thornton seemed suddenly to be in
trouble--he was bending down working at something. How jerkily the car
was moving! And now it stopped.
Thornton swung out of his seat to the ground.
"It's all right!" he called out reassuringly. "I'll have it fixed in a
minute."
It was muddy enough now, and the ruts, holding the rain, were regular
wheel-traps. Apart from any other trouble, Thornton did not like the
prospect--and, away from Helena now, his face was serious. He cranked
the engine--no result. He tried it again with equal futility--then,
going to the tool-box, he took out his electric flashlight, and, lifting
the engine hood, began to peer into the machinery. Everything seemed all
right. He tried the crank again--the engine, like some cold, dead thing,
refused to respond.
"What's the matter?" Helena asked him from the car.
"I don't know," Thornton answered lightly. "I haven't found out yet--but
don't you worry, it's nothing serious. I'll have it in a jiffy."
Helena's knowledge of motor cars and engine trouble was not
extensive--she was conversant only with the "fool's mate" of motoring.
"Maybe there's no gasoline," she suggested helpfully.
"Nonsense!" returned Thornton, with a laugh. "I told Babson to see that
the tank was full before he brought the car around--he wouldn't forget a
thing like that."
Thornton, nevertheless, tested the gasoline tank.
"Well?" inquired Helena, breaking the silence that followed.
"There is no--gasoline," said Thornton heavily.
Neither spoke for a moment. There was no sound but the steady drip from
the leaves. Then Helena forced a laugh.
"Isn't it ridiculous!" she said. "That is what one is always making fun
of others for. I--I don't think it's going to stop raining--do you? And
we're miles and miles from anywhere. What _do_ people do when they're
caught like this?"
Thornton did not answer at once. Bitterly reproachful with himself, he
stood there coatless in the rain. If it had been a breakdown, an
accident that was unavoidable, a little of the sting might have gone out
of the situation--but _gasoline_! This--from rank, blatant, glaring,
inexcusable idiocy. Not on his part perhaps--but that did not lessen his
responsibility. They were miles, as she had said, from anywhere--four
miles at least in either direction from the main road, and as many more
probably after that from any farmhouse--he remembered that for half an
hour before they had turned into the "short cut" they had seen no sign
of habitation--and what lay in the other direction, ahead, would in all
probability be the same--they were up in the timber regions, in the
heart of them--she couldn't walk miles in the rain with the roads in a
vile condition, and growing viler every minute as the rain sank in and
the mud grew deeper. And then another thought--a thought that came now,
sharp and quick, engulfing the mere discomfort of a miserable night
spent there in the woods--the clatter of busy, gossiping tongues seemed
already to be dinning their abominable noises in his ears. And that he,
that he--yes, it seemed to sweep upon him in a sudden, overmastering
surge, the realization that the delight and joy of her companionship
through the month that was gone was love that leaped now into fierce,
jealous flame, maddened at a breath that would smirch her in the eyes of
others--that _he_ should be the cause of it! "What _do_ people do when
they're caught like this?"--in their innocence there seemed an
unfathomed depth of irony in her words, but as he unconsciously repeated
them they cleared his brain and brought him suddenly to face the
immediate practical problem that confronted them. What was to be done?
"Shall--shall I get out?" she called to him, a hint of reminder in her
tones that she had spoken to him before and received no answer.
Thornton moved back to the side of the car.
"Miss Vail," he said contritely, "I--I don't know what to say to you for
getting you into this. I--"
"I know," she interrupted quickly, leaning over the side of the car and
placing her hand on his arm. "Don't try to say anything. It's not your
fault--it's not either of our faults. Now tell me what you think the
best thing is to do, and, you'll see, I'll make the best of it--there's
no use being miserable about it."
"You're a game little woman!" he said earnestly, quite unnecessarily
clasping the hand on his arm and wringing it to endorse his verdict.
"And that makes it a lot easier, you know. Well then, we might as well
face the whole truth at one fell swoop. We're up against it"--he laughed
cheerfully--"hard. It's miles to anywhere--we don't know where
'anywhere' is--and of course you can't walk aimlessly around in the mud
and rain."
"N--no," she said thoughtfully. "I suppose there's no sense in that."
"And of course you can't sit out here in the wet all night."
"That sounds comforting--propitious even," commented Helena.
"Quite!" agreed Thornton, laughing again. "Well, you wait here a moment,
and I'll see if I can't knock up some sort of shelter--I used to be
pretty good at that sort of thing."
"And I'll help," announced Helena, preparing to get out.
"By keeping at least your feet dry," he amended. "No--please. Just stay
where you are, Miss Vail. You'll get as much protection here from the
branches overhead as you will anywhere meanwhile, and you'll be more
comfortable."
She watched him as he disappeared into the wood, and after that, like a
flitting will-o'-the-wisp, watched his flashlight moving about amongst
the trees. Then presently the cheery blaze of a fire from where he was
at work sprang up, and she heard the crackle of resinous pine
knots--then a great crashing about, the snapping of branches as he broke
them from larger limbs--and a rapid fire of small talk from him as he
worked.
Helena answered him more or less mechanically--her mind, roving from one
consideration of their plight to another, had caught at a certain
viewpoint and was groping with it. They were stalled more effectively
than any accident to the car could have stalled them--they were there
for the night, there seemed no escape from that. But there was nothing
to be afraid of. She had no fears about passing the night alone with him
here in the woods--why should she? _Why should she!_ She laughed low,
suddenly, bitterly. Why should she--even if he were other than the man
he was, even if he were of the lowest type! Fear--of _that_! A yearning,
so intense as for an instant to leave her weak, swept upon her--a
yearning full of pain, of shame, of remorse, of hopelessness--oh, God,
if only she might have had the _right_ to fear! Then passion seized her
in wild, turbulent unrestraint--hatred for this clean-limbed,
pure-minded man, who flaunted all that his life stood for in her
face--hatred for everybody in this life of hers, for all were good save
her--hatred, miserable, unbridled hatred for herself.
And then it passed, the mood--and she tried to think more calmly, still
answering him as he called from the woods. She had seen a great deal of
Thornton lately--a great deal. He had been kind and thoughtful and
considerate--nothing more. More! What more could there have been? Love!
There was something of mockery in that, wasn't there? Everything she
thought about lately, every way her mind turned seemed to hold something
of mockery now. Of course, Mrs. Thornton's words expressing the wish
that she and Thornton might come together had been often enough with
her--mockingly again!--but Thornton could have known nothing of
that--so, after all, what did that matter? She had snatched at every
opportunity to motor with Thornton despite Doc's protests, protests that
had grown sullen and angry of late--snatched at the opportunities
eagerly, as she would snatch at a breath of air where all else stifled
her--snatched at them because they took her out of herself temporarily,
away from everything, where everything at times seemed to be driving her
mad. Hate Thornton! No, of course, she didn't hate him--she had thought
that a moment ago because--because her brain was--was--oh, she didn't
know--so tired and weary, and she was cold now and quite wet. She didn't
hate him, she even--
"All ready now--house to let furnished"--he was calling out, laughing as
he came thrashing through the undergrowth--"excellent situation, high
altitude, luxuriant pine grove surrounds the property, and--and"--he
had halted beside the car and opened the door--"what else do they say?"
Helena caught his spirit--or, rather, forced herself to do so. It wasn't
quite fair that one of them should do all the pretending.
"Flies," she laughed. "They always speak of flies in Maine."
"None!" said Thornton promptly. "There hasn't been one since the house
was built. Now then, Miss Vail"--he held out his arms.
"Oh, but really, I can walk."
"And I can carry you," he said--and, from the step, gathered her into
his arms.
And then, as she lay there passively at first, she seemed to sense again
that curious diffidence, that gentleness, like the touch upon her throat
of a little while ago, though now he held her in both his arms. How
strong he was--and, oh, how miserably wet--her hand around his shoulder
felt the thin shirt clinging soggily to his arm. Yes; she was glad he
hadn't let her walk--it wasn't far, but she would have had to force her
way continually through bushes that scattered showers from their
dripping leaves, and underfoot she could hear his boots squash through
the mud. And then suddenly it happened--the trees, just a yard or so
from the fire, were thick together, tangled--she bent her head quickly,
instinctively, to avoid a low-hanging branch as he for the same reason
swerved a little--and their cheeks lay close-pressed against each
other's, her hair sweeping his forehead, their lips mingling one
another's breaths. He seemed to stumble--then his arms closed about her
in a quick, fierce pressure, clasping her, straining her to him--relaxed
as suddenly--and then he had set her down inside the shelter he had
built.
Quick her breath was coming now, and across the fire for a moment she
met his eyes. His face was gray, and his hands at his sides were
clenched.
"I'll--I'll get the seat out of the car," he said hoarsely. "It will
help to make things more comfortable." And turning abruptly, he started
back for the road again.
Helena did not move. Mechanically her eyes took in the little hut,
crude, but rainproof at least--branches heaped across two forked limbs
for a roof; the trunk of a big tree for the rear wall; branches thrust
upright into the ground for the sides--the whole a little triangular
shaped affair. The fire blazed in front just within shelter at the
entrance; and beside it was piled quite a little heap of fuel that he
had gathered.
He came back bringing the leather upholstered seat, shook the rain from
it, and dried it with the help of the fire and his handkerchief--then
set it down inside the hut. His face was turned from her; and as he
spoke, breaking an awkward silence, his voice was conscious, hurried.
"I'm not going to be gone a minute more than I can help, Miss Vail. It's
mighty rough accommodation for you, but there's one consolation at
least--you'll be perfectly safe."
Helena seated herself, and held her skirt to the fire.
"Gone!" she said, a little dully. "Where are you going?"
"Why, to get help of course," he told her.
"Help!"--she shook her head. "You don't know where to find any--you only
know for a certainty that there isn't any within miles."
"I know there's a house back on the main road," he said. "I noticed it
as we came along."
"That's seven or eight miles from here," she returned. "And it's raining
harder than ever--mud up to your ankles--it would take you hours to
reach it."
"Possibly two, or two and a half," he said lightly.
"Yes; and another two at least to get back. I won't hear of you doing
any such thing--you are wet through now. It's far better to wait for
daylight and then probably the storm will be over."
"But don't you see, Miss Vail"--his voice was suddenly grave,
masterful--"don't you see that there is no other thing to do?"
"No," said Helena. "I don't see anything of the kind. I won't have you
do anything like that for me--it's not to be thought of."
Thornton stooped, placed a knot upon the fire, straightened up--and
faced her.
"It's awfully good of you to think of me," he said in a low tone; "but,
really, it won't be half as bad as you are picturing it in your mind.
And really"--he hesitated, fumbling for his words--"you see--that
is--what other people might say--your--reputation--"
With a sudden cry, white-faced, Helena was on her feet, staring at him,
her hands clutched at her bosom--a wild, demoniacal, mocking orgy in her
soul. Her reputation! It seemed she wanted to scream out the words--_her
reputation_!
Thornton's face flushed with a quick-sweeping flood of crimson.
"I'm a brute--a brute with a blundering tongue!" he cried miserably.
"You had not thought of that--and I made you. I could have found another
excuse for going if I had only had wit enough. I was a brute once before
to-night, and--" He stopped, and for a moment stood there looking at
her, stood in the firelight, his face white again even in the ruddy
glow--and then he was gone.
Time passed without meaning to Helena. The steady patter of the rain was
on the leaves, the sullen, constant drip of water to the ground, and
now, occasionally, a rush of wind, a heavier downpour. She sat before
the fire, staring into it, her elbows on her knees, her face held
tightly in her hands, the brown hair, wet and wayward now, about her
temples. Once she moved, once her eyes changed their direction--to fix
upon her sleeve in a strange, questioning surprise.
"I let him go without his coat," she said.
--XVIII--
THE BOOMERANG
It was early afternoon, as Madison, emerging from the wagon track, and
walking slowly, started across the lawn toward the Patriarch's cottage.
He was in a mood that he made no attempt to define--except that it
wasn't a very pleasant mood. Before Thornton had returned to Needley it
had been bad enough, after that, with his infernal car, it had
been--hell.
Madison's fists clenched, and his gray eyes glinted angrily. His hands
had been tied like a baby's--like a damned infant's! Helena was getting
away from him further every day, and he couldn't stop it--without
stopping the game! He couldn't tell Thornton that Helena belonged to
him--had belonged to him! He couldn't even evidence an interest in what
was going on. He had to put on a front, a suave, cordial, dignified
front before Thornton--while he itched to smash the other's face to
pulp! Hell--that's what it was--pure, unadulterated hell! He couldn't
get near Helena alone with a ten-foot pole, morning, noon or night--she
had taken good care of that. And he wanted Helena--he _wanted_ her! It
was an obsession with him now--at times driving him half crazy,--and it
didn't help any that he saw her grow more glorious, more beautiful
every day! Of course she knew she had him--had him where she knew he
couldn't do a thing--where she could laugh at him--go the limit with
Thornton if she liked. But, curse it, it wasn't only Thornton--that was
what he could not understand--she had begun to keep away from him before
ever Thornton had come back.
Madison was near the porch now, and, raising his eyes, noted a
supplicant going into the shrine-room--a woman, richly dressed but in
widow's weeds, who walked feebly. The game went on by itself, once
started--there were half a hundred more about the lawn! Like a snowball
rolling down hill, as he had put it at the Roost. The Roost! If he only
had Helena back there for about a minute there'd be an end of this!
She'd go a little too far one of these days--a little too far--it was
pretty near far enough now--and then there'd be a showdown, game or no
game, and somebody would get hurt in the smash, and--
He lifted his eyes again, as some one came hurrying through the cottage
door. It was the Flopper. And then to his surprise, he found himself
being pushed unceremoniously from the porch and pulled excitedly behind
the trellis.
"What's the matter with you!" he demanded angrily. "Are you crazy!"
"T'ank de Lord youse have showed up!" gasped the Flopper. "Say, honest,
I can't do nothin' wid him--he's got me near bughouse."
"Who?"--Madison scowled irritably.
"De Patriarch, of course. He's noivous, an' gettin' worse all de time.
He won't eat an' he won't keep still. He wants Helena, an' he keeps
writin' her name on de slate--he's got me going fer fair."
"Well, I'm not Helena!" growled Madison. "Why doesn't she go to him?"
"Now wouldn't dat sting youse!" ejaculated the Flopper. "How's she goin'
to him when she ain't here?"
"Not here?" repeated Madison sharply. "Where is she?"
The Flopper looked down his nose.
"I dunno," said he.
Madison stared at him for a moment--then he reached out and caught the
Flopper's arm in a sudden and far from gentle grip.
"Out with it!" he snapped.
"I dunno where she is," said the Flopper, with some reluctance. "She
ain't back yet, dat's all."
"Back from where?"--Madison's grip tightened.
The Flopper blinked.
"Aw, wot's de use!" he blurted out, as though his mind, suddenly made
up, brought him unbounded relief. "Youse'll find it out anyhow. Say, she
went off wid Thornton in de buzz-wagon yesterday, an' I put de Patriarch
to bed last night 'cause she wasn't back, an' dat's wot's de matter wid
him, she ain't showed up since an' he's near off his chump, an'--fer
God's sake let go my arm, Doc, youse're breakin' it!"
A sort of cold frenzy seemed to seize Madison. He was perfectly calm, he
felt himself perfectly calm and composed. Off all night with
Thornton--eh? Funny, wasn't it? She'd gone pretty far at last--gone the
limit.
"Why didn't you send me word this morning?"--was that his own voice
speaking? Well, he wouldn't have recognized it--but he was perfectly
calm nevertheless.
"Fer God's sake let go my arm," whimpered the Flopper. "I--I ain't no
squealer, dat's why."
Madison's arm fell away--to his side. He felt a whiteness creeping to
his face and lips, felt his lips twitch, felt the fingers of his hands
curl in and the nails begin to press into the palms.
"Mabbe," suggested the Flopper timidly, "mabbe dere was an accident."
Madison made no answer.
The Flopper shifted from foot to foot and licked his lips, stealing
frightened glances at Madison's face.
"Wot--wot'll I do wid de Patriarch?" he stammered out miserably.
And then Madison smiled at him--not happily, but eloquently.
"Swipe me!" mumbled the Flopper, as he backed out from the trellis. "Dis
love game's fierce--an' mabbe _I_ don't know! 'Sposin' she'd been
Mamie an' me the Doc--'sposin' it had!" He gulped hastily. "Swipe me!"
said the Flopper with emotion.
Madison, motionless, watched the Flopper disappear. He wasn't quite so
calm now, not so cool and collected and composed. He must go somewhere
and think this out--somewhere where it would be quiet and he wouldn't be
disturbed.
A step sounded on the path--Madison looked through the trellis. A man,
with yellow, unhealthy skin and sunken cheeks, his head bowed, was
passing in through the porch. It caught Madison with fierce, exquisite
irony. Why not go there himself if he wanted quiet--the shrine-room--the
place of meditation! Well, he wanted to _meditate_! He laughed
jarringly. The shrine-room--for him! Great! Immense! Magnificent! Why
not? That's what he had created it for, wasn't it--to meditate in!
He stepped inside. The woman, whom he had seen enter a short while
before, was sitting in a sort of rigid, strained attitude in the far
corner; the man, who had just preceded him, had taken the chair by the
fireplace--they were the only occupants of the room. There was no sound
save his own footsteps--neither of the others looked at him. There was
quiet, a profound stillness--and the softened light from the shuttered
window fell mellow all about, fell like a benediction upon the
simplicity of the few plain articles that the room contained--the round
rag mats upon the white-scrubbed floor; the hickory chairs, severe,
uncushioned; the table, with its little japanned box and book.
Madison's eyes fixed upon the japanned box, as he leaned now, arms
folded, against the wall--a jewel, even in the subdued light, glowed
crimson-warm where it nested on a crumpled bed of bank-notes--a ruby
ring--the last contribution--it must have been the woman who had placed
it there. Madison glanced at her involuntarily--but his thoughts were
far away again in a moment.
Anger and a blind rage of jealousy were gripping him now. _Accident!_
The thought only fanned his fury. Accident! Yes; it was likely--as an
excuse! There would have been an accident all right--leave that to them!
Thornton perhaps wasn't the stamp of man to seek an adventure of that
kind deliberately--perhaps he wasn't--and perhaps he was--you never
could tell--but what difference did that make! _Helena was that kind of
a woman_--though he'd always thought her true to him since he'd known
her--and Thornton, whatever kind of a man he was, wouldn't run away from
her arms, would he?
The red glow from the ruby ring had vanished--the man had risen from his
seat and was placing something in the box on top of the ring--Madison's
mind subconsciously absorbed the fact that it was a little sheaf of
yellow-backed bills. And now the man bent to the table and was writing
in the book.
Yellow-backs and rubies! Rubies and yellowbacks! Madison's lips thinned
and curled downward at the corners. Oh, it was coming all right, money,
jewels, pelf, rolling in merrily every day, there wasn't any stopping
it, but he was paying for it, and paying for it at a price he didn't
like--Helena. Helena! She wanted Thornton, did she--with his money!
Wanted to dangle a millionaire on her string--eh? She'd throw him
over--would she! And she thought she had him where he couldn't lift a
finger to stop it--just sit back and grin like a poor, sick fool!
The red crept up the knotted cords of Madison's neck, suffused the set
jaws, and, as though suddenly liberated to run its course where it
would, swept in a tide over cheeks and temples.
He couldn't do a thing--_couldn't he!_ Well, he'd see the game in
Gehenna before Thornton or any other man got her away from him. She
belonged to him--to _him!_ And he'd have her, hold her, own her--she was
his--_his!_ And he'd settle with Thornton too, by Heaven!
A laugh, low, unpleasant, purled to his lips--and he checked it with a
sort of strange mechanical realization that he must not laugh aloud. His
eyes swept the room--the man had returned to his seat, the woman had not
moved, both were silent, motionless--that ghastly, hallowed,
sanctimonious hush--that subdued, damnable light--meditation!
"For God's sake let me get out of here," he muttered, "or I'll go mad."
He turned--and stopped. Came a cry spontaneously from the man and the
woman--they were on their feet--no, on their knees. The doorway at the
further end of the room was framing a majestic figure, tall and
stately--and a sun-gleam struggling suddenly through the lattice seemed
to leap in a golden ray to caress in homage the snow-white hair, the
silver beard that fell upon the breast, the saintly face of the
Patriarch.
Then into the room advanced the Patriarch, and his hands were
outstretched before him, and he moved them a little to and fro--and the
gesture, the poise, the mien, as, touching nothing he seemed to feel his
way through space itself, was as one invoking a blessing of peace
ineffable.
Spellbound, Madison watched. Upon the face was a yearning that saddened
it, and, saddening, glorified it; the head was slightly turned as though
to listen--while slowly, with measured, certain tread, as though indeed
he had no need for eyes, the Patriarch circled the table and passed on
down the room. The man and the woman reached out and touched him
reverently, and drew back reverently to let him pass, and, rising from
their knees, followed him through the door and out onto the porch.
The room was empty. Madison stared at the doorway. Upon him fell a
sudden awe--it was as though a vision, an ethereal presence, some
strange embodiment of power, had been and gone--and yet still remained.
And now from without there came a sound like a distant murmur. It rose
and swelled, and began to roll in its volume, and then, like the clarion
sound of trumpets, voices burst into glad acclaim.
"The Patriarch! The Patriarch! The Patriarch!"
From the little hallway came the Flopper, running--and he stopped and
gaped at Madison.
"I left him in his room fer a minute," he gasped. "He's--he's lookin'
fer Helena."
And then Madison shook himself together--and smiled ironically. And at
the smile the Flopper hurried on.
Madison stepped out onto the porch. Helena! Helena! Within him seemed to
burn a rage of hell; but it seemed, too, most strangely that for the
moment this rage was held in abeyance, that something temporarily
supplanted it--this scene before him.
Onward across the lawn moved the Patriarch, and the Flopper had joined
him now; but the Patriarch, unheeding, turning neither to the right nor
to the left, his arms still extended before him, kept on. And the people
cried aloud:
"He is coming--he is coming! The Patriarch! The Patriarch!"
Madison moved on--out upon the lawn himself.
From everywhere, from every scattered spot where they had been, men and
women ran and limped and dragged themselves along, all converging on
one point--the Patriarch.
Madison, in the midst of them now, hurried--for it was plainly evident
that the Flopper's control over the Patriarch was gone. He reached the
Patriarch and touched the other's arm--and at the touch the Patriarch
halted instantly, his hand went out and lay upon Madison's sleeve in
recognition, and he turned his face, and it was smiling and there was
relief upon it--and confidence and trust, as, suffering himself to be
guided, they started back toward the cottage.
And then upon Madison came again that sense of awe, but now intensified.
From every hand tear-stained faces greeted him, white faces, faces full
of sorrow and suffering through which struggled hope--hope--hope. They
flung themselves before the Patriarch--yet never blocked the way. They
cried, they wept, they prayed--and some were silent. It seemed that
souls, naked, stripped, bare, held themselves up to his gaze. Men,
prostrate on stretchers, tried to rise and stagger nearer--and fell.
Friends, where there were friends to help, tugged and dragged
desperately at cots--and from the cots in piteous, agonized appeal the
helpless cried out to the Patriarch to come to them. All of human agony
and fear and hope and despair and terror seemed loosed in a mad and
swirling vortex. And ever the cries arose, and ever around them, giving
way, closing in again, pressed the soul-rent throng.
And presently to Madison it seemed as though he had awakened from some
terrifying dream, as, in the Patriarch's room again, he swept away a
bead of sweat from his forehead, and stood and looked at the Patriarch
and the Flopper.
The Flopper licked his lips, and pulled the Patriarch's chair
forward--but his hands trembled violently.
"It's been gettin' me, Doc," he whispered, "an' I can't help it. It's
been gettin' into me all de time. Say, I wisht it was over. Honest to
God I do! Dis--dis makes me queer. Say, de Patriarch's got me,
Doc--an'--an'--say--dere's been somethin' goin' on inside me dat's got
me hard."
Madison did not answer--but he started suddenly--and as suddenly
stepped to the window and looked out. Over the cries, the wailings, the
confused medley of voices, growing lower now, subsiding, there had come
the throb of a motor car.
Madison's eyes narrowed--_that_ was supreme again. A car was coming to a
stop before the porch--Thornton was helping Helena to alight.
Madison turned and caught the Flopper's arm in a fierce, imperative
grasp.
"You keep your mouth shut--do you hear?" he flung out, clipping off his
words. "You haven't seen me to-day--understand!" And, dropping the
Flopper's arm, he stepped quickly across the little hall to Helena's
door, opened it, went in--and closed the door behind him.
And the Flopper, staring, licked his lips again.
"Swipe me!" he croaked hoarsely. "Pipe de eyes on de Doc! Dere'll be
somethin' doin' now!"
--XIX--
THE SANCTUARY OF DARKNESS
There was a grim, merciless smile on Madison's lips; and a whiteness in
his face windowed the passion that seethed within him. He stood
motionless, listening, in Helena's room. He heard the automobile going
away again; then he heard Helena's light step in the hallway
without--and the smile died as his lips thinned.
But she did not come in--instead, he heard her go into the Patriarch's
room, heard her talking to the Patriarch, and bid the Flopper go to the
kitchen and make her some tea. Then the Flopper's step sounded, passing
down to the rear, of the cottage.
The minutes passed--then that light footfall again. The door of the room
swung suddenly wide--and closed--there was a cry--and Helena, wide-eyed,
the red of her cheeks fading away, leaned heavily back against the door.
Neither spoke. Madison, in the center of the room, did not move. The
smile came back to his lips.
Helena's great brown eyes met the gray ones, read the ugly glint,
dropped, raised again--and held the gray ones steadily.
Madison gave a short laugh--that was like a curse. His hands at his
sides knotted into lumps.
Then Madison spoke.
"Why don't you say, 'you!--_you_!'--and scream it out and clutch at your
bosom the way they do in story books!" he flung out raucously. "Why
don't you do your little stunt--go on, you're on for the turn--you can
put anything over me, I'm only a complacent, blind-eyed fool! Anything
goes! Why don't you start your act?"
"You don't know what you are saying," she said in a low voice. "If
there's anything you want to talk about, we'd better wait until you're
cooler."
"Oh, hell!" he roared, his passion full to the surface now. "Cut out the
bunk--cut it out! _Anything_! No, it isn't much of anything--for
you--out all night with Thornton. Do you think I'm going to stand for
it! Do you think I'm going to sit and suck my thumb and _share_ you,
and--"
"You lie!" She was away from the door now, close before him, her breath
coming fast, white to the lips, and in a frenzy her little fists
pummelled upon him. "It's a lie--a lie--a lie! It's a lie--and you know
it!"
He pushed her roughly from him.
"It is, eh?"--his words came in a sort of wild laugh. "And I know it--do
I? Why should I know it? What do you think you are? Say, you'd think you
were trying to kid yourself into believing you're the real thing--the
real, sweet, shy, modest Miss Vail. Cut it out! You're name's
Smith--maybe! And it's my money that's keeping you, and you belong to
me--do you understand?"
She stood swaying a little, her hands still tightly clenched, breathing
through half parted lips in short, quick, jerky inhalations like dry
sobs.
"It's true," she faltered suddenly--and suddenly buried her face in her
hands. And then she looked up again, and the brown eyes in their depths
held an anger and a shame. "It's true--I was--was--what you say. But
now"--her voice hurried on, an eagerness, a strange earnestness in
it--"you must believe me--you must. I'll make you--I must make you."
"Oh, don't hurt yourself trying to do it!" jeered Madison. "We're
talking plain now. I'm not taking into account how you feel about it
--don't you fool yourself for a minute. The sanctity of my home hasn't
been ruined--because it couldn't be! Get that? Thornton don't get
you--not for _keeps_! But you and he don't make a monkey of me again. Do
you understand--say, do you get that? You're _mine_--whether you like
it or not--whether you'd rather have Thornton or not. But I'll fix you
both for this--I'm no angel with a cherub's smile! I'll take it out of
Thornton till the laugh he's got now fades to a fare-thee-well; and I'll
put you where there aren't any strings tying me up the way there are
here. Do you understand!" His voice rose suddenly, and for a moment he
seemed to lose all control of himself as he reached for her and caught
her shoulder. "I love you," he flashed out between his teeth. "I love
you--that's what's the matter with me! And you know that--you know
you've got me there--and you'd play the fool with me, would you!" He
dropped his hands--and laughed a short, savage bark--and stepped back
and stared at her.
"Will you listen?"--she was twisting her hands, her head was drooped,
the long lashes veiled her eyes, her lips were quivering. "Will you
listen?" she said again, fighting to steady her voice. "It was an
accident."
"I saw the machine when you drove up--it was a wreck!" snapped Madison
sarcastically.
"We ran out of gasoline," she said quietly.
And then Madison laughed--fiercely--in his derision.
"Oh, keep on!" he rasped. "I told you I was only a blind fool that you
could put anything over on! That accounts for it, of course--a breakdown
isn't so easy to get away with. Gasoline!"
"We were miles from anywhere," she went on. "We had taken what we
thought was a short cut. Mr. Thornton built a shelter for me in the
woods, and went to--to--"
He caught up her hesitation like a flash.
"Fake the lines, Helena, if you haven't had enough rehearsals," he
suggested ironically. "Anything goes--with me."
And now a tinge of color came to Helena's cheeks, and the brown eyes
raised, and flashed, and dropped.
"He went to try and find help," she said. "He was out all night in the
storm. I do not know how far he must have walked. I know the nearest
house was five or six miles away--and there was no horse there--the man
had driven to some town that morning. It was almost daylight before Mr.
Thornton at last came back with a team. We were forty miles from
here--we sent the team to the nearest town for gasoline and then motored
back." She stopped--and then, with a catch in her voice: "He--he was
very good to me."
"Good to me"--the words seemed to stab at Madison, seemed to ring in his
ears and goad him with a fiercer jealousy--and her story of the night,
what she had been saying, save those words, was as nothing, meant
nothing, was swept from his consciousness--and only she, standing there
before him, glorious, maddening in her beauty, remained. Soul, mind and
body leaped into fiery passion--she was his, and his she always would
be--those eyes, those lips, the white throat, those perfect arms to
cling about his neck--and all of heaven and hell and earth were naught
beside her.
"I love you!"--his face was white, his words fierce-breathed, almost
incoherent--and he leaned toward her with a sudden, uncontrollable
movement, his arms sweeping out to clasp her. "I love you, Helena--I
love you. Do you understand--it's _you_! You--I love you!"
"You _love_ me!"--she retreated from him, but her head was raised now,
and her voice rang with a bitterness cold as the touch of death. "Love!
What do you know of _love_! We talk plain, you say. Love--love for me!
Passion, vice, lust, sin--and, oh, my God, degradation and misery and
shame--love! Love! That is _your_ love!"
He stood for a moment and stared at her again--and her face was as
pallid ivory. And something seemed to daze him, and he brushed his hand
across his eyes--the logic was faulty, torn and pitiful, and he groped
after the flaw.
"It's--it's your love as well as mine," he said in a stumbling way--then
his brain flashed quick into action. "My love--what other love have
_you_ known but that?" he cried. "It's _our_ love--the love we have
known together--and we're going back to it--see? I've had enough of
this. You pack your trunks--and pack them quick! We're going to beat it
out of here! We're going back to our--love. We're going back where I
don't have to sit around like a puling fool and watch Thornton chuck you
under the chin--we're going where he'll want a tombstone if he ever
shows his face there. You thought the game would hold me to the last
jackpot--did you? Well, I've got enough--and there's no game big enough
to make me stand for this. That looks like love--doesn't it?" He burst
again into a sudden, mirthless laugh--and once again swept his
hand across his eyes. "We're going to beat it out of here
now--to-night--to-morrow morning."
But now she had drawn further away from him--and there was a frightened
look in her eyes, and her lips quivered pitifully.
"No--I can't--I can't," she cried out. "No, no--I can't--I can't go back
to _that_."
"That! That--is love," he said wildly. "The only love you know. What
more do you want? There's loot enough now, and--ha, ha!--that little
contribution of Thornton's, to give you all the money you want. Love,
Helena--you and I--the old love--you and I together again, Helena. I
tell you I love you--do you hear? I love you--and I'll have you--I love
you! What do you know, what do you care about any other kind of love!"
She looked at him, misery and fear still in her eyes, and her slight
figure seemed to droop, and her hands hung heavy, listless, at her
sides.
"I care"--the words came in a strange mechanical way from her lips. "Oh,
I care. I can't--I won't go back to that. And I know--I know now. I have
learned what love is."
Quick over Madison's face surged the red in an unstemmed tide--volcanic
within him his love that he knew now possessed his very soul, jealousy
that, blinding, robbed him of his senses, roused him to frenzy.
"Oh, you've learned what love is, have you--_with him_!" he cried--and
sprang for her and snatched her into his arms. "And you won't come, eh?
Well, I've learned what love is too in the last month--and if I can't
get it one way, I'll get it another"--he was raining mad kisses upon her
face, her hair, her eyes--"I love you, I tell you--I love you!"
With a cry she tried to struggle from him--and then fought and struck at
him, beating upon his face with her fists. Fiercer, closer he held
her--around the little room, staggering this way and that, they circled.
He kissed her, laughing hoarsely like a madman, laughing at the blows,
beside himself, not knowing what he did--mad--mad--mad. He kissed her,
kissed the white throat where the dress was torn now at the neck;
imprisoned a little fist that struck at him and kissed the quivering
knuckles; kissed the wealth of glorious, burnished-copper hair that,
unloosened, fell about her, kissed it and buried his face in its rare
fragrance. And then--and then his arms were empty--and he was staring at
the calm, majestic figure of the Patriarch--and Helena was crouched upon
the floor, and, sobbing, was clinging with arms entwined around the old
man's knees.
And so for a little while Madison stood and stared--what had brought the
Patriarch there--the Patriarch who could neither see nor hear nor
speak--what had brought him from his own room across the hall! And
Madison stared, and his hands crept to his temples and pressed upon
them--weak he seemed as from some paroxysm of madness that had passed
over him. The sunlight streaming through the window sheened the
luxuriant mass of hair that falling over shoulders and to the waist
seemed alone to cloak the little figure in its crouched position--the
little figure that shook so convulsively with sobs--the little figure
that clung so desperately at the feet of this god-like, regal man, whose
beard was silver, whose hair was hoary white, upon whose face, marring
none its strength or self-possession, was a troubled, anxious,
questioning look.
Strange! Strange! Madison's hands fell to his sides. The Patriarch's
eyes were turned full upon him, wavering not so much as by the fraction
of an inch--full upon him. And then, as into some holy sanctuary,
fending her from harm and danger, the Patriarch turned a little to
interpose himself before Madison, and, raising Helena, held her in his
arms, her head against his bosom--and one hand lay upon her head and
stroked it tenderly. But upon Madison was still turned those sightless
eyes, that noble face, serene, commanding even in its perturbation, even
in its alert and searching look.
Madison stirred now--stirred uneasily--while the silence held. There was
a solemnity in the silence that seemed to creep upon and pervade the
room--a sense of a vast something that was the antithesis of turmoil,
passion, strife, that seemed to radiate from the saintly figure whose
lips were mute, whose ears heard no sound, whose eyes saw no sight. And
upon Madison it fell potent, masterful, and passion fled, and in its
place came a strange, groping response within him, a revulsion, a
penitence--and he bowed his head.
And then Helena spoke--but her head was turned away from him, hidden on
the Patriarch's breast.
"Once," she said, and her words were like broken whispers, for she was
sobbing still, "once, long, long ago, when I was a little girl, I read
the story of Mary Magdalen. I had almost forgotten it, it was so long
ago, but it has come back to me, and--and it is a glad story--at the
end."
She stopped--and Madison raised his head, and his face was strained as
with some sudden wonder as he looked at her.
"It is a glad story," she said presently. "It--it is my story."
"You mean"--Madison's voice was hoarse--"you mean that you've
turned--_straight_!"
"They love me here," she said. "They trust me and they think me good--as
they are. All think me that--the little children and this dear man
here--and for a little while, since I have been here, I have lived like
that. They made me believe that it was true--_true_. And there was shame
and agony--and hope. It seemed they could not all be wrong, and I have
asked and prayed that I might make it true always--and--and forgiveness
for what I was."
"You mean," he said again hoarsely, and he stepped toward her now, "you
mean that you are--_straight_!"
She did not answer--only now she turned her face toward him and lifted
up her head.
And for a long minute Madison gazed into the tear-splashed eyes, deep,
brave in chastened wistfulness, gazed--and like a man stunned walked
from the room, the cottage, and out across the lawn.
--XX--
TO THE VICTOR ARE THE SPOILS
Many were still about the lawn as he left the cottage--they were all
about him, those sick, half frantic creatures--and still they made
noises; still some of them cried and sobbed; still in their waning
paroxysms they moved hither and thither. They appealed to some numbed,
dormant sense in Madison, in a subconscious way, as things to be
avoided. And so, almost mechanically, he took the little path that,
striking off at right angles to the wagon track where it joined the
Patriarch's lawn, came out again upon the main road at the further end
of the village.
And, as he walked, like tidal waves on-rushing, emotions, utterly at
variance one with another, hurled themselves upon him, and he was swept
from his mental balance, tossed here and there, rolled gasping,
strangling in the chaos and turmoil of the waters, as it were, and,
rising, was hurled back again.
White as death itself was Madison's face; and at times his fingers with
a twitching movement curled into clenched fists, at times his open palms
sought his temples in a queer wriggling way and pressed upon them.
Doubt, anger, fear, a rage unhallowed--in cycles--buffeted him until
his brain reeled, and he was as a man distraught.
It began at the beginning, that cycle, and dragged him along--and left
him like one swooning, tottering, upon the edge of a precipice. And then
it began over again.
And it began always with a picture of the Roost that night--the vicious,
unkempt, ragged figure of the Flopper--the sickly, thin, greedy face of
Pale Face Harry, the drug fiend, winching a little as he plunged the
needle into his flesh--the easy, unprincipled gaiety and eagerness of
Helena for the new path of crime--crime--crime--the Roost exuded
crime--filth--immorality--typified them, framed them well as they had
sat there, the four of them, while that bruised-nosed bouncer had
brought them drink on his rattling tin tray. And then his own
self-satisfied, smug, complacent egotism at his own cleverness, his
unbounded confidence in his own ability to pull off the game, and--
Well, he had pulled it off--he'd won it--won it--won it--everybody had
fallen for it--the boobs had been plentiful--the harvest rich. What was
the matter with him! He'd won--was winning every time the clock ticked.
Somebody back there was probably throwing good hard coin at him this
minute--the damned fool! Madison threw back his head to laugh in
derision, for there was mocking, contemptuous laughter in his soul--but
the laugh died still-born upon his lips.
It was fear now--fear--staggering, appalling him. He was facing
something--_something_--his brain did not seem to define it--something
that was cold and stern and immutable, that was omnipotent, that
embodied awe--a condemnation unalterable, unchangeable, before which he
shrank back with his soul afraid. Before him seemed to unfold itself the
wagon track, the road to the Patriarch's cottage; and he was there
again, and whispering lips were around him, and men and women and
children were there, and in front of them, leading them, slithered that
twisted, misshapen, formless thing--and now they were upon the lawn, and
about him everywhere, everywhere, everywhere was a sea of white faces
out of which the eyes burned like living coals. What power was this
that, loosed, had stricken them to palsied, moaning things!
Madison shivered a little--and a sweat bead oozed out and glistened upon
his forehead. Hark--what was that! Clarionlike, clear as the chimes of a
silver bell, rang now that childish voice--rang out, and rang out
again--and the crutch was gone--and the lame boy ran, ran--_ran_! And
who was that, that stood before him now--that golden-haired woman beside
an empty wheel-chair, whose face was radiant, who cried aloud that she
was _cured_! And who were these others of later days, this motley crowd
of old and young, that passed before him in procession, that cried out
the same words that golden-haired woman by the wheel-chair had
cried--and cried out: "Faith! Faith! Faith!"
Madison swept the sweat bead from his forehead with a trembling hand. It
was a lie--a lie--a lie! He had taught them to say that--but it was all
bunk--and all were fools! He could laugh at them, jeer at them, mock at
them, deride them--they were his playthings--and faith was his
plaything--and he could laugh at them all!
And again he raised his head to laugh; and again the laugh was choked in
his throat, still-born--_Helena was straight_! To his temples went his
twitching hands. Anger raged upon him--and died in fear. Anger, for the
instant maddening him, that he should lose her; rage in ungovernable
fury that the game, his plans, the hoard accumulated, was bursting like
a bubble before his eyes--died in fear. No, no; he had not meant to
laugh or mock--no, no; not that, not that! What was this loosed titanic
power that had done these things--that had brought this change in
Helena; that had brought a change in the Flopper, transforming the
miserable, pitiful, whining thief into a man reaching out for decent
things; that had wrought at least a physical metamorphosis in Pale Face
Harry--that had transfigured those three who, in their ugly, abandoned
natures then, had hung like vultures on his words in the Roost that
night! What was this power that he was trifling with, that brought him
now this cold, dead fear before which he quailed! What was this
_something_ that in his temerity he had dared invoke--that rose now
engulfing him, a puny maggot--that snatched him up and flung him
headlong, shackled, before this nebulous, terrifying tribunal, where out
of nothingness, out of a void, the calm, majestic features of the
Patriarch took form and changed, and changed, and kept changing, and
grew implacable, set with the stamp of doom. What was it--in God's name,
what was it brought these sweat beads bursting to his forehead! Was he
going mad--was he mad already!
And then the cycle again--doubt, anger, fear--until his brain,
exhausted, seemed to refuse its functions; and it was as though, heavy,
oppressing, a dense fog shut down upon his mind and enveloped it; and
now he walked as a man in great haste, hurrying, and now his pace was
slow, uncertain.
And so he went on, following the little path that bordered the woods on
one hand and the fields on the other; went on until he neared the
village--and then he stopped suddenly, and turned about. Some one had
called his name.
From the field, a man climbed over the fence and came toward him. The
man's face was tanned and rugged, his form erect, and the sleeves rolled
back above the elbows displayed browned and muscular forearms. Madison
stared at the man apathetically. This was the farm of course where Pale
Face Harry boarded, and this was Pale Face Harry--but--
"Doc," said Pale Face Harry, and he shuffled his feet and looked down,
"Doc, I got something I've been wanting to say to you for a week."
Madison still gazed at him apathetically--Pale Face Harry for the moment
was as some unwarrantable apparition suddenly appearing before him.
Pale Face Harry raised his eyes, lowered them, kicked at a clod of earth
with the toe of his boot--and raised his eyes again.
"Say," he blurted out, "I'm through, Doc. I'm--I'm going to quit."
Into Madison's stumbling brain leaped and took form but one idea--and he
jumped forward, reaching savagely for Pale Face Harry's throat.
"You'd throw me, would you! You'd throw the game--would you!" he
snarled, as his fingers locked.
Pale Face Harry, twisting, wriggled free--and retreated a step.
"No; I ain't!" he gasped--and then his sentences came tumbling out upon
each other jerkily, as though he were trying to compress what he had to
say into as few words as possible and as quickly as he could, while he
watched Madison warily. "I ain't throwing nothing. I just want to quit
myself. I keeps my mouth shut--see? I don't want none of the share
what's coming. Say, I've got more'n a hundred times that out of it. Look
at me, Doc! Say, I'm like a horse. That's the Patriarch and living
honest. Say, in all me life I never knew what it was before till we
comes here. If I took the dough what's coming I'd go back to the old
hell, and I'd go down and out again. Say, it ain't worth it, there's
nothing in it. I ain't throwing you, Doc--I just blows out of here with
me trap closed. Say, look at me, Doc--don't you get what I mean?"
And then Madison burst into a peal of wild, strange laughter; and, as
though no man stood before him, started on along the path--and Pale Face
Harry sidled out of his way and stared after him.
"For--for God's sake, Doc," he called out, stammering, "what's the
matter?"
But Madison made no answer. He heard Pale Face Harry call out behind
him; in a subconscious, mazed way, he sensed the other following him,
gropingly, hesitantly, for a few yards, then hold back--and finally
stop.
The path swerved. Madison went on--blindly, mechanically, as though,
once set in motion, he must go on. Some ghastly, unnatural thing was
clogging his brain; not only in a mental way, but clogging it until
there was physical hurt and pain, an awful tightness--something--if he
could only reach it with his fingers and claw it away! There was black
madness here, and a pain insufferable--a damnable impotence, robbing him
of even the power, the faculty to think or reason, or to make himself
understand in any logical degree the meaning or the cause of this thing
that sent his brain swirling sick.
He halted. His lips were working; the muscles of his face quivered. And
suddenly, snatching his hat from his head, he flung himself on the
ground and plunged face and head, feverishly, tigerishly, into the
little brook that ran beside the path. Again and again he buried his
face in the cold, clear, refreshing water--and then, still on hands and
knees, he raised his head to listen. Softly, full of a great peace, full
of a strange sweetness that knew no discord, no strife, the notes of the
chapel bell floated across the fields. Evening had come; the day's work
was done--it was benediction time. It was the call of the faithful--the
Angelus of those who believed.
It came, the revulsion, to Madison in a choked sob--and he stood up. The
day's work was done--here. Here they would go in quiet thankfulness each
from the farm to his little cottage, each to his simple, wholesome meal,
each to the twilight hours of gentle communion as they talked to one
another from their doorways, each to his bed and his rest, tranquil in
the love of God and of man.
Madison flung back the dripping hair from his forehead. Strange, the
contrast that, unbidden, came insistently to him now: The liquid notes
of the bell wafted sweetly on the evening breeze; the howling, jangling
turmoil of the city slums, of his familiar haunts where, in mad chaos,
reigned the hawkers' cries, the thunder of the elevated trains, the
noisome traffic of the street, the raucous clang of trolley bells--the
sweet perfume of the, fields, the smell of trees, of earth, of all of
God's pure things untouched, unsoiled; the stench of Chatham Square,
the reek of whiskey spilled with the breath of obscene, filthy lips--the
little village that he could see beyond him, the tiny curls of blue
smoke rising like the incense from an altar over the roofs of houses
whose doors had no locks, whose windows were not barred, where plain,
homely folk, unsullied, lived at peace with God and the world; the
closed areaways of the Bowery, the creaking stairs, the dim hallways
leading to dens of vileness and iniquity where, safe by bolts from
interruption, crime bred its offsprings and vice was hatched. What did
it mean!
And so he stood there for a little space; then presently he started
forward again; and presently he reached the village street, walked down
its length, greeted from every doorway with hearty, unaffected
sincerity, and after a little while he came to the hotel, and to his
room--and there he locked the door.
Helena was straight--the words were repeating themselves over and over
in his brain. He began to pace up and down the room. The words seemed to
take form and shape in fiery red letters, being scrawled by invisible
hands upon the walls--_Helena was straight_. Straight with Thornton,
straight with any man--straight with her Maker. He knew that now--he had
read it as a soul-truth in those brave, deep, tear-dimmed eyes. And he
had _lost_ her! It seemed as though he had become suddenly conscious
that he was enduring some agony that was never to know an end, that
from now on must be with him always. He had lost her--lost Helena.
From his pocket he drew out his keys and opened his trunks, and took out
the trays and spread them about. There were very many trays, they nested
one upon the other--and they were exceedingly ingenious
trays--false-bottomed every one. And now he opened these false-bottoms,
every one of them, and stood and looked at them. The surest, safest,
biggest game he had ever played, the game that had known no single
hitch, the game that had brought no whispering breath of suspicion flung
its tribute in his face. Money that he had never tried to count, notes
of all denominations, large and small, glutted the receptacles--jewels
in necklaces, in rings, in pendants, in brooches, in bracelets,
diamonds, rubies, emeralds, winked at him and scintillated and glowed
and were afire.
And he stood and looked upon them. What was it the Flopper had said when
they had brought the Patriarch back--he did not remember. What was it
that Pale Face Harry had said a little while ago--he did not remember.
These were jewels here and money--wealth--and he had won the greatest
game that was ever played--only he had lost her--lost Helena. And he
stood and looked upon them--and slowly there crept to his face a
white-lipped smile.
"I'm beat!" he whispered hoarsely. "Beat--by the game--I won."
--XXI--
FACE VALUE
It was evening of the same day--and there came a knock at the outer door
of the cottage porch.
The Flopper answered it, and came back to the Patriarch's room; where
the Patriarch sat in his armchair; where the lamp, turned low, throwing
the little room into half shadow, burned upon the table; where Helena,
far away from her immediate surroundings, quite silent and still, her
own chair close beside the other's, nestled with her head on the
Patriarch's shoulder.
Helena looked up as the Flopper returned.
Upon the Flopper's face was a curious expression--not one that in the
days gone by had been habitual--it seemed to mingle a diffidence, a
kindly solicitude and a sort of anxious responsibility.
"It's Thornton askin' fer youse," announced the Flopper.
Helena rose from her chair, and started for the door--but the Flopper
blocked the way. Helena halted and looked at him in astonishment.
The Flopper licked his lips.
"Say, Helena," he said earnestly, "if I was youse I wouldn't go--say,
I'll tell him youse have got de pip an' gone ter bed."
"Not go?" echoed Helena. "What do you mean?"
The Flopper scratched at his chin uneasily.
"Oh, you know!" he said. "De Doc let youse down easy ter-day. Say, if
youse had piped his lamps when you drives up in de buzz-wagon dis
afternoon youse wouldn't be lookin' fer any more trouble. Say, I'm
tellin' youse straight, Helena. When I was out dere in de kitchen an'
youse was in yer room wid him me heart was in me mouth all de time.
Youse can take it from me, Helena, he let youse down easy."
Helena's brown eyes, a little wistfully, a little softly, held upon the
Flopper.
"Yes?" she said quietly.
"Youse had better cut it out ter-night, Helena," the Flopper went on.
"Y'oughter know de Doc by dis time--de guy dat starts anything wid de
Doc gets his--dat's all! Remember de night he threw Cleggy down de
stairs in de Roost?--an' he was only havin' fun! Say, you go out wid
Thornton again ter-night an' de Doc finds it out--an' something'll
happen. Say, Helena, fer God's sake, don't youse do it--de Doc was bad
enough dis afternoon when he let youse down easy, but he's worse now,
an'--"
"Worse?" Helena interrupted, smiling a little apathetically. "In what
way is he worse? And how do you know? You haven't seen Doc, have you?"
"No," the Flopper answered, circling his lips with his tongue again.
"No; I ain't seen de Doc since--but I seen Pale Face. Say, Helena"--the
Flopper's words came stumbling out now, agitated, perturbed, not
altogether coherent--"wot's de answer I dunno; I dunno wot's de matter
here. Say"--he pointed suddenly to the Patriarch, whose face was turned
toward them as he stroked thoughtfully at his silver beard--"he's got me
fer fair--dere ain't no fake here--dis way ter live is de real t'ing--he
ain't like you an' me--he's _more'n_ dat--look at him now--youse'd t'ink
he could see us, an' was listenin' ter wot we said. I dunno wot's de
end--I dunno wot's de matter wid me. I was scared more'n ever out dere
dis afternoon on de lawn, an' I thought mabbe God 'ud strike me
dead--but 'tain't only dat I'm scared ter buck de game any more, 'tain't
only dat--I don't _wanter_ any more, an' it don't make no difference
about de dough--I wanter live straight, same as him, same as de guys
around here, same--same as Mamie. Say, Helena, say, do youse believe in
love--in--in de _real_ t'ing?"
Helena's apathy was gone now--a flush dyed her cheeks. She was not
startled at what the Flopper had said--she had seen it coming,
subconsciously, vaguely, mistily, for days now, only she had been
immersed in herself--she was not startled, and yet, in a way, she was.
The end! She too had been thinking about that--and she too did not know.
What _was_ the end?
"You were going to say something about Pale Face," she said, prompting
the Flopper. "Something about Pale Face and Doc."
"Yes," said the Flopper, and again the tip of his tongue sought his lips
nervously. "Dat's why I don't want youse ter go out wid Thornton
ter-night. Pale Face has got it de same as me, an' he told de Doc dis
afternoon, out in de path dere, after de Doc left de cottage here. Dere
was a showdown--see? De Doc 'ud kill youse an' Thornton ter-night if he
caught youse ter-gether. He's like a wild man. When Pale Face tells him
he was goin' ter quit, de Doc makes a grab fer him by de t'roat like a
tiger, only Pale Face gets away, an' den de Doc goes off widout a word,
laughin' like he'd escaped out of a dippy-house. An' Pale Face was
shakin' like he had a fit when he gets here. Say, Helena, don't youse go
ter-night."
Helena made no answer for a moment. Thoughts, a world of them, confused
her, crowded upon her, as they had ever since Madison had left her room
a few hours ago--and the future was as some dread, bewildering maze
through which she had tried to stumble and grope her way--and had lost
herself ever deeper. How full of utter, miserable, bitter irony it was
that this thing, unscrupulous and shameful, that they had created in
their guilt should have brought the beauty and the glory and the
yearning of a new life to her--and yet should chain her remorselessly
to the old! True, she had broken with Madison, irrevocably, forever, she
supposed, it could not be other than that, for the ugly bond between
them was severed--but the game still went on! In repentance, on her
bended knees, sobbing as a tired and worn-out child, she could ask for
forgiveness; but the double life, the duplicity, by reason of the very
nature in which they had fashioned this iniquitous monster, still went
on, and like some hideous octopus reached out its waving, feeling
tentacles to encircle her--the Patriarch there; the world-wide
publicity, those poor creatures upon whose misery and whose suffering,
upon whose frantic, frenzied snatching out at hope they had preyed and
fed and gorged themselves; the life itself that she had taken up, in its
minutiæ, in its care of this great-souled, great-hearted man so dear to
her now, the life itself because it was what it was, changed though she
herself might be, though her soul cried out against it in its new-found
purity--all this still held her fast! The end--she could not see the
end. What would Madison do--and there was Thornton. Thornton! She caught
her breath a little. Yes; she had promised Thornton she would see him
to-night--she knew well enough why he wanted to see her--last night had
told her that--he loved her. Her face softened. Last night--it seemed a
thousand years ago, and it seemed but as an instant passed--last
night--she had learned what love was, and--
The Flopper stirred uneasily.
"Wot'll I tell him?" asked the Flopper. "He's waitin' out dere by de
porch."
"Why--why nothing," said Helena, and she smiled a little tremulously at
the Flopper. "Nothing. I'll--I'll go and see him."
"Say, Helena," protested the Flopper, "don't youse--"
But Helena stepped by him now.
"Don't leave the Patriarch," she cautioned, turning on the threshold.
"I--I won't be late."
She passed down the little hall, through the still, quiet room beyond,
empty now, through the porch, and out into the night--and then from out
the shadows by the row of maples, Thornton came hurriedly toward her,
holding out his hands.
"It's good of you to come, Miss Vail," he said, in his grave, quiet way.
"You must be nearly dead with weariness after last night, and I am
afraid I am not very thoughtful--only I--" he broke off suddenly. "Shall
we sit here on the bench for a little while, or would you rather
walk--I--I have something to say to you."
It was very dark--the storm of the night before still lingered in a
wrack of flying clouds, scurrying one after the other, veiling the
stars--and the moon was hidden--and hidden too was the sudden whiteness
of Helena's face. She knew what he had to say, knew it before she had
come to him--and yet she was there--and she had come resolutely
enough--only now she was afraid.
"I would rather walk a little, I think," she said. "Here where--where I
can be within call. My absence last night seems to have made the
Patriarch very uneasy, you know, and--and--let us just walk up and down
here beneath the maples in front of the cottage."
How heavy upon the air lay the fragrance of the flowers; how still the
night was, save for the constant muffled boom of the breaking surf!--for
a moment an almost ungovernable impulse swept upon her to make some
excuse, anything, no matter how wild, a sudden faintness, anything, and
run from him back into the cottage. And then she tried to think, think
in a desperate sort of way of some subject of conversation that she
might introduce that would stave off, postpone, defer the words that she
knew were even now on his lips--nothing--she could think of
nothing--only that she might have let the Flopper have his way, have let
him tell Thornton that she had gone to bed with--the pip. The _pip_! She
could have screamed out hysterically as the word flashed all unbidden
upon her--it stood for a very great deal that word--her world of the
years of yesterday. Could she never get away from that world; was it too
late--already! Could she, even with all the earnestness, all the
yearning that filled her soul, ever live it down, ever be what Naida
Thornton had called her that night--a good woman! Could she--
Thornton was speaking now--how strange that she would have done
anything, given anything to prevent his speaking--and done anything,
given anything to make him speak! How strange and perplexed and dismayed
her brain was! Love! Yes; she wanted love! God knew she wanted love such
as his was--for he had shown her what love, free from abasing passion,
in its purest sense, was. Like a glimpse of glory, hallowed, full of
wondrous amazement, it came to her--and then her head was lowered, and
the whiteness was upon her face again.
He had halted suddenly and detained her with his hand upon her arm--with
that touch, so full of reverence, of fine deference, that had thrilled
her before--that thrilled her now, awakening into fuller life these new
emotions whose birth was in gladder, sweeter, purer aspirations.
"Miss Vail," he said, in a low voice, "there was a letter--a letter that
Naida left--did you know of it?"
They were close together, and it was very dark--but was it dark enough
to hide the crimson that she felt sweeping in a flood to her face! What
was in that letter? Had Mrs. Thornton written as she had talked, or only
about the Patriarch and the work in Needley? She had forgotten for the
moment about the letter--if there were more in it than that, if it were
about Thornton and herself and what Mrs. Thornton had hoped for between
them, and she admitted knowledge of it, what would he think, what
_could_ he think of her! But to deny it--no, not now. Once, and this
came to her in a little thrill of gladness, she would not have
hesitated; but now it--it was--it was not that world of yesterday.
"Yes," she said faintly; "she told me that she had left a letter for
you."
"It was about the work here," said Thornton gently. "Her whole soul
seemed wrapt up in that--and she asked me as her last wish to do what
she would have done if she had lived; and she spoke of you very
beautifully." Thornton paused for a moment--then he laid his hands on
Helena's shoulders--and she felt them tremble a little. "Miss
Vail--Helena," he said, and his voice was full of passionate earnestness
now, "I cannot say these things well--only simply. I came back here to
take an interest in the work, for I too have it at heart--but I have
more than that now--there is _you_--your dear self. I love you,
Helena--you have come into my life until you are everything and all to
me. Helena, look up at me--will you marry me, dear? Tell me what I long
to hear. Helena, Helena--I love you!"
But Helena did not answer--only very slowly she raised her head. And his
hands on her shoulders tightened, and he was drawing her gently toward
him. Then he bent his head until it was close to hers, and his breath
was upon her cheek as it had been that other night--and the longing to
know that it was hers, a caress, pure in its motive, hers, snatched out
of all that had gone before that sought to rob her of the right to ever
know it, fascinated her, held her spellbound, possessed her. Closer his
lips came to hers, closer, until they touched her--and then, with a cry,
she sprang back, and her hands were fiercely pressed against her cheeks,
her throbbing temples. Was she mad! Mad! Was it for this that she had
forced herself to give him the opportunity to speak to-night, when her
motive was so different, when it had seemed the only _right_ thing left
for her to do!
And now, still holding her temples, she raised her eyes to Thornton--he
had stepped back like a man stricken, his hands dropped to his sides.
"I--we are mad!" she whispered.
"Helena!" he said in a numbed way; and again; "Helena!" Then, with an
effort to control his voice: "You--you do not care--you do not love me?"
"No," she said--and thereafter for a long time a silence held between
them.
Then Thornton spoke.
"Some day perhaps, Helena," he said, "you could learn to love me--for I
would teach you. Perhaps now you feel that your whole duty lies here in
this work to which you have so unselfishly given your life; but I would
not hinder that, only try to help as best I could. Perhaps I have been
abrupt, have spoken too soon--it is only a few weeks since I saw you
first, but it seems as though in those few weeks I had come to know you
as if I had known you all my life and--"
But now she interrupted him, shaking her head in a sad little fashion.
"You do not know me," she said. "Sometimes I think I do not know myself.
Think! You do not know where I came from to join the Patriarch here; you
have no single shred of knowledge about me; you do not know a single
particular of my life before you knew me."
"I do not need to know," he answered gravely. "You are as genuine as
pure gold is genuine--it is in your voice, your smile, your eyes. It is
a crude simile perhaps, but one never asks where the pure gold was
dug--it stands for itself, for what it is, because it is what it
is--pure gold--at its face value."
The words seemed to stab at Helena, condemning, accusing; and yet, too,
in a strange, vague way, they seemed to bring her a hope, a promise for
the days to come--at face value! If she could live hereafter--at face
value!
"Listen," she said, and her voice was very low. "I do not know how to
say what I must say to you. Last night I knew that--that you loved me. I
had not thought of you like that, in that way, until then, or--or I
should have tried never to have let this hurt come to you. But last
night I knew, and since then I have known that sooner or later you
would--would tell me of it." She stopped for an instant--her eyes full
of tears now. "And so," she went on presently, "I have let you speak
to-night because it was better, it was even necessary that I should do
so at once--because this could not go on--because you must go away
and--"
"Necessary?" he repeated. "I--I do not understand."
"No," she said helplessly; "you do not understand--and I--I cannot
explain. Oh, I do not know what to say to you, only that you must take
what I say, as you have taken me--at face value."
"I do not understand," he said again. "Helena, I do not understand. Are
you in trouble--tell me?"
"No," she said.
"But I cannot go away like this!" he cried out suddenly. "I cannot go
and leave you, Helena. You have come into my life and filled it; and I
cannot let you pass out of it--like this--without an effort to hold what
has come to mean everything to me now. You may not love me now, but some
day--"
She shook her head, interrupting him once more.
"There can never be a 'some day,'" she said. "Oh, I do not want to hurt
you--you, to whom I owe more than you will ever know--but--but there can
never be anything between us, and--and we are only making it harder for
ourselves now--aren't we?"
And then he leaned abruptly toward her.
"Is there--some one else?" he asked in a strained voice.
And to Helena the question came as though it had been an inspiration
given him--for after that he would ask no more, seek no more to
understand, for he was too big and strong and fine for that; and even if
it was hopeless now this love that she had known for Madison, even if it
could never be again, still that love was hers, and she could answer
truthfully.
"Yes," she said beneath her breath.
For a moment Thornton neither moved nor spoke. Then he held out his
hand.
"Miss Vail," he said simply, "will you tell this 'some one else' that
another man beside himself is the better for having known you.
Good-night. And may God bring you happiness through all your life."
But she did not speak--they were standing by the rustic bench and she
sank down upon it, and, with her head hidden in one arm outflung across
the back of the seat, was sobbing softly.
And he stood and watched her for a little space, his face grave and
white; then taking the hand that lay listlessly in her lap, he raised it
to his lips--and turned away.
And so he left her--and so, because of this, he knocked upon another
door that night, and all unwittingly gave to that "some one else"
himself the message that he had asked Helena to deliver.
Madison, pacing his room like a caged beast, his teeth working upon the
cigar that he had never thought to light, paid no attention to the
summons until it had been repeated twice; then, with a glance around the
room, his eyes lingering for a critical instant upon the trunks, closed
now, the trays restored to their hiding places, he stepped to the door,
unlocked it, and flung it open. And at sight of Thornton, mechanically,
as second nature to him, outwardly, like a mask, there came a smile upon
his working lips, a suave, unconcerned composure to his face; while
inwardly, in his dazed, fogged brain where chaos raged, surged an
impulse to fling himself upon the other, wreck a mad vengeance upon the
man--and then swift upon the heels of this an impulse to refrain, for if
Helena was straight why should he harm Thornton--and then the shuttle
again--why should he not--hadn't Helena said that she had learned what
love was last night--and last night she had been with Thornton. How his
brain whirled! What had brought Thornton here, anyhow? If he stayed very
long perhaps he would batter Thornton to jelly after all! Quick, almost
instantaneous in their sequence came this wild jumble singing dizzily
its crazy refrain through his mind--and then to his amazement he heard
some one speaking pleasantly--and to his amazement it was himself.
"Come in, Thornton. Come in--and take a chair."
"Thanks," Thornton answered; and, entering the room, closed the door
behind him. "No; I won't sit down--I shall only remain a moment."
The lamp was on the washstand, and, intuitively again, Madison shifted
his position to bring his face into shadow--and leaned against the foot
of the bed. He stared at Thornton, nodding--Thornton's face was white
and exceedingly haggard--rather curious for Thornton to look that way!
"Madison," said Thornton abruptly, "I believe you to be a gentleman in
the best sense of the word, and because of that, and because of the
unusual circumstances that first brought us together and the mutual
interests that have since been ours, I have come to you to-night to tell
you, first, that I am going away from Needley and that I shall not
return--and then to ask a service and repose a trust in you. You have
said several times that you intended to remain here and take a personal
and active part in the work?"
Madison removed the chewed cigar end from one corner of his mouth--and
placed it in the other.
"Yes," said Madison.
"Then this is what I want to say," said Thornton seriously. "For my own
sake, because it was my wife's wish, and for other reasons as well, my
interest here, though I am going away, will be just as great as it has
ever been; and so I want you to keep me thoroughly posted, and when the
time comes that I can be of further material assistance to let me know.
I impose only one condition--you are to say nothing to Miss Vail about
it--you can make anything that I may do appear to come from yourself."
"Say nothing to Miss Vail!" repeated Madison vaguely--then a sort of
ironic jest seemed to take possession of him: "But Miss Vail keeps all
the funds."
"That is why I am asking you to represent me," said Thornton quietly. "I
am afraid that she might have a natural diffidence about accepting
anything more from me--I asked Miss Vail to marry me to-night, and she
refused."
The cigar kind of slid down unnoticed from the corner of Madison's
mouth--and he leaned forward, hanging with a hand behind him to the
bedpost--and stared at Thornton.
"You--_what_!" he gasped.
"Yes; I know," Thornton answered--and moved abruptly toward the door.
"Love makes one's temerity very great--doesn't it? I asked her to marry
me--because I loved her." He came back from the door and held out his
hand, "I've told you what I would tell no other man, Madison. You
understand now why--and you'll do this for me?"
What answer Madison made he never knew himself--he only knew that he was
staring at the door after Thornton had gone out, and that he wanted to
laugh crazily. Marry Helena! Thornton had asked Helena to marry him
because he loved her. God, there was humor here! His brain itself seemed
to cackle at it--_marry_ Helena!
And then suddenly there seemed no humor at all--only black, infamous
shame and condemnation--and he straightened up from where he leaned
against the bedpost, his face set and strained.
"Thornton had asked Helena to marry him because he _loved_ her"--the
words came slowly, haltingly, aloud--and then he covered his face with
his hands. But he, he who loved her too--what had _he_ done!
--XXII--
THE SHRINE
For a little time Madison stood there in his room, motionless, staring
unseeingly before him--and then, as one awakening from a dream that had
brought dismay and a torment too realistic to be thrown from him on the
instant, his brain still a little blunted, he took up his hat
mechanically, went out from the room, descended by the back stairs to
the rear door of the hotel, and took the road to the Patriarch's
cottage.
And as he walked in the freshness of the night, the restless turmoil of
his soul that since early afternoon had brought him near to the verge of
madness itself, that had robbed him of sane virility, that a moment
since in his room had suddenly begun to lift from him even as the leaden
clouds in the vault above him now were scattering, breaking, and through
the rifts a moon-glint and the starlight came, passed from him
utterly--and a strange calm, a strange joy, a strange sadness was upon
him--and his brain for the first time in many hours was rational,
keen--and he was master of himself again--and yet master of himself no
more!
He smiled a little at the seeming paradox--smiled a little wistfully. He
was beaten--by the game--he had won. How strange it was that sense of
more than resignation now--a sense that seemed like one of
thankfulness--a sense that bade him fling wide his arms as though
suddenly they had been loosed from bondage and he was free, free as the
God-given air around him.
He could understand Helena, and the Flopper, and Pale Face Harry now.
With them it had come slowly, in a gradual concatenation, a progression,
as it were, that had worked upon them, molding them, changing them day
by day--and he had been too blind to see, or, seeing, had measured the
changes only by a standard as false as all his life had been false. With
him it had come in a crash, unheralded, that had left him a naked,
quivering, stricken thing to know madness, terror and despair, to taste
of emotions that had sickened the soul itself.
On Madison walked--along the road, across the little bridge, into the
wagon track where, under the arched branches, it was utter dark. There
was no one upon the road--he passed no one--saw no one--he was alone.
He had lost Helena--but he understood her now--understood the depth of
remorse that she was living through, the terror and the dread as she
sought escape, the fear of him--yes, it would be fear now where once it
had been love! He had lost Helena--that was the price he had paid--but
he understood her now, and he was going to her to help her if he could,
going to tell her that he, too, was changed--as she was changed.
His hands clenched suddenly. God, the misery, the hopelessness, the
wreck and ruin that lay at his door! And amends--what amends could he
make--it was too late for that! How clearly he saw now--when it was too
late! Her life was a broken thing, robbed, stripped and despoiled for
all the years to come. Their love had not been love--she had given it
its name--"passion, vice, lust, sin, degradation and misery and shame."
And then love had come to her, into her life, love as God had meant love
to be, and she had learned what love was she had said--only that she
might never know its fulness, only that it might bring her added
bitterness and added sorrow! Thornton had asked her to marry him that
night--and she had refused him--because the past, it must have been as a
shuddering, hideous phantom that the past had risen before her, had left
her no other thing to do but turn away. It seemed he could see her--see
her bury her face in her hands and--
He stopped short in his walk. Was he changed so much as this! Did he
care so much that it was her happiness--even with another--that counted
most! Yes; it was true--he was changed indeed. And the change had
brought him too, it seemed, to learn what love was--too late.
He went forward again--a little more slowly; now; a sadness upon him,
but, through the sadness, an uplift from that new sense of freedom that
was as a balm, soothing him in the most curious way. His had been a rude
awakening--mind and body and soul had been torn asunder; but he knew
now, as he recalled the hours just past when he had looked on fear, when
the gamut of human passion had raged over him, when he had stood
staggered and appalled before, yes, before his God, that he had come
forth a new man. And how strange had been the ending, how strange and
simple, and yet how significant, typifying the broad, clean outlook on
life, bringing coherency to his tottering mind, had been those words of
Thornton's--"because he loved her."
He had reached the end of the wagon track now, and he walked across the
lawn, his steps noiseless on the velvet sward, and passed between the
maples; and the moon gleam--for the flying clouds, rear-guard of the
routed storm, were flung wide apart, dispersed--fell upon a coiled and
huddled little figure all in white, that was quite still and motionless
upon the rustic seat beside the porch.
She did not see him, did not hear him, until he stood before her and
called her name.
"Helena!" he said unsteadily. "Helena!"
She raised her head and looked at him; and then she rose from the bench,
and, still holding to it by one hand, drew back a little. There was no
outcry, no startled action. Her dark eyes played questioningly upon
him--and he could see that they were wet with tears, and that the face
from out of which they looked was very white.
"Why have you come back here to-night?" she asked in a low tone; and
then, suddenly, a fear, a terror in her voice, as the Flopper's warning
flashed upon her: "Thornton--you have seen Thornton?"
"Yes," he said, surprised a little that she should know; "I saw Thornton
a few minutes ago."
She came toward him now and clutched his arm.
"What have you done?" she cried tensely. "Answer me! You--you met him on
your way here?"
It was a moment before Madison replied. He had schooled himself of
course for more than this, yet the words hurt--that was why she had
asked for Thornton--she was afraid that he had harmed the man.
"No," he said; "I did not meet him. I think you must have been longer
here on that bench than you imagined--haven't you? He came to my room."
"Your room! What for? Tell me!"
Madison smiled with grave whimsicality.
"To call me a gentleman and repose a trust."
She stepped back again, uncertainly.
"I do not know what you are talking about," she said in a strained way.
"And you are talking very strangely."
"Yes," he said. "Everything is strange to-night. It is like a new world,
and--and I have not found my way--yet."
She drew back still further.
"Are you mad?" she whispered.
"No," he answered. "Not now--that Is past."
She looked at him for a little time; and, her hands joined before her,
her fingers locked and interlocked nervously.
"And--and Thornton?" she asked, at last.
"It was a trust," said Madison slowly; "but it was betrayed before it
was given. He did not know--the game. He did not know what was
between--you and me."
"No," she said--and the word came almost inaudibly.
"And so," he said, "I will tell you, for it cannot matter now in any
case. He told me that he had asked you to marry him to-night--and that
you had refused."
Madison paused, and swept his hand across his forehead--his voice
somehow had suddenly grown hoarse, beyond control.
"Yes," she said--and reached again for the back of the bench, supporting
herself against it.
"He is going away," Madison continued; "and he is to send more money
here for the 'cause'--when I ask for it--only you are not to know,
because you might be diffident about taking it after refusing him."
She stared at him numbly--there was no sarcasm in his words; in his
tones only a sort of dreary monotony. She shivered a little--how cold it
seemed! She did not quite grasp his words--and yet she shrank from them.
And then her very soul seemed to cry out against them, to pit itself
against their meaning, as their meaning surged upon her. And
unconsciously she drew herself up, and the whiteness of her face fled
before a rush of color.
"Oh, the shame of it!" she burst out. "The bitter shame of it! You shall
not touch the money--do you hear! You shall not touch it! I--I thought
that you had understood this afternoon. I am glad then that you have
come to-night--if I must say more to make you understand. This is the
end! I do not care what happens--the little I can do now to atone for
what I have done, I am going to do. The game is at an end--you shall not
touch another cent--and everything that we have taken goes back to those
whom we have worse than robbed it from! You hear--you understand! I will
cry it out in the town street if there is no other way--but it shall
stop--it shall stop to-night"--she was panting, breathless, the little
figure erect, outraged, quivering--and then suddenly the shoulders
seemed to droop, the lips to tremble, and she was on her knees upon the
grass beside the bench, and sobbing as a child.
"Helena!" Madison said hoarsely. "Helena! Listen! That is what I came
for to-night--to find a way out for you, for us all, if I can."
The passionate outburst passed--and she was on her feet again, facing
him.
"You are clever--clever!" she cried fiercely. "But you shall not play
with me--you shall not trick me--I meant every word I said!"
But now Madison made no answer. The moonlight bathed them both in its
clear, white radiance; and touched the sward, shading it to softest
green; and the trees limned out like fairy things against the night; and
the calm light flooded the little cottage with its hidden walls where
the ivy and the creepers grew, and lingered over the trellises to drink
the fragrance of the flowers that peeped out from their leafy beds. And
upon Madison's face crept slowly the anguish that was in his soul--until
it was mirrored there--until unconsciously it answered her where words
would have been useless things. Like some white-robed, sorrowing angel,
she seemed, as she stood there before him--the brown eyes full of
shadow, troubled; the sweet face tear-splashed; the little figure in its
simple muslin frock, pitiful in its brave defiance. And pure--just God,
how pure she looked!--the brow stainless white under the mass of dark,
coiled hair; the perfect throat of ivory. And--and the misery that was
in every feature of her face, in every line of her poise--and he had
brought her that--_he_ had brought her to that--and now when he loved
her as he might have loved her once and known her love in return, when
his heart cried out for her, when she was all in life he cared for, she
was gone from him, out of his life, and between them was a barrier he
could never pass--a barrier of his own raising.
And so he made no answer, for indeed he had not heard her; but she was
coming toward him now, her hands outstretched in a wondering way,
wistfully, pleadingly, as though to hold back a refutation that would
change the dawning light upon her face to dismay and grief again.
"It--it is true," she faltered. "It has come to you too--this change,
this new life that has come to me. It is true--I can see it in your
face."
"Yes; it is true," he answered, in a low voice.
"Thank God!" she whispered--and hid her face in her hands--and presently
he heard her sob again.
A tiny cloud edged the moon, and the light faded, and it grew dark, and
the darkness hid her; then softly, timidly almost it seemed, the
radiance came creeping through the branches overhead again--and then he
spoke.
"Helena," he said, steadying his voice with an effort, "you spoke of
atonement a little while ago; but there is no atonement that I can make
to you--nothing that I can do to change what I would give my soul to
change. I know what it meant to you to send Thornton away to-night, for
I love you now as you love him--I know why you did it, and--"
She was staring at him a little wildly--her hands pressed against her
cheeks.
"Love--Thornton," she repeated in a sort of wondering way, a long pause
between the words.
"Yes," he said gently; "I know. Have you forgotten what you told me this
afternoon?--that you had learned--last night--what love was."
She shook her head.
"I do not love Thornton," she said in a monotone. "And yet it is true
that through him I learned what love was, what it _could_ be--don't you
understand?"
Understand! No; it seemed that he could never understand! She did not
love Thornton! And then, as some fiery cordial, the words seemed to whip
through his veins, quickening the beat of his heart into wild,
tumultuous throbbing. Yes, yes, he could understand--it was
true--true--she did not love Thornton.
"Helena!" he cried--and stretched out his arms to her. "I thought, oh,
God, I thought that I had lost you--Helena!"
But she did not move.
"What does it matter to you whether I love Thornton or not?" she said
dully. "Does it change anything where you and I are concerned--does it
change what I told you this afternoon--that I would not go back to
_that_."
"To that! Ah, no!"--his voice rang dominant, vibrant, triumphant now.
"Helena, don't you understand? We are to begin life again--in a new
way, the true way, the only way. Don't you see--I love you!"
Still she did not move--but there was a great whiteness in her face, and
in the whiteness a great light.
"You mean?"--her lips scarcely seemed to form the words.
"Yes!" he cried. "Yes; to make a home for you, to marry you if only you
love me still, to live in God's own sight and hold you as a sacred
gift--Helena! Helena!"--his arms went out to her again, and the yearning
in his soul was in his voice--to crush her to him, to hold her in his
arms, and hold her there where none should take her from him, to shield
and guard her through the years to come, to live with her a life that
seemed to break now in a vista of gladness, of glory, as the day-dawn
breaks with its golden rays of God-given promise--the new life, perfect
and pure and innocent--because he loved her. "Helena! Speak to me. Tell
me that it is not too late--tell me that you love me too."
And then her eyes were raised to his, and they were wet--but there was
love-light and a wondrous happiness shining through the tears.
"Helena!" he murmured brokenly--and swept her into his arms--and kissed
the eyelids, lowered now, the hair, the white brow, the lips--kissed
her, and held her there, her clinging arms about his neck, her face half
hidden on his shoulder.
And so for a space they stood there--and there were no words to say,
only the song in their hearts in deathless melody--but after a little
time he held her from him, and lifted up her face that he might look his
fill upon it.
"Helena," he said, "I cannot understand it all yet--it is as though it
were born out of the sin and the darkness and the blackness of what is
gone--as though here at this Shrine that we created in mockery and crime
it was meant that you and I should save each other for each other. And
yet this Shrine as we have made it is a thing of guilt, and it has
brought us all, you and I, and Harry, and the Flopper to a new life."
She lay still for a moment in his arms--then her hand crept up and
touched his forehead and smoothed back his hair.
"I do not quite know how to say it," she said a little timidly. "When
you went away this afternoon, the Patriarch took me back into his room,
and--and I knelt at his knees--and after a little while my mind seemed
very calm and quiet--do you know what I mean? And I tried to think
things out--and understand. And it seemed to come to me that there was a
shrine everywhere if we would only look for it--that God has put a
shrine in every heart, only we are so blind--that every one can make
their own surroundings beautiful and good and true, no matter where they
are, or how poor, or how rich--and if they live like that they must be
good and true themselves."
"Yes," he said slowly; then, after a moment: "And faith too is very much
like that."
"Only some need a sign," she said.
There was silence again, while her hand crept over his face and back to
his forehead to smooth his hair once more--and then very gently she
slipped out of his arms.
"What are we to do about--about everything here?" she asked soberly. "We
are forgetting that in our own happiness. How are we going to return the
money that we have taken?"
"I don't know yet," he answered. "I haven't thought much about it--but
we'll manage somehow."
She shook her head.
"I've thought a great deal about it since yesterday--and I'm not so sure
it is to be 'managed somehow'--and the more I've thought the more
tangled and complicated it has become."
"Well, we'll untangle it to-morrow," said Madison, with a smile, "and--"
"No"--she touched his sleeve. "To-night. Let us do it now--to-night. I
should be so happy then."
He smiled at her again, and drew her to him.
"But we ought to have Pale Face and the Flopper too, don't you think
so?" he said.
"Of course," she said; "and so we will. The Flopper is here, and we can
send him for Harry. It's early yet--not ten o'clock."
"All right," said Madison; "if you wish it. We'll go in then and get the
Flopper."
And so they walked to the cottage door, and into the porch--but in the
porch Madison held her for a moment, and lifted up her face again and
looked into her eyes.
"My--wife," he whispered--and took her in his arms.
--XXIII--
THE WAY OUT
Strange scene indeed! Strange antithesis to that other night when these
four were gathered in that crime-reeked, sordid room at the Roost--where
Pale Face Harry, gaunt, emaciated, coughed, and, trembling, plunged a
morphine needle in his arm; where the Flopper, a wretched tatterdemalion
from the gutter, licked greedy lips and gloated in his rascality; where
Helena, flushed-faced, inhaled her interminable cigarettes and dangled
her legs from the table edge; where Madison, suave, flippant, so certain
of his own infallibility, glorying in his crooked masterpiece, laid the
tribute to genius at his own feet!
Strange scene! Strange antithesis indeed! It was quiet here--very
still--only the distant, muffled boom of the pounding surf. And the
shrine-room, for the first time since its creation, was locked against
the night. It lay now in shadow from the single lamp upon the table--and
the light, where it fell in a shortened circle, for the lamp itself had
a little green paper shade, was soft, subdued and mellow.
Where he had been wont to sit in the days gone by, the Patriarch sat now
in his armchair by the empty fireplace--in the shadow--his head turned
in his strange, listening, attentive way toward the table--toward the
four who were grouped around it. There had been no one to stay with him
in his own room, and so Helena had brought him there--to play his silent
part.
At the table, Pale Face Harry, bronzed and rugged, clear-eyed, a robust
figure from his clean living, his months of the out-of-doors, traced the
grain of the wood on the table mechanically with his finger nail, his
face sober, perplexed; while the Flopper, clear-eyed too, his face
almost a handsome one in its bright alertness, now that it had rounded
out and the hard, premature lines were gone, mirrored Pale Face Harry's
perturbed expression, his eyes fixed anxiously on Madison opposite him;
and Helena, sitting beside Madison, was very quiet, her forehead
wrinkled and pursed up into little furrows, the brown eyes with a hint
of dismay and consternation lurking in their depths, one hand stretched
out to lay quite unconsciously on Madison's sleeve--and from the sleeve
to steal occasionally into Madison's hand.
Madison, his lips tight, pushed back his chair suddenly--they had been
sitting there an hour.
"You were right, Helena," he said, with a nervous laugh. "The more you
try to figure it out the worse it gets."
"Aw, say, Doc," pleaded the Flopper desperately, "don't youse give it
up--youse have got de head--youse ain't never left us in a hole yet."
Madison looked at him, and smiled mirthlessly.
"My head!" he exclaimed bitterly. "I got you into this, all of you--but
it will take more than my head to get you out. If I could stand for it
myself, I'd do it--but I can't without dragging you in too--we're too
intimately mixed up. If I said it was a deal of mine--they'd ask where
Helena came from--they'd ask where you came from, Flopper. We're
beaten--beaten every way we turn. The game has got us--we haven't a
move. We played it to the limit, the slickest swindle that was ever
worked, and it worked till there's more money than I've tried to count.
And then it changed us from thieves, from--from anything you like--and
now that we want to quit, now that we want a chance to make good, it's
got us in its grip and we can't get away." He flirted a bead of moisture
from his forehead. "My God, I don't know what to do!" he muttered
hoarsely. "It was easy enough to _talk_ about stopping this thing, about
returning the money--but I can't see the way out."
No one answered him--all were silent--as silent as the mute and
venerable figure that sat, listening attentively it seemed, in the
armchair by the fireplace.
Madison turned abruptly after a moment to Pale Face Harry.
"You, Harry," he said, laying a hand on the other's shoulder, "you're
the only one of the four that can walk out of it--you don't show in the
center of the stage--you go. You said the old folks would cry over
you--twenty years is a long time to stay away from the old folks--I--I
never knew mine. You go on back to the little farm out there in the West
where you said you'd like to go, and--and give the old people a hand for
the years they've got left."
Pale Face Harry shook his head.
"God knows I'd like to," he said, choking a little; "that's what I
counted on. God knows I'd like to go out there and lead a decent
life--but I don't go that way--I don't crawl out and leave you--what's
coming to you is coming to me."
"That won't help us any, Harry," said Madison softly, and his hand
tightened in an eloquent pressure on Pale Face Harry's shoulder. "You
go--and God bless you!"
Again Pale Face Harry shook his head.
"No," he said. "I stick. If the game's got you, it's got me too--to the
limit. There's no use talking about that."
The Flopper licked his lips miserably.
"Swipe me!" he mumbled. "Hell wasn't never like dis! Me an' Mamie we've
got it fixed, an' her old man says he'll take me inter de store. Say,
Doc, say--ain't dere a chanst ter live straight now we wants ter?"
But Madison did not hear the Flopper save in a vague, inconsequential
way--he was looking at Helena. She had drooped forward a little over the
table, her chin in her hands, her lips quivering--and a white misery in
her face seemed to bring a chill, a numbness to his heart. His Hands
clenched, and he began to pace up and down the room.
How buoyantly he had tackled the problem--buoyant in his own
emancipation, buoyant in his love, in the future full of dreams, full of
inspiration, full of the new life that Helena and he would live
together! How confidently he had settled himself to undo in a moment the
work of months, to outline a mere matter of detail, with never a thought
that he was face to face with a problem that he could never solve--that
brought him to the realization that the game, not he, was the master
still, iron-handed, implacable--that though the mental chains were
loosed it was but as if, in ironic justice, in grim punishment, only
that he might look, clear-visioned, upon the ignominy of the physical
shackles he himself had forged and fashioned so readily, whose breaking
now was beyond his strength.
He had done his work well! In the first few moments, an hour ago, when
he had begun to consider the problem, as seeming difficulties arose, he
had turned coolly from one alternative to another. And then slowly a
sickening sense of the truth had begun to dawn upon him--and like a man
lost in a great forest, peril around him, he had plunged then
desperately in this direction and in that, as a glimmering point of
light here or there had seemed to promise an avenue of escape--only to
find it vanish at almost the first step, the way closed as by some
invisible, remorseless power. No, not invisible--it seemed to take the
form of the Patriarch--for at every turn the majestic figure stood and
would not let him pass.
Madison's face was gray now as he walked up and down the room--there was
his own revulsion, his abhorrence at the part he had played, a frantic,
honorable eagerness to be rid of it; there were these others too who
looked to him, the Flopper and Pale Face Harry; and there was--Helena!
He did not dare to look at the misery in her face again--he was unmanned
enough now.
And then Helena spoke.
"It--it seems," she said, in a low broken way, "as if--as if God did not
want to pardon us--as if our repentance had come too late, and that
there was no Eleventh Hour for us." Then, in passionate pleading, facing
Madison: "God cannot mean that--it is we who cannot see. There is some
way out--there must be--there _must_ be."
"It begins and ends with the Patriarch," said Madison monotonously. "We
can't sacrifice him--can we! What's the use of going over it again? It
all comes back to the same point--the Patriarch."
"Yes, yes; I know, I know," she said piteously. "But think,
Doc--_think_! See now, we just send back all the money and jewels--we
know to whom they belong."
"Well, what reason do we give?" Madison said heavily. "The Patriarch is
alive and well. The immediate corollary is that from the moment we do
that, to-morrow morning for instance, every gift, every offering here is
suddenly refused. What reason do we give? If it were only the donors who
were to be considered it might be done. It's human nature that
ninety-nine out of every hundred of them"--his voice rose a little
bitterly--"would probably be only too glad to get their money back--and
the mere statement that you, as the Patriarch's grand-niece, his only
relative, on mature thought did not consider the project as planned
advisable might suffice. But this thing goes beyond that, beyond even
the remaining few who are earnestly interested and would cause us
trouble--it is world-wide in its publicity! Every newspaper in the land
would snatch at it for a headline, and ask--why? And they would not be
content with simply asking why--this thing is too big for that--too much
before the people's eyes--too good 'copy.' They'd start in to find
out--and the result is inevitable. Our safety so far has lain in the
fact that there has been no suspicion aroused; but snooping around a
bank vault at midnight with a mask on and a bull's-eye lantern fades to
a whisper as a suspicion-arouser compared with anybody willingly
coughing up a bunch of money once they've got their claws on it--and a
yellow journal, let alone an army corps of them, on the scent of a
possible sensation has all the detective bureaus in the country pinned
to the ropes--they'd have us uncovered quicker than I like to think
about it--and that means--"
He stopped, and with a hurried motion, carried his hands across his
eyes--Helena, pure as one of God's own angels now, to come to that, to
come to--
It was the Flopper who completed the sentence.
"Ten spaces up de river," said the Flopper, and shivered, and his tongue
sought his lips; "or mabbe--mabbe twenty."
Pale Face Harry stirred uneasily.
"There's the other way," he said without looking up, his eyes on his
finger nail that traced the grain of the wood again. "Get the money and
the sparklers all done up and addressed to the ones they came from, send
'em off in a bunch to Thornton--and we fly the coop before he gets them,
disappear, fade away--and take our chances of getting caught."
"An' den it's all off wid me an' Mamie"--the Flopper's face grew hard.
"Nix on dat! Dat don't go!"
"We cannot do that, Harry," said Helena, in a tired voice. "There
is--the Patriarch."
"Yes," said Madison, beginning his stride up and down the room again.
"After all, whether we could give back the money without being caught,
or whether we couldn't, is not the vital thing; there is--the
Patriarch."
Helena's eyes were on the silent figure in the shadows by the fireplace.
"If--if it were not for him," she said, "I think that perhaps--perhaps I
might be brave enough to confess it all, and--and not try to escape
from the punishment that I deserve. But he would know--he cannot see,
nor hear, nor speak, but he would know--as he seems so strangely, so
wonderfully, so supernaturally to know and understand everything. And,
oh, he means so much to me, to us all, for it is he, more than any one
else, who has saved us from--from what we were. And he loves us. It
would shatter his faith, ruin all that his life has meant to him,
and--and we cannot bring him grief and sorrow like that. Oh, what can we
do! What _can_ we do! We cannot stop--and we cannot go on! We cannot
stay here even if we returned the money successfully, and we cannot stay
here if we kept it as it is; for things would still have to go on as
they are, even if we didn't mean to steal any more, no matter what we
might say or do, for it's beyond our control now, and to stay means that
we should still have to live and lead our double lives, still have to
practise hypocrisy and deceit, and--and I cannot--we cannot do that any
more. And the only way to get away from it all is to run away--and we
can't do that, either! There is--the Patriarch. We cannot leave him--to
break his heart--with none he loves to care for him. We can't do that.
He is a very old, old man, and--and I think he has been happy with us,
and--and we must make him happy always as long as he lives. We cannot go
away and leave him. We can't do that." Then, in a heartbroken,
despairing cry: "We can't do--_anything_!"
No one answered her. She had begged Madison to go over it all again--and
she had summed it up herself. There was--the Patriarch.
There was utter silence in the room now, save only for that low, solemn
boom of distant surf--for Madison had stopped his nervous pacing up and
down, and stood now by the Patriarch's armchair gazing into the
fireplace.
The minutes passed, and the silence in that dim, shadowed room grew
tense--and tenser still--until the very shadows themselves, as the lamp
flickered now and then, seemed to creep and shift and readjust
themselves in stealth. No sound--no movement--utter stillness--only,
from without, the mourning of the surf, like a dirge now.
And then, with a sudden sob, Helena flung out her arms across the table
toward the Patriarch.
"Oh, if he could only speak!" she cried pitifully. "If he could only
speak--he would show us the way out."
The words seemed to come to Madison as an added pang. He turned his eyes
instinctively from the fireplace to the Patriarch beside him--and then,
a moment, as a man stricken, he stood there--and then reaching quickly
for the lamp from the table he held it up, and leaned forward toward the
figure in the chair.
Helena, startled at the act, rose almost unconsciously to her feet, her
hands holding tightly to the table edge--looking at Madison, looking at
the silent form where Pale Face Harry, where the Flopper looked.
"What is it?" she asked tensely, under her breath.
Madison's lips moved--silently. His face was white, ashen--there was no
color in it. Then his lips moved once more.
"The way out," he said; and again, in a low, awed way: "_The way out_.
We can make restitution now--we can give it all back--he _has_ shown us
the way out."
Helena's lips were quivering, tears were dimming the brown eyes,
trembling on the lashes, as she stepped now to Madison's side.
"It is God who has shown us the way out," she whispered brokenly--and
dropping down before the chair, her little form shaken with sobs, she
hid her face on the Patriarch's knees.
And serene and peaceful as a child in sleep, a smile like a benediction
on the saintly face, the Patriarch sat in his armchair by the fireplace
where he had been wont to sit in years gone by--and so he had passed on.
The Patriarch was dead.
--XXIV--
VALE!
The years have passed--but in their passing have brought few changes to
the little village nestling in the Maine pines that border on the sea.
Not many changes--it is as though Time had touched it loath to touch at
all; as though some spirit lingering there, sweet and fresh and vernal,
had bade Time stay its hand.
Not many changes--the same familiar faces gather around the stove in the
hotel office; and, neither as a memory, nor yet as of one who has gone,
but as if he were amongst them, living still, they speak of the
Patriarch as of yore.
And with this little circle of kindly, simple folk Time has dealt gently
too, for there is only one who is no more--Cale Rodgers, the proprietor
of the general store.
But the general store on the village street still flourishes, and in
Cale Rodgers' place is one whose speech is still a marvelous thing in
staid old New England ears--it is an Irish brogue perhaps, for his name
is Michael Coogan. There are little Coogans too, and Mamie is a happy
wife. And to the Coogans come sometimes letters from a far-western farm
to say that things are well and that prosperity has come to one who
signs himself--facetiously it always seems to Mamie who reads the
letters to her husband--as Pale Face Harry.
And so the years have passed, and it is summer time again. The fields
are green; the trees in leaf; the flowers in bloom. And there are
visitors who have come again to the scenes of yesterday--a man and
woman--and between them a sturdy little lad of eight. They stop at the
end of the wagon track and look out across the lawn.
It is still and peaceful, tranquil--and to them conies the soft, low
murmur of the surf. Slowly they walk across the lawn, and pass beneath
the splendid maples--and pause again.
The cottage is like some poet's fancy, hidden shyly in its creepers and
its vines; and seems to speak and breathe in its simple beauty of the
gentle soul who once had lived there--and loved his fellow-men. It is as
it always was, open, free for all to pass within who wish to enter; for
loving hands have cared for it, and grateful purses, opened to its
needs, have kept it as--a Shrine.
But they do not enter now, for Madison points to where the sunlight, as
it glints through the trees at the far end of the cottage, falls on a
slender shaft of marble.
"Let us go there, Helena," he said softly.
And so they walked that way, past the trellises laden with flowers,
past the end of the cottage; and presently they stopped again where,
beneath the maples' shade, rises the pure white stone--and beyond it is
the sweep of the eternal sea.
Madison, his hair streaking just a little gray at the temples now,
removed his hat--and his face softened, saddened, as he read the simple
inscription:
THE PATRIARCH
The boy glanced at his father a little wonderingly--and then spelt out
the words. He shook his head.
"I don't know what that means," he said. "What does that word mean?"
Madison patted his head.
"You tell him, Helena," he said--and came and stood beside her.
And so Helena told the boy in simple language as much of the Patriarch's
story as she thought he could understand--and when she had finished the
boy's face was aglow.
"And!" he said breathlessly, "and--and did he ever do a really,
truly-truly miracle?"
There was silence for an instant--then a tender smile came trembling to
Helena's lips, and into the brown eyes crept the love-light, as she
reached out to Madison and her hand found his and held it very tightly.
And Madison bent and kissed her; and drew the little lad between them
and laid his hand on the boy's head, and answered for Helena.
"Yes, my son," he said; "and some day when you are a man you will
understand how great a miracle it was."
THE END
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