by Ruth Sawyer
XI
AND CHANCE STAGES MELODRAMA INSTEAD OF COMEDY
"A brave day to ye!" A little bit of everything that made Patsy waswrapped in the smile she gave the man in the Balmacaan coat standingby the wheel-guard of the car before the town post-office, a hand onthe front seat. "Maybe ye're not knowing it, but it's a rare good dayfor us both. If you'll only take me for a spin in your car I'll tellyou what brings me--and who I am--if you haven't that guessedalready."
Plainly the occupant of the coat and the car was too much taken bysurprise to guess. He simply stared; and by that stare conveyed aheart-sinking impression to Patsy. She looked at the puffed eyes andthe grim, unyielding line of the mouth, and she wanted to run. Ittook all the O'Connell stubbornness, coupled with the things GregoryJessup had told her about his friend, to keep her feet firm to thesidewalk and her resolution.
"Maybe," she thought, "he's just taken on the look of a rascalbecause he thinks the world has written him down one. That's oftenthe way with a man; and often it takes but a bit of kindness tochange it. If I could make him smile--now--"
Her next remark accomplished this, but it did not mend matters awhit. Patsy's heart turned over disconsolately; and she wassafety-locking her wits to keep them from scattering when she madeher final plea.
"I'm not staying long, and I want to know you; there's something Ihave to be saying before I go on my way. 'Twould be easiest if you'dtake me for a ride in your car; we could talk quieter there."
She tried to finish with a reasonably cheerful look, but it was atragic failure. The man was looking past her to the post-officebeyond, and the things Patsy had seemed to feel in his face suddenlyrose to the surface and revealed themselves with an instant'sintensity. Patsy followed the look over her shoulder and shrank awayperceptibly.
In the doorway of the office stood another man, younger andmore--pronounced. It could mean but one thing: Billy Burgeman hadlost his self-respect along with Marjorie Schuyler and had fallen inwith foul company.
There were natures that crumbled and went to pieces under distrustand failure--natures that allowed themselves to be blown by passionand self-pity until they burned down into charred heaps of humanity.She had met a few of them in her life; but--thank God!--there wereonly a few.
She found herself praying that she might not have come too late. Justwhat she would do or say she could not tell; but she must make himunderstand that he was not the arbiter of his own life, that in spiteof what he had found, there were love and trust and disinterestedkindness in the world, lots of it. Money might be a curse, but it wasa curse that a man could raise for himself; and a little lad whocould shovel snow for half a day to earn two white roses for a deadfriend was too fine to be lost out of life's credit-sheet.
She did not wait for any invitation; silently, with a white face, sheclimbed into the car and sat with hands folded about the pilgrimstaff. It was as if she had taken him for granted and was waiting forhis compliance to her will. And he understood. He moved the starter,and, as the motor began its chugging, he called out to the man in thedoorway:
"Better not wait for me. I seem to have a date with--a lady." Therewas an unpleasant intonation on the last word.
"Please take a quiet road--where there will not be much passing,"commanded Patsy.
She did not speak again until the town lay far behind and they werewell on that quiet road. Then she turned partly toward him, her handsstill clasped, and when she spoke it was still in the best of theking's English--she had neither feeling nor desire for the intimacyof her own tongue.
"I know it must seem a bit odd to have me, a stranger, come to youthis way. But when a man's family and betrothed fail him--why, someone must--make it up--"
He turned fiercely. "How did you know that?"
"I--she--Never mind; I know, that's all. And I came, thinking maybeyou'd be glad--"
"Of another?" he laughed coarsely, looking her over with anappraising scrutiny. "Well, a fellow might have a worse--substitute."
Patsy crimsoned. It seemed incredible that the man she had listenedto that day in Marjorie Schuyler's den, who had then gripped hersympathies and thereby pulled her after him in spite of past illnessand all common sense, should be the man speaking now. And yet--whatwas it Gregory Jessup had said about him? Had he not implied that oldKing Midas had long ago warped his son's trust in women until he hadcome to look upon them all as modern Circes? And gradually shame forherself changed into pity for him. What a shabby performance lifemust seem to such as he!
She had an irresistible desire to take him with her behind the scenesand show him what it really was; to point out how with a change ofline here, a new cue there, and a different drop behind; with achoice of fellow-players, and better lights, and the right spiritback of it all--what a good thing he could make of his particularpart. But would he see--could she make him understand? It was worthtrying.
"You are every bit wrong," she said, evenly. "Look at me. Do I looklike an adventuress? And haven't you ever had anybody kind to yousimply because they had a preference for kindness?"
The two looked at each other steadily while the machine crawled atminimum speed down the deserted road. Her eyes never flinched underthe blighting weight of his, although her heart seemed to stop ahundred times and the soul of her shrivel into nothing.
"Well," she heard herself saying at last, "don't you think you canbelieve in me?"
The man laughed again, coarsely. "Believe in you? That's preciselywhat I'm doing this minute--believing in your cleverness and a deucedpretty way with you. Now don't get mad, my dear. You are alldaughters of Eve, and your intentions are very innocent--of course."
Pity and sympathy left Patsy like starved pensioners. The eyeslooking into his blazed with righteous anger and a hating distrust;they carried to him a stronger, more direct message than words couldhave done. His answer was to double the speed of the car.
"Stop the car!" she demanded.
"Oh, ho! we're getting scared, are we? Repenting of our haste?" Thegrim line of his mouth became more sinister. "No man relishes awoman's contempt, and he generally makes her pay when he can. Now Icame for pleasure, and I'm going to get it." An arm shot around Patsyand held her tight; the man was strong enough to keep her where hewished her and steer the car down a straight, empty road. "Remember,I can prove you asked me to take you--and it was your choice--thisnice, quiet spin!"
She sat so still, so relaxed under his grip that unconsciously herelaxed too; she could feel the gradual loosening of joint andmuscle.
"Why didn't you scream?" he sneered at length.
"I'm keeping my breath--till there's need of it."
Silence followed. The car raced on down the persistently empty road;the few houses they passed might have been tenantless for any signsof human life about them. In the far distance Patsy could see asuspension-bridge, and she wished and wished it might be closed forrepairs--something, anything to bring to an end this hideous,nightmarish ride. She groaned inwardly at the thought of it all.She--Patricia O'Connell--who would have starved rather than playcheap, sordid melodrama--had been tricked by chance into becoming anactual, living part of one. She wondered a little why she felt nofear--she certainly had nothing but distrust and loathing for the manbeside her--and these are breeders of fear. Perhaps her anger hadcrowded out all other possible emotion; perhaps--back ofeverything--she still hoped for the ultimate spark of decency andgood in him.
Her silence and apparent apathy puzzled the man. "Well, what's inyour mind?" he snapped.
"Two things: I was thinking what a pity it was you let your fatherthrow so much filth in your eyes, that you grew up to see everythingabout you smirched and ugly; and I was wondering how you ever came tohave a friend like Gregory Jessup and a fancy for white roses."
"What in thunder are you talking--"
But he never finished. The scream he had looked for came when he hadgiven up expecting it. Patsy had wrenched herself free from his holdand was leaning over the wind-shield, beckoning frantical
ly to afigure mounted on one of the girders of the bridge. It was agrotesque, vagabond figure in rags, a battered cap on the back of itshead.
"Good God!" muttered the man in the car, stiffening.
Luckily for the tinker the car was running again at a moderate speed;the man had slowed up when he saw the rough planking over the bridge,and his hand had not time enough to reach the lever when the tinkerwas upon him. The car came to an abrupt stop.
Patsy sank back on the seat, white and trembling, as she watched theinstant's grappling of the two, followed by a lurching tumble overthe side of the car to the planking. The fall knocked them apart, andfor the space of a few quick breaths they half rose and faced eachother--the one almost crazed with fury, the other steady, calm, butterrifyingly determined.
Before Patsy could move they were upon each other again--rollingabout in the dust, clutching at each other's throat--now half underthe car, now almost through the girders of the bridge, with Patsy'svoice crying a warning. Again they were on their feet, grappling andhitting blindly; then down in the dust, rolling and clutching.
It was plain melodrama of the most banal form; and the mostconvincing part of it all was the evident personal enmity thatdirected each blow. Somehow it was borne in upon Patsy that her sharein the quarrel was an infinitesimal part; it was the old, old scenein the fourth act: the hero paying up the villain for all pastscores.
Like the scene in the fourth act, it came to an end at last. The timecame when no answering blow met the tinker's, when the hand thatgripped his throat relaxed and the body back of it went down underhim--breathless and inert. Patsy climbed out of the car to make roomfor the stowing away of its owner. He was conscious, but pastarticulate speech and thoroughly beaten; and the tinker kindly turnedthe car about for him and started him slowly off, so as to rid theroad of him, as Patsy said. It looked possible, with a carefulharboring of strength and persistence, for him to reach eventuallythe starting-point and his friend of the post-office. As his trail ofdust lengthened between them Patsy gave a sigh of relieved contentand turned to the tinker.
"Faith, ye are a sight for a sore heart." Her hand slid into hisoutstretched one. "I'll make a bargain with ye: if ye'll forgive andforget the unfair things I said to ye that night I'll not stay hurtover your leaving without notice the next morning."
"It's a bargain," but he winced as he said it. "It seems as if ourmeetings were dependent on a certain amount of--of physicaldisablement." He smiled reassuringly. "I don't really mind in theleast. I'd stand for knockout blows down miles of road, if they wouldbring you back--every time."
"Don't joke!" Patsy covered her face. "If--if ye only knew--what itmeans to have ye standing there this minute!" She drew in her breathquickly; it sounded dangerously like a sob. "If ye only knew what yehave saved me from--and what I am owing ye--" Her hands fell, and shelooked at him with a sudden shy concern. "Poor lad! Here ye are--afit subject for a hospital, and I'm wasting time talking instead oftrying to mend ye up. Do ye think there might be water hereaboutswhere we could wash off some of that--grease paint?"
But the tinker was contemplating his right foot; he was standing onthe other. "Don't bother about those scratches; they go rather wellwith the clothes, don't you think? It's this ankle that's botheringme; I must have turned it when I jumped."
"Can't ye walk on it? Ye can lean on this"--she passed him thepilgrim staff--"and we can go slowly. Bad luck to the man! If I hadknown ye were hurt I'd have made ye leave him in the road and we'dhave driven his machine back to Arden for him." She looked longinglyafter the trail of dust.
"Your ethics are questionable, but your geography is worse. Ardenisn't back there."
"What do ye mean? Why, I saw Arden, back yonder, with my owneyes--not an hour ago."
"No, you didn't. You saw Dansville; Arden is over there," and thetinker's hand pointed over his shoulder at right angles to the road.
"Holy Saint Branden!" gasped Patsy. "Maybe ye'll have the boldness,then, to tell me I'm still seven miles from it?"
"You are." But this time he did not laugh--a smile was the utmost hecould manage with the pain in his ankle.
Patsy looked as if she might have laughed or cried with equal ease."Seven miles--seven miles! Tramp the road for four days and be justas near the end as I was at the start--" An expression ofenlightenment shot into her face. "Faith, I must have been going in acircle, then."
The tinker nodded an affirmative.
"And who in the name of reason was the man in the car?"
"That's what I'd like to know; the unmitigated nerve of him!" hefinished to himself. His chin set itself squarely; his face had grownas white as Patsy's had been and his eyes became doggedly determined."If it isn't a piece of impertinence, I'd like to ask how youhappened to be with him, that way?"
Patsy flushed. "I'm thinking ye've earned the right to an answer. Itook him for the lad I was looking for. I thought the place wasArden, and--and the clothes were the same."
"The clothes!" the tinker repeated it in the same bewildered way thathad been his when Patsy first found him; then he turned and graspedPatsy's shoulders with a sudden, inexplicable intensity. "What's thename of the lad--the lad you're after?"
"I'll tell you," said Patsy, slowly, "if you'll tell me what you didwith my brown clothes that morning before you left."
And the answer to both questions was a blank, baffling stare.