Part 13 (1/2)
In one she came upon a suit of familiar white flannels; and she pa.s.sed them slowly--so slowly that her hands brushed them with a friendly little greeting. But the search was a barren one, and she returned to the porch as empty-handed and as mystified as she had left it; the heap of ashes on the hearth held no meaning for her, and consequently told no tales.
”'Tis plain enough what's happened,” she said, soberly, to the sparrows who were skirmis.h.i.+ng for crumbs. ”Just as I said, he was fearsome of those constables, after all, and he's escaped in my clothes!”
The picture of the tinker's bulk trying to disguise itself behind anything so scanty as her shrunken garments proved too irresistible for her sense of humor; she burst into peal after peal of laughter which left her weak and wet-eyed and dispelled her loneliness like fog before a clearing wind.
”Anyhow, if he hasn't worn them he's fetched them away as a wee souvenir of an O'Connell; and if I'm to reach Arden in any degree of decency 'twill have to be in stolen clothes.”
But she did not go in the blue frock; the realization came to her promptly that that was no attire for the road and an unprotected state; she must go with dull plumage and no beguiling feathers. So she searched again, and came upon a blue-and-white ”middy” suit and a dark-blue ”Norfolk.” The exchange brought forth the veriest wisp of a sigh, for a woman's a woman, on the road or off it; and what one has not a marked preference for the more becoming frock?
Patsy proved herself a most lawful housebreaker. She tidied up and put away everything; and the shutter having already been replaced over the broken window by the runaway tinker, she turned the k.n.o.b of the Yale lock on the front door and put one foot over the threshold.
It was back again in an instant, however; and this time it was no lawful Patsy that flew back through the hall to the mantel-shelf.
With the deftness and celerity of a true housebreaker she de-framed the tinker and stuffed the photograph in the pocket of her stolen Norfolk.
”Sure, he promised his company to Arden,” she said, by way of stilling her conscience. Then she crossed the threshold again; and this time she closed the door behind her.
The sun was inconsiderately overhead. There was nothing to indicate where it had risen or whither it intended to set; therefore there was no way of Patsy's telling from what direction she had come or where Arden was most likely to be found. She shook her fist at the sun wrathfully. ”I'll be bound you're in league with the tinker; 'tis all a conspiracy to keep me from ever making Arden, or else to keep me just seven miles from it. That's a grand number--seven.”
A glint of white on the gra.s.s caught her eye; she stooped and found it to be a diminutive quill feather dropped by some pa.s.sing pigeon.
It lay across her palm for a second, and then--the whim taking her--she shot it exultantly into the air. Where it fell she marked the way it pointed, and that was the road she took.
It was beginning to seem years ago since she had sat in Marjorie Schuyler's den listening to Billy Burgeman's confession of a crime for which he had not sounded in the least responsible. That was on Tuesday. It was now Friday--three days--seventy-two hours later. She preferred to think of it in terms of hours--it measured the time proportionally nearer to the actual feeling of it. Strangely enough, it seemed half a lifetime instead of half a week, and Patsy could not fathom the why of it. But what puzzled her more was the present condition of Billy Burgeman, himself. As far as she was concerned he had suddenly ceased to exist, and she was pursuing a Balmacaan coat and plush hat that were quite tenantless; or--at most--they were supported by the very haziest suggestion of a personality. The harder she struggled to make a flesh-and-blood man therefrom the more persistently did it elude her--slipping through her mental grasp like so much quicksilver. She tried her best to picture him doing something, feeling something--the simplest human emotion--and the result was an absolute blank.
And all the while the shadow of a very real man followed her down the road--a shadow in grotesquely flapping rags, with head flung back. A dozen times she caught herself listening for the tramp of his feet beside hers, and flushed hotly at the nagging consciousness that pointed out each time only the mocking echo of her own tread. Like the left-behind cottage, the road became unexpectedly lonely and discouraging.
”The devil take them both!” she sputtered at last. ”When one man refuses to be real at all, and the other pesters ye with being too real--'tis time to quit their company and let them fetch up where and how they like.”
But an O'Connell is never a quitter; and deep down in Patsy's heart was the determination to see the end of the road for all three of them--if fate only granted the chance.
She came to a cross-roads at length. She had spied it from afar and hailed it as the end of her troubles; now she would learn the right way to Arden. But Patsy reckoned without chance--or some one else.
The sign-boards had all been ripped from their respective places on a central post and lay propped up against its base. There was little information in them for Patsy as she read: ”Petersham, five miles; Lebanon, twelve miles; Arden, seven miles--”
The last sign went spinning across the road, and Patsy dropped on a near-by stone with the anguish of a great tragedian. ”Seven miles--seven miles! I'm as near to it and I know as much about it as when I started three days ago. Sure, I feel like a mule, just, on a treadmill, with Billy Burgeman in the hopper.”
A feeling of utter helplessness took possession of her; it was as if her experiences, her actions, her very words and emotions, were controlled by an unseen power. Impulse might have precipitated her into the adventure, but since her feet had trod the first stretch of the road to Arden chance had sat somewhere, chuckling at his own comedy--making, while he pulled her hither and yon, like a marionette on a wire. Verily chance was still chuckling at the incongruity of his stage setting: A girl pursuing a strange man, and a strange sheriff pursuing the girl, and neither having an inkling of the pursuit or the reason for it.
On one thing her mind clinched fast, however: she would at least sit where she was until some one came by who could put her right, once and for all; rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief--she would stop whoever came first.
The arpeggio of an automobile horn brought her to her feet; the next moment the machine careened into sight and Patsy flagged it from the middle of the road, the lines of her face set in grim determination.
”Would you kindly tell me--” she was beginning when a girl in the tonneau cut her short:
”Why, it's Patsy O'Connell! How in the name of your blessed Saint Patrick did you ever get so far from home?”
The car was full of young people, but the girl who had spoken was the only one who looked at all familiar. Patsy's mind groped out of the present into the past; it was all a blind alley, however, and led nowhere.
The girl, seeing her bewilderment, helped her out. ”Don't you remember, I was with Marjorie Schuyler in Dublin when you were all so jolly kind to us? I'm Janet Payne--those awful 'Spitsburger Paynes'”--and the girl's laugh rang out contagiously.
The laugh swept Patsy's mind out into the open. She reached out and gripped the girl's hand. ”Sure, I remember. But it's a long way from Dublin, and my memory is slower at hearkening back than my heart. A brave day to all of you.” And her smile greeted the carful indiscriminately.