Part 24 (1/2)
But Patsy, slipping into her tent, hardly heard the last. If they played Greyfriars the next day, that meant they would leave Arden on the first train after they were packed; and that meant she was pa.s.sing once and for all beyond tramping reach of the tinker. There was a dull ache at her heart which she attempted neither to explain nor to a.n.a.lyze; it was there--that was enough. With impatient fingers she tore off Rosalind's wedding finery and attacked her make-up. Then she lingered over her dressing, hoping to avoid the rest of the company and any congratulatory friends who might happen to be browsing around. She wanted to be alone with her memories--to have and to hold them a little longer before they should grow too dim and far away.
A hand scratched at the flap of her tent and Janet Payne's voice broke into her reverie: ”Can't we see you, please, for just a moment?
We'll solemnly promise not to stay long.”
Patsy hooked back the flap and forced the semblance of a welcome into her greeting.
”It was simply ripping!” chorused the Dempsy Carters, each gripping a hand.
Janet Payne looked down upon her with adoring eyes. ”It was the best, the very best I've ever seen you or any one else play it. For the first time Rosalind seemed a real girl.”
But it was the voice of Gregory Jessup that carried above the others: ”Have you heard, Miss O'Connell? Burgeman died last night, and Billy was with him. He's come home.”
”Faith! then there's some virtue in signs, after all.”
A hush fell on the group. Patsy suddenly put out her hand. ”I'm glad for you--I'm glad for him; and I hope it ended right. Did you see him?”
”For a few minutes. There wasn't time to say much; but he looked like a man who had won out. He said he and the old man had had a good talk together for the first time in their lives--said it had given him a father whose memory could never shame him or make him bitter. I wanted to tell you, so you wouldn't have him on your mind any longer.”
She smiled retrospectively. ”Thank you; but I heaved him off nearly twenty-four hours ago.”
Left to herself again, she finished her packing; then tying under her chin a silly little poke-bonnet of white chiffon and corn-flowers, still somewhat crushed from its long imprisonment in a trunk, she went back for a last glimpse of the Forest and her Greenwood tree.
The place was deserted except for the teamsters who had come for the tents and the property trunks. A flash of white against the green of the tree caught her eye; for an instant she thought it one of Orlando's poetic effusions, overlooked in the play and since forgotten. Idly curious, she pulled it down and read it--once, twice, three times:
Where twin oaks rustle in the wind, There waits a lad for Rosalind.
If still she be so wond'rous kind, Perchance she'll ease the fretted mind That naught can cure--but Rosalind.
With a glad little cry she crumpled the paper in her hand and fled, straight as a throstle to its mate, to the giant twin oaks which were landmarks in the forest. Her eyes were a-search for a vagabond figure in rags; it was small wonder, therefore, that they refused to acknowledge the man in his well-cut suit of gray who was leaning partly against the hole of a tree and partly on a pilgrim staff. She stood and stared and gave no sign of greeting.
”Well, so the Duke's daughter found her rhyme?”
”I'm not knowing whether I'll own ye or not. Sure, ye've no longer the look of an honest tinker; and maybe we'd best part company now--before we meet at all.”
But the tinker had her firmly by both hands. ”That's too late now. I would have come in rags if there'd been anything left of them, but they are the only things I intend to part company with. And do you know”--he gripped her hands tighter--”I met an acquaintance as I came this way who told me, with eyes nearly popping out of his head, that the wonderful little person who had played herself straight into hundreds of hearts had actually been his cook for three days. Oh, la.s.s! la.s.s! how could you do it!”
”Troth! G.o.d made me a better cook than actress. Ye wouldn't want me to be slighting His handiwork entirely, would ye?”
The tinker shook his head at her. ”Do you know what I wanted to say to every one of those people who had been watching you? I wanted to say: 'You think she is a wonderful actress; she is more than that.
She is a rare, sweet, true woman, better and finer than any play she may act in or any part she may play in it. I, the tinker, have discovered this; and I know her better than does any one else in the whole world.'”
”Is that so?” A teasing touch of irony crept into Patsy's voice.
”'Tis a pity, now, the manager couldn't be hearing ye; he might give ye a chance to understudy Orlando.”
”And you think I'd be content to understudy any one! Why, I'm going to pitch Orlando straight out of the Forest of Arden; I'm going to pull Willie Shakespeare out of his grave and make him rewrite the whole play--putting a tinker in the leading role.”
”And is it a tragedy ye would have him make it?”
”Would it be a tragedy to take a tinker 'for better--for worse'?”