Seven Miles to Arden Part 15

The doctor was kindly and efficient, but professionally non-committal. The boy was badly injured, and he must be moved at once to the nearest house. Somehow they lifted Joseph and held him so as to break the jar of stone and rut as the doctor drove his car as carefully as he could down the road leading to the nearest farm-house.

There they were met with a generous warmth of sympathy and hospitality; the spare chamber was opened, and the farm wife bustled about, turning down the bed and bringing what comforts the house possessed. The doctor stayed as long as he could; but the stork was flying at the other end of the towns.h.i.+p, and he was forced to leave Patsy in charge, with abundant instructions.

Soon after his leaving the Dempsy Carters returned without Joseph's parents; they had gone to town and were not expected home until "ch.o.r.e time."

"All right," Patsy sighed. "Now ye had best all go your ways and I'll bide till morning."

"But can you?" Janet Payne asked it, wonderingly. "I thought you said you had to be in Arden to-day?"

A smile, whimsical and baffling, crept to the corners of Patsy's mouth. "Sure, life is crammed with things ye think have to be done to-day till they're matched against a sudden greater need. Chance and I started the wee lad on his journey, and 'twas meant I should see him safe to the end, I'm thinking. Good-by."

Gregory Jessup lingered a moment behind the others; his eyes were suspiciously red, and the hands that gripped Patsy's shook the least bit. "I wanted to say something: If--if you should ever happen to run up against Billy Burgeman--anywhere--don't be afraid to do him a kindness. He--he wouldn't mind it from you."

Patsy leaned against the door and watched him go. "There's another good lad. I'd like to be finding him again, too, some day." She pressed her hands over her eyes with a fierce little groan, as if she would blot out the enveloping tragedy along with her surroundings.

"Faith! what is the meaning of life, anyway? Until to-day it has seemed such a simple, straight road; I could have drawn a fair map of it myself, marking well the starting-point and tracing it reasonably true to the finish. But to-night--to-night--'tis all a tangle of lanes and byways. There's no sign-post ahead--and G.o.d alone knows where it's leading."

She went back to the spare chamber and took up her watching by the bedside; and for the rest of that waning day she sat as motionless as everything else in the room. The farm wife came and went softly, in between her preparations for supper. When it was ready she tried her best to urge Patsy down-stairs for a mouthful.

But the girl refused to stir. "I couldn't. The wee lad might come back while I was gone and find no one to reach him a hand or smile him a welcome."

A little later, as the dark gathered, she begged two candles and stood them on the stand beside the bed. Something in her movements or the flickering light must have pierced his stupor, for Joseph moaned slightly and in a moment opened his eyes.

Patsy leaned over him tenderly; could she only keep him content until the mother came and guard the mysterious borderland against all fear or pain, "Laddy, laddy," she coaxed, "do ye mind me--now?"

The veriest wisp of a smile answered her.

"And were ye for playing Jack yourself, tramping off to find the castle with a window in it for every day in the year?" Her voice was full of gentle, teasing laughter, the voice of a mother playing with a very little child. "I'm hoping ye didn't forget the promise--ye didn't forget to ask for the blessing before ye went, now?"

No sound came; but the boy's lips framed a silent "No." In another moment his eyes were drooping sleepily.

Night had come, and with it the insistent chorus of tree-toad and katydid, interspersed with the song of the vesper sparrow. From the kitchen came the occasional rattle of dish or pan and the far-away murmur of voices. Patsy strained her ears for some sound of car or team upon the road; but there was none.

Again the lids fluttered and opened; this time Joseph smiled triumphantly. "I thought--p'r'aps--I hadn't found you--after all--there was--so many ways--you might ha' went." He moistened his lips. "At the cross-roads--I wasn't quite--sure which to be takin', but I took--the right one, I did--didn't I?"

There was a ring of pride in the words, and Patsy moistened her lips.

Something clutched at her throat that seemed to force the words back.

"Aye," she managed to say at last.

"An' I've--found you now--you'll have to--promise me not to go back--not where they can get you. Si Perkins said--as how they'd soon forget--if you just stayed away long enough." The boy looked at her happily. "Let's--let's keep on--an' see what lies over the next hill."

To Patsy this was all an unintelligible wandering of mind; she must humor it. "All right, laddy, let's keep on. Maybe we'll be finding a wood full of wild creatures, or an ocean full of s.h.i.+ps."

"P'r'aps. But I'd rather--have it a big--big city. I never--saw a city."

"Aye, 'tis a city then"--Patsy's tone carried conviction--"the grandest city ever built; and the towers will be touching the clouds, and the streets will be white as sea-foam; and there will be a great stretch of green meadow for fairs--"

"An' circuses?"

"What else but circuses! And at the entrance there will be a gate with tall white columns--"

The sound Patsy had been listening for came at last through the open windows: the pad-pad-pad of horses' hoofs coming fast.

Joseph looked past Patsy and saw for the first time the candles by his bed. His eyes sparkled. "They _are_--woppin' big columns--an' at night--they have lighted lamps on top--all s.h.i.+nin'. Don't they?"

"Aye, to point the way in the dark."

"It's dark--now." The boy's voice lagged in a tired fas.h.i.+on.

"Maybe we'd best hurry--then."

A door slammed below, and there was a rustle of tongues.

"Who'll be 'tendin' the city gates?" asked Joseph.

"Who but the gatekeeper?"

m.u.f.fled feet crept up the stairs.

"Will he let us in?"

"He'll let ye in, laddy; I might be too much of a stranger."

"But I could speak for you. I--I wouldn't like--goin' in alone in the dark."

"Bless ye! ye'd not be alone." Patsy's voice rang vibrant with gladness. "Now, who do you think will be watching for ye, close to the gate? Look yonder!"

Joseph's eyes went back to the candles, splendid, tall columns they were, with beacon lamps capping each. "Who?"

Dim faces looked at him through the flickering light; but there was only one he saw, and it brought the merriest smile to his lips.

"Why--'course it's mother--sure's shootin'!"

Early the next morning Patsy waited on the braided rug outside the spare chamber for Joseph's mother to come out.

"I've been praying ye'd not hate me for the tale I told the little lad that day, the tale that brought him--yonder. And if it isn't overlate, I'd like to be thanking ye for taking me in that night."

The woman looked at her searchingly through swollen lids. "I cal'ate there's no thanks due; your man paid for your keep; he sawed and split nigh a cord o' wood that night--must ha' taken him 'most till mornin'." She paused an instant. "Didn't--he"--she nodded her head toward the closed door behind her--"never tell you what brought him?"

"Naught but that he wanted to find me."

"He believed in you," the woman said, simply, adding in a toneless voice: "I cal'ate I couldn't hate you. I never saw any one make death so--sweet like--as you done for--him."

Patsy spread her hands deprecatingly. "Why shouldn't it be sweet like? Faith! is it anything but a bit of the very road we've been traveling since we were born, the bit that lies over the hill and out of sight?" She took the woman's work-worn hands in hers. "'Tis terrible, losing a little lad; but 'tis more terrible never having one. G.o.d and Mary be with ye!"