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 over 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 touch. "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?
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-conmittingly.
"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 Flopper, 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 yo 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 woodbox. He had never lacked company—the office stove and the spit-box 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, I will," 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 up-stairs 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 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 deprecatingiy 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 doglike 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
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Mayflower Photopay Corporation.
SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.
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
"IAM 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 Flopper'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! 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.
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