Chapter V: Part 5

"An' you needn't t'ink I ain't," asserted the Flopper. "But I can't stop de town fallin' over itself to bring de whole farmyard, an' eggs, an' butter, an' flour, an' everyt'ing else out here every mornin', can I? She's blown in twice wid cream fer de Patriarch."

"What's her name?" inquired Madison quizzically.

"Mamie Rodgers," said the Flopper. "She says her old man keeps a store in de village."

"I know her," nodded Madison. "Pretty girl and all right, Flopper. But mind what you're doing, that's all. I don't want any complications to queer things around here--understand? But let's get down to the business that I came out about--the lay from now on. You can put Helena wise."

"Sure," said the Flopper earnestly.

"Well then, listen," said Madison. "The patients have begun to arrive--there were three of them in to-day. There's no more circus parades--everything's under the tent after this. I want you to wean the Patriarch entirely from that front room--that's to be free for anybody to enter so's they can drink in atmosphere--and see the contribution box. But they don't see the Patriarch. Get his armchair into his own room, make him comfortable there--get the idea? Now, there's no consultation hours--the Patriarch can't be seen just by asking for him--the only chance they get at the Patriarch is by an exercise of patience that'll work their faith up to a pitch that'll do them some good. The harder it is to get a thing, the more it's worth and the more you want it--that's the principle. See?"

"Sure," said the Flopper, licking his lips.

"Sometimes," Madison went on, "you're to keep the Patriarch under cover for two or three days, while they hang around working themselves into a frenzy. And when they do see him they have to scramble for it. You don't lead him out to them--ever. Make them waylay him when you take him for a walk--make them crawl and hop and show they've got faith, make them believe they've got faith themselves--we'll get some more cures, or near-cures anyway, that way, and we won't get them any other way, and we've got to have some sort of cures coming along fairly regularly. Do you get me, Flopper? If there's a party on a cot a hundred yards away and he begs you to bring the Patriarch to him, say him nay. Everybody has got to get into the reserved paddock by themselves--tell them that no man can be cured who has not got the faith to reach the Patriarch by himself--tell them to get up and _walk_ to him--tell them what you did."

"Swipe me!" said the Flopper. "Say, Doc, youse are de one an' only. I gotcher--put it up to _dem_ everytime."

"Exactly," said Madison. "It's their move every minute--make them feel that if they don't get what they're after it's their own fault--that it's their own lack of faith that's to blame. And the longer they have to wait to see the Patriarch, the more they become impressed that faith is necessary, and--oh, well, psychology is the greatest jollier of them all."

"Eh?" inquired the Flopper. "I ain't on dere, Doc."

"It's very simple," smiled Madison, "They'll want to convince themselves that they _have_ got faith, that it's all bottled up and ready to have the cork drawn when called for, and they'll prove it to themselves by laying an offering upon the shrine as evidence of faith _before_ the goods are delivered."

"I gotcher!" said the Flopper enthusiastically. "Why say, Doc, dat's de way I'd do meself--swipe me, if I wouldn't!"

"That's the way nearly everybody would do," said Madison, laughing. "There's at least a few similar kinks common to our noble race--we're busy most of the time trying to fool ourselves one way or another. Well, that's about all. I can't lay out a programme for every minute of the day--you and Helena have got to use your heads and work along that general idea. You play up your gratitude strong. And, oh yes--keep the altar box well baited. Let Helena put some of her near-diamond rings and joujabs in until we collect some genuine ones--and then keep the genuine ones going--change every day for variety, you know. And take the silver money out every time you see any in--not that we scorn it in the great aggregate, far from it--it's just psychology again, Flopper. I went to church once and sat beside a duck with a white waistcoat and chop whiskers, who wore the dollar sign sticking out so thick all over him that you couldn't see anything else; and when it came time for collection he peeled a bill off a roll the size of a house, and waited for the collection plate to come along. But he got his eye on the plate a couple of pews ahead and it was full of coppers and chicken feed, and he did the palming act with the bill slicker than a faro dealer--and whispered to me to change a quarter for him."

"And did you?" asked the Flopper anxiously.

"Oh, wake up, Flopper!" grinned Madison; then, suddenly: "Hullo! Who's that?"

Across the lawn, coming through the row of maples from the direction of the wagon track, appeared two figures.

"Dat's who," said the Flopper, after gazing an instant. "It's Helena an' Thornton."

"So it is," agreed Madison. "Get behind the trellis here then--it wouldn't do for him to see me out here at this time of night."

They rose noiselessly from the bench, and slipped quickly behind the trellis. Toward them, walking slowly came the two figures, Helena leaning on Thornton's arm. Thornton was talking, but in too low a tone to be overheard. Then a silence appeared to fall between the two, and it was not until they reached the porch, close to Madison and the Flopper, that either spoke again.

Then Thornton held out his hand.

"Good-night, Miss Vail--and good-by temporarily," he said. "I suppose I shall be gone four or five days; I'm going up on the morning train, you know. I wish you'd go as often as you can to see Naida in the car while I'm away--will you? Her condition worries me, though she insists that she is completely cured, and she will not listen to any advice. I have an idea that she has overtaxed herself--apart from her hip disease, her heart was in a very critical state. You'll go to her, won't you?"

"Yes," said Helena, "of course, I will."

Their voices dropped lower, and for a moment only a murmur reached Madison; and then, with another "Good-night, Miss Vail," Thornton started back across the lawn.

Madison could hear Helena fumbling with the door latch, and by the time she had succeeded in opening the door the retreating figure of Thornton was a safe distance away. Madison called in a whisper:

"Here, Helena! Wait a minute!"

There was a quick, startled little exclamation from the doorway, and Helena came out hurriedly from the porch.

"Who's there?" she cried in a low voice. "Oh"--as they stepped into view--"you, Doc, and the Flopper! What were you doing behind that trellis?"

"Keeping out of Thornton's road," said Madison. "So he's going away, eh? What for?"

"Business," replied Helena. "Has to go to some meeting in Chicago--he's leaving his wife and the private car here. What did you come at this hour for?"

"Lines for the next act," said Madison; "but the Flopper's got it all, and he'll put you on." He stepped toward Helena and slipped his arm around her waist. "Come on, it's early yet, let's go for a little walk. The Flopper'll excuse us, and I--"

"I thought you said," Helena interrupted, disengaging herself quietly, "that we had to play the game to the limit and take no chances."

"Well, so I did," admitted Madison, and his arm crept around her again; "but I guess we've earned a little holiday and--"

"'Nix on that,' I think was what you said," said Helena with a queer little laugh, drawing away again. "And I really think you were right, Doc--we ought to play the game without breaking the rules, and so--good-night"--and she turned and ran from him into the cottage.

Madison stared after her in a sort of helpless state of chagrin.

"Mabbe," said the Flopper, "mabbe she's lonely."

--XV--

A MIRACLE OVERDONE

Helena sat in the Patriarch's room, and her piquant little face was pursed up into a scowl so daintily grim as to be almost ludicrous. The Patriarch, in his armchair, had been scrawling words upon the slate all evening--and she had been wiping them off! He scrawled another now--and mechanically, without looking at it, by way of answer she pressed his arm to appease him.

She had been restless all day, and she was restless now. What had induced her to treat Madison the way she had the night before? Pique, probably. No; it wasn't pique. It was just getting back at him--and he deserved it. He hadn't seemed to mind it much, though--he had only laughed and teased her about it that morning when he had joined the Patriarch and herself in their walk along the beach.

With her chin in her hands, she began to study the Patriarch through half closed eyes--deaf and dumb and blind--and somehow it all seemed excruciatingly funny and she wanted to laugh hysterically. He seemed to sense the fact that she was looking at him, and, with quick, instant intuition, he smiled and reached out his hand toward her.

Unconsciously, involuntarily, she drew back--then, recovering herself the next instant, she took his hand. Now, why had she done that? What was the matter with her? Again she felt that sudden impulse to scream, or laugh, or shout, or make some noise--it seemed as though she were penned in, smothered somehow, imprisoned. What _was_ the matter? Nerves? She had never known what nerves were in all her life! Couldn't she play the game and act her part without making a fool of herself? She had played a part all her life, hadn't she? Maybe it was quite a shock to her system to take a place amongst really good and simple folk!

She laughed a little shortly--then rose abruptly from her chair, and began to walk up and down the room. The trouble was that the soft pedal was getting unbearable. That air of awed hush and solemnity, morning, noon and night, without anything to relieve it, was just a trifle too drastic and sudden a change in life for her to accept calmly and swallow in one dose without feeling any effects from it! If she could be transported now for an hour, say, to the Roost, or Heligman's and the turkey trot, or the Rivoli, or any old place--except Needley, Maine!

"Gee!" said Helena to herself. "If I don't break loose and kick the traces over for a minute or two, I'll be clawing the bars of a dippy asylum before I'm through--and just listen to the sweet, girlish language I'm using--I'd like to bite something!"

She turned impulsively to the door, stepped out into the hall, and called the Flopper from his room.

"Flopper, you go in there and stay with the Patriarch for awhile," she ordered curtly. "I'm going down on the beach to yell."

"Yell?" inquired the Flopper, blinking helplessly.

"I'm going outside to yell--_yell._ You know what 'yell' means, don't you?" she snapped.

"Swipe me!" observed the Flopper, gazing at her anxiously. "Skirts is all de same--youse never know wot dey'll do next. Wot you wanter yell fer?"

"You mind your own business and do as you're told!" said Helena tartly. "Go in there and stay with the Patriarch."

"Sure," said the Flopper, grinning a little now. "Sure t'ing--but youse needn't get on yer ear about it. Cheer up, mabbe de Doc'll be out to-night, an' if he don't hear youse yellin' himself will I tell him youse are out on de beach t'rowin' a fit?"

"No," Helena answered sharply; "tell him nothing--I'm out." Then, quite as quickly, changing her mind: "Yes; tell him I'm down there--or come and get me yourself"--and she walked abruptly into her own room.

"Now wot do youse t'ink of dat?" demanded the Flopper of the universe. He blinked at the door she had closed in his face. "Say," he asserted, with sublime inconsistency, "if Mamie Rodgers was like all de rest of dem, I'd t'row up me dukes before de gong rang." The Flopper went into the Patriarch's room, and took the chair beside the other that Helena had vacated. "Swipe me, if I wouldn't!" he added fervently, by way of confirmation.

Helena, in her own room, opened one of her trunks, lifted out the tray, worked somewhat impatiently down through several layers of yellow, paper-covered literature, that would have made the classics on the Patriarch's bookshelves shrivel up and draw their skirts hurriedly around them in righteous horror could they but have known or been capable of such intensely human characteristics, and finally produced a daintily jewelled little cigarette case and match box. She slammed the tray back, slammed the cover of the trunk down, snatched up a wrap, flung it over her head and shoulders--and left the cottage.

She ran down to the beach at top speed, as if she couldn't get there fast enough.

"And now I'm just going to yell and go crazy as much as ever I like!" panted Helena to the rollers.

Instead, she sat down with her back to a rock, and opened her cigarette case. She took out a cigarette, extracted a match from the match box, lighted the match--and flung both cigarette and match from her.

"I don't want to be crazy--I don't know what I want," said Helena petulantly. Her chin went into her hands, and she stared wide-eyed at the breaking surf. "I wonder what it all means?" she murmured, with a mirthless little laugh.

Her thoughts began to run riot. What _did_ it all mean? What was this faith? There was, there _must_ be something in it. There was the Holmes boy--suppose it _was_ only some nervous disorder--well, something had risen superior to whatever it was and had _cured_ him. There was Naida Thornton--true, she was ill again--her heart, Mr. Thornton had said--but she could still walk, a thing she had not been able to do for a long time until she came to Needley.

Helena laughed again--oh, it was a good game! The Doc had made no mistake about that--but then, when it came to planting anything the Doc rarely did make a mistake. Fancy fifty thousand dollars in one haul! _Fifty thousand in one haul!_ The bank had sent her a passbook with that amount to her credit. And that was only the beginning--hardly anybody had come yet, and already there was several hundred dollars more in real money that she had handed over to Madison from the offering box.

Money! They'd have more money than they'd know what to do with before they got through--there was nothing the matter with the game--all there was to do was to play it to a finish. And there wasn't the slightest risk about it--everything was given voluntarily. Oh, the game was all right--but somehow she wasn't happy--not nearly so happy as she had been in New York, even in lean periods when she and the Doc had been pressed for money. But, anyway, then they had been together, and fought, and laughed, and loved, and quarrelled through flush times and bad.

Maybe that was it! The Doc! Of course, she loved him--she had loved him ever since she had known him. There was no secret about that--she loved him fiercely, passionately, more than she loved anything else in the world, with all the love she was capable of--more than he loved her--he seemed to accept her, too often, so casually, so indifferently, so much as a matter of course. He was so confidently and complacently sure of her--and she was not at all sure of him. She was only sure that he was quite right in being sure--she couldn't help loving him if she tried.

She had hardly seen anything of him since that night in the Roost before he had left for Needley--and he hadn't seemed to care much whether she did or not. That talk about playing the game and taking no chances was all bosh--there had been plenty of chances where it wouldn't have hurt the game any. Perhaps the little jolt she had given him last night, turning the tables a little, would wake him up a bit. Perhaps, as the Flopper had said, he would come out to-night, and--

"Helena! Helena!"

Helena sat suddenly upright--the noise of the surf muffled the sound of the voice, but that was probably Doc now--she could hear footsteps running from the direction of the cottage. Deliberately, Helena leaned back again against the rock, took out a cigarette and with no attempt to shade the flame of the match, rather to use it as a challenging beacon, held it to the cigarette--but for the second time she flung both match and cigarette hurriedly away. It wasn't Madison at all--it was only the Flopper.

"Say!" gasped the Flopper, blowing hard. "Why can't youse answer when yer called? Wot you tryin' ter do--light a bonfire ter save yer voice? Say, youse wanter get a wiggle on--beat it--quick! Dey're after you."

"What?" cried Helena sharply, jumping to her feet. "After me? Who? What do you mean?"

"I dunno," said the Flopper with sudden imperturbability--and evidently quite pleased with the agitation he had caused. "He talks like his mouth was full, an' he's got a scare t'rown inter him so's his teeth have got de jiggles."

Helena caught the Flopper's arm and shook him angrily.

"What are you talking about--what is it?" she demanded fiercely.

"It's de porter from de private car," said the Flopper, wriggling away from her. "He drove out here. De lady's on de toboggan--sick. She's askin' fer youse an'--"

Helena waited for no more. She raced to the cottage and around to the front. A wagon was standing before the porch; the negro porter on the seat.

"What is it, Sam?" she called anxiously, as she came up. "Is Mrs. Thornton seriously ill?"

"Yas--yas'um, miss," Sam answered excitedly. "I done feel in mah bones she's gwine to die. Miss Harvey she done tole me to get a team an' drive foh you-all like de debbil."

Without waste of words, Helena clambered in beside him.

"Then drive," she said shortly. "Drive as fast as you can."

At first, as they drove along, Helena plied Sam with questions--and then lapsed into silence. The man did not know very much--only that Mrs. Thornton had been taken suddenly ill, and that the nurse had sent him on the errand that had brought him to the cottage. A turmoil of conflicting emotions filled Helena's mind, obtruding upon her anxiety, for she had grown to care a great deal for Naida Thornton--this was a complication that Doc Madison must know about--Thornton had left that morning and was already far away--the newspaper men, or some of them at least, were still in the town--and there were so many things else--they all came crowding upon her, as she clung to her seat in the jolting wagon. But Doc must know--that rose a paramount consideration. It seemed an age, an eternity before they stopped finally at the station.

She sprang out and turned to Sam.

"Sam," she directed hurriedly, "you go back to the Congress Hotel and get Mr. Madison. Mr. Madison is a friend of Mr. Thornton's, you know. Go about it quietly--you needn't let any one know what you came for. You can tell Mr. Madison what the trouble is--and tell him that I sent you, and that I am here. Do you understand?"

"Yas'um, mum," said Sam impressively. "Just you done leab all that to me, missy."

Across the track on the siding, the private car was dimly lighted, the window curtains down. Helena crossed the track and mounted the steps. As she reached the platform, Miss Harvey, who had evidently heard her coming, opened the door and drew her quietly inside.

A glance at the nurse's face brought a sudden chill to Helena's heart. Miss Harvey, capable, controlled, grave, smiled at her a little sadly.

"I sent for you, Miss Vail," she said in a low tone, "because Mrs. Thornton has been asking for you incessantly ever since the attack came on three-quarters of an hour ago."

"You mean," said Helena, "that--that there is--"

"No hope," the nurse completed. "I am afraid there is none--it is her heart. The condition has been aggravated by her activity during the last few days since she has been able to walk--though I have done everything within my power to keep her quiet." Miss Harvey laid her hand on Helena's arm. "There is one thing, Miss Vail, I feel that I must say to you, in justice both to you and to myself, before you see her. Whatever my personal ideas may be of what has taken place here, my professional duty as a nurse demanded that I send for a doctor at once, and I want you to know that is what I did, though I have not been successful in getting one. There is no doctor here, so I telegraphed; but the doctor at Barton's Mills is away."

"Yes," said Helena mechanically.

"I just wanted you to understand," said Miss Harvey. "Will you come and see Mrs. Thornton now?"

"Does she know," whispered Helena, as she followed the nurse down the corridor of the car, "does she know that--how ill she is?"

"Yes," Miss Harvey answered simply. She stopped before a compartment door, opened it softly, and, stepping aside, motioned Helena to enter.

A little cry rose to Helena's lips that she choked back somehow, and a mist for a moment blinded her eyes--then she was kneeling beside the brass bed, and was holding in both her own the hand that was stretched out to her.

"Helena--dear--I am so glad you came," said Mrs. Thornton faintly. "I--I am not going to get better, and there are some things I want to say to you."

"Oh, but you are," returned Helena quickly, smiling bravely now. "You mustn't say that."

Mrs. Thornton shook her head.

"Dear," she said, "I know. And I know that what I have to say I must say quickly." Her voice seemed to grow suddenly stronger with a great earnestness. "Listen, dear. This must not make any difference to this wonderful work that has just begun here. I was cured of my hip disease--perfectly cured--no one can deny that--this is my own fault, I have overdone it--I would not listen to reason--to do what I have done in the last few days, when for a year and a half I had never moved a step, was more than my heart could stand. I should have been more quiet--but I was so glad, so happy--and I wanted to tell everybody--I wanted all the world to know, so that others could find the joy that I had found."

She paused--and Helena sought for words that, somehow, would not come.

The nurse was bending over the bed on the other side, and Mrs. Thornton turned her head toward Miss Harvey now. She smiled gently, as though to rob her words of any possible hurt.

"Nurse, I want--to be alone with Miss Vail for just a moment."

Miss Harvey, doubtful, hesitated.

"Only for a moment," pleaded Mrs. Thornton. "You can stay just outside the door."

Reluctantly, Miss Harvey complied, and left the room.

Mrs. Thornton pressed Helena's hand tightly.

"Listen, dear--this must not make any difference. It--it is the one thing that will make me happy now--to know that. I--I have written a little note to Robert about it, to be given to him. Oh, if I could only have lived to help--I should have tried so hard to be worthy to have a part in it. Not like you, dear, with your sweetness and nobleness, for God seems to have singled you out for this--but just to have had a little part. How wonderful it would have been, bringing peace and health and gladness where only sorrow and misery was before, and--and--"

Mrs. Thornton's eyes closed, and she lay for a moment quiet.

A blackness seemed to settle upon Helena--and how cold it was! She shivered. Her dark eyes, wide, tearless now, stared, startled, dazed, at the white face on the pillow crowned with its mass of golden hair. Her sweetness! Her nobleness! Helena's lips half parted and her breath came in quick, fierce, little gasps--it seemed as though she had been struck a blow that she could not quite understand because somehow it had numbed her senses--only there was a hurt that curiously, strangely seemed to mock as it stabbed with pain.

"There is Robert"--Mrs. Thornton spoke again--"I am sure he will do as I have asked him to do about this, but--you can have a great deal of influence with him. It--it perhaps may seem a strange thing to say, but I pray that you two may be brought very close to each other. Robert needs a good, true woman so much in his life--and I--we--we--my illness--we have never had a home in its truest sense. Yes, it is strange for me perhaps to talk like this--but it is in my heart. I would like to think of you both engaged in this wonderful work together."

Again, through exhaustion, Mrs. Thornton stopped--and Helena, from gazing at the other's pallid countenance in a sort of involuntary, frightened fascination, dropped her head suddenly upon the bed-spread and hid her face.

Mrs. Thornton's hand found Helena's head and rested upon it.

"I would like to see Robert happy," she murmured, after a little silence. "Riches do not make happiness--they are so sad and empty a thing when the heart is empty. I know he would be happy with you--he has spoken so much of you lately--perhaps--perhaps--"

Mrs. Thornton's voice was very faint--the words reached Helena plainly enough as words, but they seemed to reach her consciousness in an unreal, unnatural, blunted way, coma-like--pregnant of significance, yet with the significance itself elusive, evading her.

"A good woman," whispered Mrs. Thornton, "I have tried to be a good woman--but--but my life, our wealth, our position has made it so artificial. You have never known these things, dear--and so you are just as God made you--good woman, so pure, so wonderful in your freshness and your innocence. Robert's life has been so barren--so barren. I would like to know that--that it will not always be so. Oh, if it could only be that you and he should carry on this great, glad work together--and love should come into his life--and yours--and sunshine--promise me, dear, that--"

The voice died away. Helena, with head still buried, waited for Mrs. Thornton to speak again. It seemed she waited for a great length of time--and yet there was no such thing as time. It seemed as though she were transported to a place of great and intense blackness where it was miserably cold and chill, and she stood alone and lost, and strove to find her way--and there was no way--only blackness everywhere, immeasurable. She lifted her head suddenly, desperately, to shake the unreality from her--and her eyes fell upon the gentle face, peaceful, smiling, calm, and so _still_--and a startled, frightened cry rang from her lips.

There was the quick, hurried rush of some one coming into the room, and the nurse brushed by her and bent instantly over the bed--after that, quite soon after that it seemed, and yet it might have been quite a little while, she found herself outside in the corridor and the nurse was speaking to her.

"Sam is still out there," said Miss Harvey gently. "I told him to keep the team. You cannot help me, and I want you to go home, dear. And will you ask Sam to go for Mr. Madison at the hotel on the way back--I do not know who else I can call upon for advice."

"I've sent for him already," said Helena numbly.

"Have you, dear?" Miss Harvey said. "That was very thoughtful of you--I'm sure he'll be here presently then. And now, dear, it is much better that you should go."

There were no tears in Helena's eyes as she stepped down from the car vestibule to the tracks--only a drawn misery in her face. That was Doc over there, pacing up and down on the platform in the darkness--wasn't it weird the way his cigar glowed bright and then went out and then glowed bright again--like a gigantic firefly!

She was across the tracks before he saw her, then, hurrying forward, he helped her to the platform.

"Well?" he asked quickly.

Helena did not answer.

Madison took the cigar from his lips, leaned forward, and peered into Helena's face--then drew back with a low whistle.

"Dead?" he said.

Helena nodded.

"Miss Harvey wants to see you," she said.

"Say," said Madison slowly, "first crack out of the box this looks bad, don't it? If this gets around here without a muffler on it, it might make the railroad companies hang fire with those circulars for excursion rates to Needley--what?"

"I--I think I hate you!" Helena cried out suddenly, passionately. "She's--she's dead--and that's all you think about!"

Madison stared at Helena for a moment calmly.

"Now, look here, Helena," said he quietly, "don't get excited. Of course I'm sorry--I'm not a brute and I've got feelings--but I can't afford to lose my head. Something's got to be done, and done quick. We don't want this headlined in every paper in the United States to-morrow morning--Thornton wouldn't want it either. You say Miss Harvey wants to see me? Well, that'll help some--she'll probably do as she's told, and--"

Madison paused abruptly, gazed abstractedly at the private car across the tracks on the siding, and pulled at his cigar.

Helena watched him in silence--a little bitterly. That quick, clever, cunning brain of his was at work again--scheming--scheming--always scheming--and Naida Thornton was dead.

"I'll tell you," said Madison, speaking again as abruptly as he had stopped. "It's simple enough. There's a westbound train due in an hour or so--we'll couple the private car onto that and send it right along to Chicago. What the authorities don't know won't hurt them. There's no reason for anybody except Thornton to know what's happened till she gets there--I'll wire him. The main thing is that the car won't be here in the morning, and that'll take a little of the intimate touch of Needley off. It might well have happened on her way home--journey too much for her--left too soon--see? Thornton'll see it in the right light because he's got fifty thousand dollars worth of faith in what's going on here--get that? He won't want to harm the 'cause.' There'll be some publicity of course, we can't help that--but it won't hurt much--and Thornton can gag a whole lot of it--he'd want to anyway for his own sake. Now then, kid, there's Sam over there--you pile into the wagon and go home, while I get busy--and don't you say a word about this, even to the Flopper."

And so Helena drove back to the Patriarch's cottage that night, a little silent figure in the back seat of the wagon--and her hands were locked tightly together in her lap--and to her, as she drove over the peaceful, moonlit road, and under the still, arched branches of the trees in the wood that hid the starlight, came again and again the words of one who had gone, who perhaps knew better now--"you are as God made you."

--XVI--

A FLY IN THE OINTMENT

The days passed. And with the days, morning, noon and night, they came by almost every train, the sick and suffering, the lame, the paralytics and the maimed--a steady influx by twos and threes and fours--from north over the Canadian boundary line, from the far west, and from the southernmost tip of the Florida coast. No longer on the company's schedule was Needley a flag station--it was a regular stop, and its passenger traffic returns were benign and pleasing things in the auditor's office. And it was an accustomed sight now, many times a day--what had once been a strange, rare spectacle--that slow procession wending its way from the station to the town, some carried, some limping upon crutches, all snatching at hope of life and health and happiness again. Needley, perforce, had become a vast boarding house, as it were--there were few homes indeed that did not harbor their quota of those who sought the "cure."

But there were others too who came--who were not sick--who had not faith--who came to laugh and peer and peek. Pleasure yachts dropped their anchors in the cove around the headland from the Patriarch's cottage--and their dingeys brought women decked out _de rigeur_ in middy blouses and sailor collars, and nattily attired gentlemen whose only claim to seamanship was the clothes, or rather, the costumes that they wore.

They came laughing, supercilious, tolerant, contemptuous, pitying the inanity of those they held less strongly-minded than themselves who should be taken in by so apparent, glaring and monstrous a fake. They came because it was the rage, the thing to do, quite the thing to do, quite a necessary part of the summer's itinerary. But that they, should they have been sick, would ever have dreamed of coming there was too perfectly ridiculous an idea for words. How strange a thing is the human animal!

They came in their rather cruel, merciless gaiety--and they left sobered and impressed; the ladies holding their embroidered parasols at a less jaunty angle; the men with lightened pockets, their names enrolled in the contribution book in that quiet, simple room, whose door was open, whose cash-box was unguarded, where none asked them to either enter or withdraw. They came and found no air of charlatanism such as they had looked for--only a peaceful, unostentatious, patient air of sincerity that left them remorseful and abashed. They came and went, a source of revenue not counted on or thought of before by Madison; but a source that swelled the coffers, brimming fuller day by day, to overflowing.

In three weeks from the night of Mrs. Thornton's death, which had had at least no visible effect on Needley, Needley was metamorphosed--with a spontaneity, so to speak, that astounded even Madison himself--into something that approximated very closely in reality the word-picture he had drawn of it that night in the Roost. Madison looked upon his work and saw that it was pleasing beyond his dreams. Money was pouring in--no single breath of suspicion came to disquiet him. Even the cures were working satisfactorily--even Pale Face Harry, who had become great friends with the farmer at whose house he boarded, and who now spent most of his time in the fields, was showing an improvement--Pale Face Harry coughed less. The Flopper was as happy as a lark--and Mamie Rodgers blushed now at mention of the name of Coogan. Helena, demure, adored by all who saw her, went daily about her housework in the cottage, and waited upon the Patriarch with gentle tenderness; while the Patriarch, docile, full of supreme trust and confidence in every one, radiant in Helena's companionship, was as putty in their hands. And so Madison looked upon his work and saw no flaw--but with the days he grew ill at ease.

"It's too easy," he told himself. "I guess that's it--it's too easy. The whole show runs itself. Why, there's nothing to do but count the cash!"

And yet in his heart he knew that wasn't it--it was Helena. Helena was beginning to trouble him a little. She was playing the game all right--playing it to the limit--and making a hit at every performance. Her name was on every tongue, and men and women alike spoke of her sweetness, her goodness, her loveliness. Well, that was all right, Helena was a star no matter where you put her--but something was the matter. Helena wasn't the Helena of a month ago back in little old New York. He hadn't managed to get a dozen words with her since that night on the station platform, without taking chances and gaining admission to the cottage through the Flopper's window after dark--and then she had held him at arm's length.

"The matter with me?" she had said. "There isn't anything the matter with me--is there? I'm--I'm playing the game."

It certainly couldn't be grief over Mrs. Thornton's death--she had begun to act that way before Mrs. Thornton died--that night when she came home with Thornton, and he and the Flopper were behind the trellis. Thornton! Had Thornton anything to do with it, after all? No--Madison had laughed at it then, and he had much more reason to laugh at it now. Thornton was still in Chicago, and hadn't been back to Needley.

For three weeks this sort of thing occupied a considerably larger share of Madison's thoughts than he was wont to allow even the most vexing problems to disturb his usually imperturbable and complacent self--and then one afternoon, he smiled a little grimly, and, leaving the hotel, started along the road toward the Patriarch's cottage.

"What Helena needs is--a jolt!" said Madison to himself. "I guess her trouble is one of those everlasting feminine kinks that all women since Adam's wife have patted themselves on the back over, because they think it's a dark veil of mystery that is beyond the acumen of brute man to understand. That's what the novelists write pages about--wade right in up to the armpits in it--feminine psychology--great! And the women smile commiseratingly at the novelist--the idea of a man even pretending to understand them--kind of a blooming merry-go-round and everybody happy! Feminine psychology! I guess a little masculine kick-up is about the right dope! What the deuce have I been standing for it for? I don't have to--I don't have to go around making sheep's-eyes at her--what? She wants grabbing up and being rushed right off her feet _a la_ Roost, and--hello, Mr. Marvin, how are you to-day!"--he had halted beside a middle-aged man who was sitting on the grass at the roadside.

"Better, Mr. Madison, better," returned the man, heartily. "Really very much better."

"Fine!" said Madison.

"We all saw the Patriarch to-day--God bless him!" said Marvin. "We've been waiting out there two days, you know--that woman with the bad back got up off her stretcher."

"Splendid!" exclaimed Madison enthusiastically. "And the glorious thing about it is that there's no reason why everybody can't be cured if they'll only come here in the right spirit."

"That's so!" agreed Marvin. "None are so blind as those who won't see--they're in utter blackness compared with the physical blindness of that grand and marvelous man. I'm going home myself in another week--better than ever I was in my life. It was stomach with me, you know--doctors said there wasn't any chance except to operate, and that an operation was too slim a chance to be worth risking it." He got up and laughed, carefree, joyous. "God-given place down here, isn't it? Clean--that's it. Clean air, clean-souled people, clean everything you see or do or hear. Say, it kind of opens your eyes to real living, doesn't it--it's the luxuries and the worries and the pace and the damn-fooleries that kill. Well, I'm going along back now to get some of Mrs. Perkins' cream--clean, rich cream--and homemade bread and butter--imagine me with an appetite and able to eat!"

He laughed again--and Madison joined him in the laugh, slapping him a cordial good-by on the shoulder.

Madison started on once more--but now his progress was slow, frequently interrupted, for he stopped a score of times to chat and exchange a few words with those whom he passed on the road. There were cheery faces everywhere--even those of the sufferers who straggled out along the road coming back from the Patriarch's cottage. It was a cheery afternoon, warm and balmy and bright--everything was cheery. The farmers, their vocations for the moment changed, waved their whips at him and shouted friendly pleasantries as they drove by with those who were unable to make the trip from the Patriarch's unaided.

Madison began to experience a strange, exhilarating sense of uplift upon him, a sort of rather commendatory and gratified feeling with himself. Marvin had hit it pretty nearly right with his "clean-wholesomeness" idea--it kind of made one feel good to be a part of it. Madison, for the time being, relegated Helena and his immediate mission to a secondary place in his thoughts.

Young girls, young men, middle-aged men, elderly women, all ages of both sexes he passed as he went along; some alone, some in couples, some in little groups, some on crutches, some in wheel-chairs, some walking without extraneous aid--he had turned into the woods now, and he could see them strewn out all along the wagon track under the cool, interlacing branches overhead.

Now he stepped aside to let a wagon pass him, and answered the farmer's call and the smile of the occupants in kind; now some one stopped to tell him again the story of the afternoon--there had been cures that day and the Patriarch had come amongst them. Some laughed, some sang a little, softly, to themselves--all smiled--all spoke in glad, hopeful words, clean words--there seemed no base thought in any mind, only that cleanness, that wholesomeness that had so appealed to Marvin--that somehow Madison found he was taking a delight in responding to, and, because it afforded him whimsical pleasure, chose to pretend that he was quite a genuine exponent of it himself.

He reached the end of the wagon track, and paused involuntarily on the edge of the Patriarch's lawn as he came out from the trees. Like low, lulling music came the distant, mellowed noise of waters, the breaking surf. And the cottage was a bower of green now, clothed in ivy and vine--upon the trellises the early roses were budding--fragrance of growing things blended with the salt, invigorating breeze from the ocean. And upon the lawn, flanked with its sturdy maples, all in leaf, that toned the sunshine in soft-falling shadows, stood, or sat, or reclined on cots, the supplicants who still tarried though the Patriarch had gone. And now one came reverently out of the cottage door from that room that was never closed; now another went in--and still another.

Madison smiled suddenly, broadly, with immense satisfaction and contentment--and then his eyes fixed quite as suddenly on the single-seated buggy that was coming toward him on the driveway across the lawn. That was Mamie Rodgers driving--and that was Helena beside her.

Madison recalled instantly the object of his visit--and instantly he whistled a rather surprised little whistle under his breath. How alluringly Helena's brown hair coiled in wavy wealth upon her head; there wasn't any need of rouge for color in the oval face; the dark eyes were soft and deep and glorious; and she sat there in a little white muslin frock as dainty as a medallion from a master's brush.

"Say," said Madison to himself, "say, I never quite got it before. Say, she's--she's lovely--and that's my Helena. It's no wonder Thornton stared at her that day we touched him for the fifty, and"--suddenly--"damn Thornton!"

But the buggy was beside him now, and he lifted his hat as Mamie Rodgers pulled up the horse.

"Good afternoon, Miss Rodgers," he said. "Good afternoon, Miss Vail--how is the Patriarch to-day?"

"He is very well, thank you," Helena answered--and being custodian of the whip brushed a fly off the horse's flank.

"I was just coming out to pay you a little visit," remarked Madison, trying to catch her eye.

"Oh, I'm _so_ sorry!" said Helena sweetly, still busy with the fly. "Mamie is going to take me for a drive--and afterwards we are going to her house for tea."

"Oh!" said Madison, a little blankly.

Helena smiled at him, nodded, and touched the horse with the whip--and then she leaned suddenly out toward him, as the buggy started forward.

"Oh, Mr. Madison," she called, "I forgot to tell you! I had a letter from Mr. Thornton to-day--and he's coming back to-morrow."

--XVII--

IN WHICH HELENA TAKES A RIDE

The wind kissed Helena's face, bringing dainty color to her cheeks, tossing truant wisps of hair this way and that, as the car swept onward. But she sat strangely silent now beside Thornton at the steering wheel.

It seemed to her that she was living, not her own life, not life as she had known and looked upon it in the years before, but living, as it were, in a strange, suspended state that was neither real nor unreal, as in a dream that led her, now through cool, deep forests, beside clear, sparkling streams where all was a great peace and the soul was at rest, serene, untroubled, now into desolate places where misery had its birth and shame was, where there was fear, and the mind stood staggered and appalled and lost and knew not how to guide her that she might flee from it all.

At moments most unexpected, as now when motoring with Thornton in the car that he had brought back with him on, his return to Needley, when laughing at the Flopper's determined pursuit of Mamie Rodgers, when engaged in the homely, practical details of housekeeping about the cottage, there came flashing suddenly upon her the picture of Mrs. Thornton lying on the brass bed in the car compartment that night, every line of the pale, gentle face as vivid, as actual as though it were once more before her in reality, and in her ears rang again, stabbing her with their unmeant condemnation, those words of sweetness, love and purity that held her up to gaze upon herself in ghastly, terrifying mockery.

It stupified her, bewildered her, frightened her. She seemed, for days and weeks now, to be drifting with a current that, eddying, swirling, swept her this way and that. How wonderful it was, this life she was now leading compared with the old life--so full of the better things, the better emotions, the better thoughts that she had never known before! How monstrous in its irony that she was leading it to _steal_, that she might play her part in a criminal scheme for a criminal end! And yet, somehow, it did not all seem sham, this part she played--and that very thought, too, frightened her. Why was it now that Madison's oft-attempted, and as oft-repulsed, kiss upon her lips was something from which she shrank and battled back, no longer from a sense of pique or to bring him to his knees, but because something new within her, intangible, that she did not understand, rose up against it! Why did she do this--she, who had known the depths, who had known no other guide or mentor than the turbulent, passionate love she had yielded him and in her abandonment had once found contentment! Was her love for him gone? Or, if it was not that--what was it?

What was it? A week, another, two more, a month had slipped away since Thornton had returned, and there had been so much of genuineness crowded into this sham part of hers that it seemed at times the part itself was genuine. She had come to love that little room of hers, love it for its dear simplicity, the white muslin curtains, the rag mat, the patch-quilt on the bed; those daily duties of a woman, that she had never done before, that she had at first looked at askance, brought now a sense of keen, housewifely pride; the gentle patience of the Patriarch, his love for her, his simple trust in her had found a quick and instant response in her own heart, and daily her affection for him had grown; and there was Thornton--this man beside her, whose companionship somehow she seemed to crave for, who, in his grave, quiet manliness, seemed a sort of inspiration to her, who seemed in a curious way to appease a new hunger that had come to her for association, for contact with better thoughts and better ideals.

What was it? Environment? Yes; there must be something in that. It was having its effect even on Pale Face Harry and the Flopper. What was it that Harry, a surprisingly lusty farmhand now, had said to her a week or so ago: "Say, Helena, do you ever feel that while you was trying to kid the crowd about this living on the square, you was kind of getting kidded yourself? I dunno! I ain't coughed for a month--honest. But it ain't only that. Say--I dunno! Do you ever feel that way?"

Yes; there must be something in environment. The old life had never brought her thoughts such as these, thoughts that had been with her now almost since the first day she had come to Needley--this disquiet, this self-questioning, these sudden floods of condemnatory confusion; and, mingling with them, a startled thrill, a strange, half-glad, half-premonitory awakening, a vague pronouncement that innately it might be true that she was not what she _really_ was--but what all those around her held her to be--what Mrs. Thornton had said she was--and--

Her fingers closed with a quick, fierce pressure on the arm-rest of her seat--and she shifted her position with a sudden, involuntary movement.

Thornton, a road-map tacked on a piece of board and propped up at his feet, raised his head, and, self-occupied himself, had apparently not noticed her silence, for he spoke irrelevantly.

"I hope you won't mind if the road is a bit rougher than usual for a few miles," he said; "but you know we decided we didn't like the looks of the weather at tea-time, and according to the map, which labels it 'rough but passable,' this is a short cut that will lop off about ten miles and take us back to Needley through Barton's Mills."

"Of course, I don't mind," Helena answered. "How far are we from Needley?"

"About thirty-five miles or so," Thornton replied. "Say, an hour and a half with any kind of going at all. We ought to be back by nine."

Helena nodded brightly and leaned back in her seat. Rather than objecting to the short cut that Thornton had begun to negotiate, the road, now that she gave her attention to it, she found to be quite the prettiest bit she had seen in the whole afternoon's run, where, in the rough, sparsely settled north country, all was both pretty and a delight--miles and miles without the sign of even a farmhouse, just the great Maine forests, so majestic and grand in their solitude, bordering the road that undulated with the country, now to a rise with its magnificent sweep of scenery, now to the cool, fresh valleys full of the sweet pine-scent of the woods. They had explored much of it together in the little 'run-about,' nearly every day a short spin somewhere; to-day a little more ambitious run--the whole afternoon, and tea, a picnic tea, an hour or more back, in a charming glade beside a little brook.

"Oh, this is perfectly lovely!" she exclaimed; and then, with a breathless laugh, as a bump lifted her out of her seat: "It _is_ rough--isn't it?"

Thornton laughed and slowed down.

"I don't fancy it's used much, except in the winter for logging. But if the map says we can get through, I guess we're all right--there's about an eight mile stretch of it."

It was growing dusk, and the shadows, fanciful and picturesque; were deepening around them. Now it showed a solid mass of green ahead, and, like a sylvan path, the road, converging in the distance, lost itself in a wall of foliage; now it swerved rapidly, this way and that, in short curves, as though, like one lost, it sought its way.

A half hour passed. Thornton stopped the car, got down and lighted his lamps, then started on again. The going had seemed to be growing steadily worse--the road, as Thornton had said, was little more indeed than a logging trail through the heart of the woods; and now, deeper in, with increasing frequency, the tires slipped and skidded on damp, moist earth that at times approached very nearly to being oozy mud.

Silence for a long while had held between them. It was taking Thornton all his time now to guide the car, that, negotiating fallen branches strewn across the way, bad holes and ruts, was crawling at a snail's pace.

"'Rough but passable'!" he laughed once, clambering back to his seat after clearing away a dead tree-trunk from in front of them. "But there's no use trying to go back, as we must be halfway through, and it can't be any worse ahead than it's been behind. I'd like to tell the fellow that made this map something!"