The Miracle Man by Frank L. Packard

F >> Frank L. Packard >> The Miracle Man

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

Time passed without meaning to Helena. The steady patter of the rain was
on the leaves, the sullen, constant drip of water to the ground, and
now, occasionally, a rush of wind, a heavier downpour. She sat before
the fire, staring into it, her elbows on her knees, her face held
tightly in her hands, the brown hair, wet and wayward now, about her
temples. Once she moved, once her eyes changed their direction--to fix
upon her sleeve in a strange, questioning surprise.

"I let him go without his coat," she said.

--XVIII--

THE BOOMERANG

It was early afternoon, as Madison, emerging from the wagon track, and
walking slowly, started across the lawn toward the Patriarch's cottage.
He was in a mood that he made no attempt to define--except that it
wasn't a very pleasant mood. Before Thornton had returned to Needley it
had been bad enough, after that, with his infernal car, it had
been--hell.

Madison's fists clenched, and his gray eyes glinted angrily. His hands
had been tied like a baby's--like a damned infant's! Helena was getting
away from him further every day, and he couldn't stop it--without
stopping the game! He couldn't tell Thornton that Helena belonged to
him--had belonged to him! He couldn't even evidence an interest in what
was going on. He had to put on a front, a suave, cordial, dignified
front before Thornton--while he itched to smash the other's face to
pulp! Hell--that's what it was--pure, unadulterated hell! He couldn't
get near Helena alone with a ten-foot pole, morning, noon or night--she
had taken good care of that. And he wanted Helena--he _wanted_ her! It
was an obsession with him now--at times driving him half crazy,--and it
didn't help any that he saw her grow more glorious, more beautiful
every day! Of course she knew she had him--had him where she knew he
couldn't do a thing--where she could laugh at him--go the limit with
Thornton if she liked. But, curse it, it wasn't only Thornton--that was
what he could not understand--she had begun to keep away from him before
ever Thornton had come back.

Madison was near the porch now, and, raising his eyes, noted a
supplicant going into the shrine-room--a woman, richly dressed but in
widow's weeds, who walked feebly. The game went on by itself, once
started--there were half a hundred more about the lawn! Like a snowball
rolling down hill, as he had put it at the Roost. The Roost! If he only
had Helena back there for about a minute there'd be an end of this!
She'd go a little too far one of these days--a little too far--it was
pretty near far enough now--and then there'd be a showdown, game or no
game, and somebody would get hurt in the smash, and--

He lifted his eyes again, as some one came hurrying through the cottage
door. It was the Flopper. And then to his surprise, he found himself
being pushed unceremoniously from the porch and pulled excitedly behind
the trellis.

"What's the matter with you!" he demanded angrily. "Are you crazy!"

"T'ank de Lord youse have showed up!" gasped the Flopper. "Say, honest,
I can't do nothin' wid him--he's got me near bughouse."

"Who?"--Madison scowled irritably.

"De Patriarch, of course. He's noivous, an' gettin' worse all de time.
He won't eat an' he won't keep still. He wants Helena, an' he keeps
writin' her name on de slate--he's got me going fer fair."

"Well, I'm not Helena!" growled Madison. "Why doesn't she go to him?"

"Now wouldn't dat sting youse!" ejaculated the Flopper. "How's she goin'
to him when she ain't here?"

"Not here?" repeated Madison sharply. "Where is she?"

The Flopper looked down his nose.

"I dunno," said he.

Madison stared at him for a moment--then he reached out and caught the
Flopper's arm in a sudden and far from gentle grip.

"Out with it!" he snapped.

"I dunno where she is," said the Flopper, with some reluctance. "She
ain't back yet, dat's all."

"Back from where?"--Madison's grip tightened.

The Flopper blinked.

"Aw, wot's de use!" he blurted out, as though his mind, suddenly made
up, brought him unbounded relief. "Youse'll find it out anyhow. Say, she
went off wid Thornton in de buzz-wagon yesterday, an' I put de Patriarch
to bed last night 'cause she wasn't back, an' dat's wot's de matter wid
him, she ain't showed up since an' he's near off his chump, an'--fer
God's sake let go my arm, Doc, youse're breakin' it!"

A sort of cold frenzy seemed to seize Madison. He was perfectly calm, he
felt himself perfectly calm and composed. Off all night with
Thornton--eh? Funny, wasn't it? She'd gone pretty far at last--gone the
limit.

"Why didn't you send me word this morning?"--was that his own voice
speaking? Well, he wouldn't have recognized it--but he was perfectly
calm nevertheless.

"Fer God's sake let go my arm," whimpered the Flopper. "I--I ain't no
squealer, dat's why."

Madison's arm fell away--to his side. He felt a whiteness creeping to
his face and lips, felt his lips twitch, felt the fingers of his hands
curl in and the nails begin to press into the palms.

"Mabbe," suggested the Flopper timidly, "mabbe dere was an accident."

Madison made no answer.

The Flopper shifted from foot to foot and licked his lips, stealing
frightened glances at Madison's face.

"Wot--wot'll I do wid de Patriarch?" he stammered out miserably.

And then Madison smiled at him--not happily, but eloquently.

"Swipe me!" mumbled the Flopper, as he backed out from the trellis. "Dis
love game's fierce--an' mabbe _I_ don't know! 'Sposin' she'd been
Mamie an' me the Doc--'sposin' it had!" He gulped hastily. "Swipe me!"
said the Flopper with emotion.

Madison, motionless, watched the Flopper disappear. He wasn't quite so
calm now, not so cool and collected and composed. He must go somewhere
and think this out--somewhere where it would be quiet and he wouldn't be
disturbed.

A step sounded on the path--Madison looked through the trellis. A man,
with yellow, unhealthy skin and sunken cheeks, his head bowed, was
passing in through the porch. It caught Madison with fierce, exquisite
irony. Why not go there himself if he wanted quiet--the shrine-room--the
place of meditation! Well, he wanted to _meditate_! He laughed
jarringly. The shrine-room--for him! Great! Immense! Magnificent! Why
not? That's what he had created it for, wasn't it--to meditate in!

He stepped inside. The woman, whom he had seen enter a short while
before, was sitting in a sort of rigid, strained attitude in the far
corner; the man, who had just preceded him, had taken the chair by the
fireplace--they were the only occupants of the room. There was no sound
save his own footsteps--neither of the others looked at him. There was
quiet, a profound stillness--and the softened light from the shuttered
window fell mellow all about, fell like a benediction upon the
simplicity of the few plain articles that the room contained--the round
rag mats upon the white-scrubbed floor; the hickory chairs, severe,
uncushioned; the table, with its little japanned box and book.

Madison's eyes fixed upon the japanned box, as he leaned now, arms
folded, against the wall--a jewel, even in the subdued light, glowed
crimson-warm where it nested on a crumpled bed of bank-notes--a ruby
ring--the last contribution--it must have been the woman who had placed
it there. Madison glanced at her involuntarily--but his thoughts were
far away again in a moment.

Anger and a blind rage of jealousy were gripping him now. _Accident!_
The thought only fanned his fury. Accident! Yes; it was likely--as an
excuse! There would have been an accident all right--leave that to them!
Thornton perhaps wasn't the stamp of man to seek an adventure of that
kind deliberately--perhaps he wasn't--and perhaps he was--you never
could tell--but what difference did that make! _Helena was that kind of
a woman_--though he'd always thought her true to him since he'd known
her--and Thornton, whatever kind of a man he was, wouldn't run away from
her arms, would he?

The red glow from the ruby ring had vanished--the man had risen from his
seat and was placing something in the box on top of the ring--Madison's
mind subconsciously absorbed the fact that it was a little sheaf of
yellow-backed bills. And now the man bent to the table and was writing
in the book.

Yellow-backs and rubies! Rubies and yellowbacks! Madison's lips thinned
and curled downward at the corners. Oh, it was coming all right, money,
jewels, pelf, rolling in merrily every day, there wasn't any stopping
it, but he was paying for it, and paying for it at a price he didn't
like--Helena. Helena! She wanted Thornton, did she--with his money!
Wanted to dangle a millionaire on her string--eh? She'd throw him
over--would she! And she thought she had him where he couldn't lift a
finger to stop it--just sit back and grin like a poor, sick fool!

The red crept up the knotted cords of Madison's neck, suffused the set
jaws, and, as though suddenly liberated to run its course where it
would, swept in a tide over cheeks and temples.

He couldn't do a thing--_couldn't he!_ Well, he'd see the game in
Gehenna before Thornton or any other man got her away from him. She
belonged to him--to _him!_ And he'd have her, hold her, own her--she was
his--_his!_ And he'd settle with Thornton too, by Heaven!

A laugh, low, unpleasant, purled to his lips--and he checked it with a
sort of strange mechanical realization that he must not laugh aloud. His
eyes swept the room--the man had returned to his seat, the woman had not
moved, both were silent, motionless--that ghastly, hallowed,
sanctimonious hush--that subdued, damnable light--meditation!

"For God's sake let me get out of here," he muttered, "or I'll go mad."

He turned--and stopped. Came a cry spontaneously from the man and the
woman--they were on their feet--no, on their knees. The doorway at the
further end of the room was framing a majestic figure, tall and
stately--and a sun-gleam struggling suddenly through the lattice seemed
to leap in a golden ray to caress in homage the snow-white hair, the
silver beard that fell upon the breast, the saintly face of the
Patriarch.

Then into the room advanced the Patriarch, and his hands were
outstretched before him, and he moved them a little to and fro--and the
gesture, the poise, the mien, as, touching nothing he seemed to feel his
way through space itself, was as one invoking a blessing of peace
ineffable.

Spellbound, Madison watched. Upon the face was a yearning that saddened
it, and, saddening, glorified it; the head was slightly turned as though
to listen--while slowly, with measured, certain tread, as though indeed
he had no need for eyes, the Patriarch circled the table and passed on
down the room. The man and the woman reached out and touched him
reverently, and drew back reverently to let him pass, and, rising from
their knees, followed him through the door and out onto the porch.

The room was empty. Madison stared at the doorway. Upon him fell a
sudden awe--it was as though a vision, an ethereal presence, some
strange embodiment of power, had been and gone--and yet still remained.

And now from without there came a sound like a distant murmur. It rose
and swelled, and began to roll in its volume, and then, like the clarion
sound of trumpets, voices burst into glad acclaim.

"The Patriarch! The Patriarch! The Patriarch!"

From the little hallway came the Flopper, running--and he stopped and
gaped at Madison.

"I left him in his room fer a minute," he gasped. "He's--he's lookin'
fer Helena."

And then Madison shook himself together--and smiled ironically. And at
the smile the Flopper hurried on.

Madison stepped out onto the porch. Helena! Helena! Within him seemed to
burn a rage of hell; but it seemed, too, most strangely that for the
moment this rage was held in abeyance, that something temporarily
supplanted it--this scene before him.

Onward across the lawn moved the Patriarch, and the Flopper had joined
him now; but the Patriarch, unheeding, turning neither to the right nor
to the left, his arms still extended before him, kept on. And the people
cried aloud:

"He is coming--he is coming! The Patriarch! The Patriarch!"

Madison moved on--out upon the lawn himself.

From everywhere, from every scattered spot where they had been, men and
women ran and limped and dragged themselves along, all converging on
one point--the Patriarch.

Madison, in the midst of them now, hurried--for it was plainly evident
that the Flopper's control over the Patriarch was gone. He reached the
Patriarch and touched the other's arm--and at the touch the Patriarch
halted instantly, his hand went out and lay upon Madison's sleeve in
recognition, and he turned his face, and it was smiling and there was
relief upon it--and confidence and trust, as, suffering himself to be
guided, they started back toward the cottage.

And then upon Madison came again that sense of awe, but now intensified.
From every hand tear-stained faces greeted him, white faces, faces full
of sorrow and suffering through which struggled hope--hope--hope. They
flung themselves before the Patriarch--yet never blocked the way. They
cried, they wept, they prayed--and some were silent. It seemed that
souls, naked, stripped, bare, held themselves up to his gaze. Men,
prostrate on stretchers, tried to rise and stagger nearer--and fell.
Friends, where there were friends to help, tugged and dragged
desperately at cots--and from the cots in piteous, agonized appeal the
helpless cried out to the Patriarch to come to them. All of human agony
and fear and hope and despair and terror seemed loosed in a mad and
swirling vortex. And ever the cries arose, and ever around them, giving
way, closing in again, pressed the soul-rent throng.

And presently to Madison it seemed as though he had awakened from some
terrifying dream, as, in the Patriarch's room again, he swept away a
bead of sweat from his forehead, and stood and looked at the Patriarch
and the Flopper.

The Flopper licked his lips, and pulled the Patriarch's chair
forward--but his hands trembled violently.

"It's been gettin' me, Doc," he whispered, "an' I can't help it. It's
been gettin' into me all de time. Say, I wisht it was over. Honest to
God I do! Dis--dis makes me queer. Say, de Patriarch's got me,
Doc--an'--an'--say--dere's been somethin' goin' on inside me dat's got
me hard."

Madison did not answer--but he started suddenly--and as suddenly
stepped to the window and looked out. Over the cries, the wailings, the
confused medley of voices, growing lower now, subsiding, there had come
the throb of a motor car.

Madison's eyes narrowed--_that_ was supreme again. A car was coming to a
stop before the porch--Thornton was helping Helena to alight.

Madison turned and caught the Flopper's arm in a fierce, imperative
grasp.

"You keep your mouth shut--do you hear?" he flung out, clipping off his
words. "You haven't seen me to-day--understand!" And, dropping the
Flopper's arm, he stepped quickly across the little hall to Helena's
door, opened it, went in--and closed the door behind him.

And the Flopper, staring, licked his lips again.

"Swipe me!" he croaked hoarsely. "Pipe de eyes on de Doc! Dere'll be
somethin' doin' now!"

--XIX--

THE SANCTUARY OF DARKNESS

There was a grim, merciless smile on Madison's lips; and a whiteness in
his face windowed the passion that seethed within him. He stood
motionless, listening, in Helena's room. He heard the automobile going
away again; then he heard Helena's light step in the hallway
without--and the smile died as his lips thinned.

But she did not come in--instead, he heard her go into the Patriarch's
room, heard her talking to the Patriarch, and bid the Flopper go to the
kitchen and make her some tea. Then the Flopper's step sounded, passing
down to the rear, of the cottage.

The minutes passed--then that light footfall again. The door of the room
swung suddenly wide--and closed--there was a cry--and Helena, wide-eyed,
the red of her cheeks fading away, leaned heavily back against the door.

Neither spoke. Madison, in the center of the room, did not move. The
smile came back to his lips.

Helena's great brown eyes met the gray ones, read the ugly glint,
dropped, raised again--and held the gray ones steadily.

Madison gave a short laugh--that was like a curse. His hands at his
sides knotted into lumps.

Then Madison spoke.

"Why don't you say, 'you!--_you_!'--and scream it out and clutch at your
bosom the way they do in story books!" he flung out raucously. "Why
don't you do your little stunt--go on, you're on for the turn--you can
put anything over me, I'm only a complacent, blind-eyed fool! Anything
goes! Why don't you start your act?"

"You don't know what you are saying," she said in a low voice. "If
there's anything you want to talk about, we'd better wait until you're
cooler."

"Oh, hell!" he roared, his passion full to the surface now. "Cut out the
bunk--cut it out! _Anything_! No, it isn't much of anything--for
you--out all night with Thornton. Do you think I'm going to stand for
it! Do you think I'm going to sit and suck my thumb and _share_ you,
and--"

"You lie!" She was away from the door now, close before him, her breath
coming fast, white to the lips, and in a frenzy her little fists
pummelled upon him. "It's a lie--a lie--a lie! It's a lie--and you know
it!"

He pushed her roughly from him.

"It is, eh?"--his words came in a sort of wild laugh. "And I know it--do
I? Why should I know it? What do you think you are? Say, you'd think you
were trying to kid yourself into believing you're the real thing--the
real, sweet, shy, modest Miss Vail. Cut it out! You're name's
Smith--maybe! And it's my money that's keeping you, and you belong to
me--do you understand?"

She stood swaying a little, her hands still tightly clenched, breathing
through half parted lips in short, quick, jerky inhalations like dry
sobs.

"It's true," she faltered suddenly--and suddenly buried her face in her
hands. And then she looked up again, and the brown eyes in their depths
held an anger and a shame. "It's true--I was--was--what you say. But
now"--her voice hurried on, an eagerness, a strange earnestness in
it--"you must believe me--you must. I'll make you--I must make you."

"Oh, don't hurt yourself trying to do it!" jeered Madison. "We're
talking plain now. I'm not taking into account how you feel about it
--don't you fool yourself for a minute. The sanctity of my home hasn't
been ruined--because it couldn't be! Get that? Thornton don't get
you--not for _keeps_! But you and he don't make a monkey of me again. Do
you understand--say, do you get that? You're _mine_--whether you like
it or not--whether you'd rather have Thornton or not. But I'll fix you
both for this--I'm no angel with a cherub's smile! I'll take it out of
Thornton till the laugh he's got now fades to a fare-thee-well; and I'll
put you where there aren't any strings tying me up the way there are
here. Do you understand!" His voice rose suddenly, and for a moment he
seemed to lose all control of himself as he reached for her and caught
her shoulder. "I love you," he flashed out between his teeth. "I love
you--that's what's the matter with me! And you know that--you know
you've got me there--and you'd play the fool with me, would you!" He
dropped his hands--and laughed a short, savage bark--and stepped back
and stared at her.

"Will you listen?"--she was twisting her hands, her head was drooped,
the long lashes veiled her eyes, her lips were quivering. "Will you
listen?" she said again, fighting to steady her voice. "It was an
accident."

"I saw the machine when you drove up--it was a wreck!" snapped Madison
sarcastically.

"We ran out of gasoline," she said quietly.

And then Madison laughed--fiercely--in his derision.

"Oh, keep on!" he rasped. "I told you I was only a blind fool that you
could put anything over on! That accounts for it, of course--a breakdown
isn't so easy to get away with. Gasoline!"

"We were miles from anywhere," she went on. "We had taken what we
thought was a short cut. Mr. Thornton built a shelter for me in the
woods, and went to--to--"

He caught up her hesitation like a flash.

"Fake the lines, Helena, if you haven't had enough rehearsals," he
suggested ironically. "Anything goes--with me."

And now a tinge of color came to Helena's cheeks, and the brown eyes
raised, and flashed, and dropped.

"He went to try and find help," she said. "He was out all night in the
storm. I do not know how far he must have walked. I know the nearest
house was five or six miles away--and there was no horse there--the man
had driven to some town that morning. It was almost daylight before Mr.
Thornton at last came back with a team. We were forty miles from
here--we sent the team to the nearest town for gasoline and then motored
back." She stopped--and then, with a catch in her voice: "He--he was
very good to me."

"Good to me"--the words seemed to stab at Madison, seemed to ring in his
ears and goad him with a fiercer jealousy--and her story of the night,
what she had been saying, save those words, was as nothing, meant
nothing, was swept from his consciousness--and only she, standing there
before him, glorious, maddening in her beauty, remained. Soul, mind and
body leaped into fiery passion--she was his, and his she always would
be--those eyes, those lips, the white throat, those perfect arms to
cling about his neck--and all of heaven and hell and earth were naught
beside her.

"I love you!"--his face was white, his words fierce-breathed, almost
incoherent--and he leaned toward her with a sudden, uncontrollable
movement, his arms sweeping out to clasp her. "I love you, Helena--I
love you. Do you understand--it's _you_! You--I love you!"

"You _love_ me!"--she retreated from him, but her head was raised now,
and her voice rang with a bitterness cold as the touch of death. "Love!
What do you know of _love_! We talk plain, you say. Love--love for me!
Passion, vice, lust, sin--and, oh, my God, degradation and misery and
shame--love! Love! That is _your_ love!"

He stood for a moment and stared at her again--and her face was as
pallid ivory. And something seemed to daze him, and he brushed his hand
across his eyes--the logic was faulty, torn and pitiful, and he groped
after the flaw.

"It's--it's your love as well as mine," he said in a stumbling way--then
his brain flashed quick into action. "My love--what other love have
_you_ known but that?" he cried. "It's _our_ love--the love we have
known together--and we're going back to it--see? I've had enough of
this. You pack your trunks--and pack them quick! We're going to beat it
out of here! We're going back to our--love. We're going back where I
don't have to sit around like a puling fool and watch Thornton chuck you
under the chin--we're going where he'll want a tombstone if he ever
shows his face there. You thought the game would hold me to the last
jackpot--did you? Well, I've got enough--and there's no game big enough
to make me stand for this. That looks like love--doesn't it?" He burst
again into a sudden, mirthless laugh--and once again swept his
hand across his eyes. "We're going to beat it out of here
now--to-night--to-morrow morning."

But now she had drawn further away from him--and there was a frightened
look in her eyes, and her lips quivered pitifully.

"No--I can't--I can't," she cried out. "No, no--I can't--I can't go back
to _that_."

"That! That--is love," he said wildly. "The only love you know. What
more do you want? There's loot enough now, and--ha, ha!--that little
contribution of Thornton's, to give you all the money you want. Love,
Helena--you and I--the old love--you and I together again, Helena. I
tell you I love you--do you hear? I love you--and I'll have you--I love
you! What do you know, what do you care about any other kind of love!"

She looked at him, misery and fear still in her eyes, and her slight
figure seemed to droop, and her hands hung heavy, listless, at her
sides.

"I care"--the words came in a strange mechanical way from her lips. "Oh,
I care. I can't--I won't go back to that. And I know--I know now. I have
learned what love is."

Quick over Madison's face surged the red in an unstemmed tide--volcanic
within him his love that he knew now possessed his very soul, jealousy
that, blinding, robbed him of his senses, roused him to frenzy.

"Oh, you've learned what love is, have you--_with him_!" he cried--and
sprang for her and snatched her into his arms. "And you won't come, eh?
Well, I've learned what love is too in the last month--and if I can't
get it one way, I'll get it another"--he was raining mad kisses upon her
face, her hair, her eyes--"I love you, I tell you--I love you!"

With a cry she tried to struggle from him--and then fought and struck at
him, beating upon his face with her fists. Fiercer, closer he held
her--around the little room, staggering this way and that, they circled.
He kissed her, laughing hoarsely like a madman, laughing at the blows,
beside himself, not knowing what he did--mad--mad--mad. He kissed her,
kissed the white throat where the dress was torn now at the neck;
imprisoned a little fist that struck at him and kissed the quivering
knuckles; kissed the wealth of glorious, burnished-copper hair that,
unloosened, fell about her, kissed it and buried his face in its rare
fragrance. And then--and then his arms were empty--and he was staring at
the calm, majestic figure of the Patriarch--and Helena was crouched upon
the floor, and, sobbing, was clinging with arms entwined around the old
man's knees.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15