The Miracle Man by Frank L. Packard

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"I would rather walk a little, I think," she said. "Here where--where I
can be within call. My absence last night seems to have made the
Patriarch very uneasy, you know, and--and--let us just walk up and down
here beneath the maples in front of the cottage."

How heavy upon the air lay the fragrance of the flowers; how still the
night was, save for the constant muffled boom of the breaking surf!--for
a moment an almost ungovernable impulse swept upon her to make some
excuse, anything, no matter how wild, a sudden faintness, anything, and
run from him back into the cottage. And then she tried to think, think
in a desperate sort of way of some subject of conversation that she
might introduce that would stave off, postpone, defer the words that she
knew were even now on his lips--nothing--she could think of
nothing--only that she might have let the Flopper have his way, have let
him tell Thornton that she had gone to bed with--the pip. The _pip_! She
could have screamed out hysterically as the word flashed all unbidden
upon her--it stood for a very great deal that word--her world of the
years of yesterday. Could she never get away from that world; was it too
late--already! Could she, even with all the earnestness, all the
yearning that filled her soul, ever live it down, ever be what Naida
Thornton had called her that night--a good woman! Could she--

Thornton was speaking now--how strange that she would have done
anything, given anything to prevent his speaking--and done anything,
given anything to make him speak! How strange and perplexed and dismayed
her brain was! Love! Yes; she wanted love! God knew she wanted love such
as his was--for he had shown her what love, free from abasing passion,
in its purest sense, was. Like a glimpse of glory, hallowed, full of
wondrous amazement, it came to her--and then her head was lowered, and
the whiteness was upon her face again.

He had halted suddenly and detained her with his hand upon her arm--with
that touch, so full of reverence, of fine deference, that had thrilled
her before--that thrilled her now, awakening into fuller life these new
emotions whose birth was in gladder, sweeter, purer aspirations.

"Miss Vail," he said, in a low voice, "there was a letter--a letter that
Naida left--did you know of it?"

They were close together, and it was very dark--but was it dark enough
to hide the crimson that she felt sweeping in a flood to her face! What
was in that letter? Had Mrs. Thornton written as she had talked, or only
about the Patriarch and the work in Needley? She had forgotten for the
moment about the letter--if there were more in it than that, if it were
about Thornton and herself and what Mrs. Thornton had hoped for between
them, and she admitted knowledge of it, what would he think, what
_could_ he think of her! But to deny it--no, not now. Once, and this
came to her in a little thrill of gladness, she would not have
hesitated; but now it--it was--it was not that world of yesterday.

"Yes," she said faintly; "she told me that she had left a letter for
you."

"It was about the work here," said Thornton gently. "Her whole soul
seemed wrapt up in that--and she asked me as her last wish to do what
she would have done if she had lived; and she spoke of you very
beautifully." Thornton paused for a moment--then he laid his hands on
Helena's shoulders--and she felt them tremble a little. "Miss
Vail--Helena," he said, and his voice was full of passionate earnestness
now, "I cannot say these things well--only simply. I came back here to
take an interest in the work, for I too have it at heart--but I have
more than that now--there is _you_--your dear self. I love you,
Helena--you have come into my life until you are everything and all to
me. Helena, look up at me--will you marry me, dear? Tell me what I long
to hear. Helena, Helena--I love you!"

But Helena did not answer--only very slowly she raised her head. And his
hands on her shoulders tightened, and he was drawing her gently toward
him. Then he bent his head until it was close to hers, and his breath
was upon her cheek as it had been that other night--and the longing to
know that it was hers, a caress, pure in its motive, hers, snatched out
of all that had gone before that sought to rob her of the right to ever
know it, fascinated her, held her spellbound, possessed her. Closer his
lips came to hers, closer, until they touched her--and then, with a cry,
she sprang back, and her hands were fiercely pressed against her cheeks,
her throbbing temples. Was she mad! Mad! Was it for this that she had
forced herself to give him the opportunity to speak to-night, when her
motive was so different, when it had seemed the only _right_ thing left
for her to do!

And now, still holding her temples, she raised her eyes to Thornton--he
had stepped back like a man stricken, his hands dropped to his sides.

"I--we are mad!" she whispered.

"Helena!" he said in a numbed way; and again; "Helena!" Then, with an
effort to control his voice: "You--you do not care--you do not love me?"

"No," she said--and thereafter for a long time a silence held between
them.

Then Thornton spoke.

"Some day perhaps, Helena," he said, "you could learn to love me--for I
would teach you. Perhaps now you feel that your whole duty lies here in
this work to which you have so unselfishly given your life; but I would
not hinder that, only try to help as best I could. Perhaps I have been
abrupt, have spoken too soon--it is only a few weeks since I saw you
first, but it seems as though in those few weeks I had come to know you
as if I had known you all my life and--"

But now she interrupted him, shaking her head in a sad little fashion.

"You do not know me," she said. "Sometimes I think I do not know myself.
Think! You do not know where I came from to join the Patriarch here; you
have no single shred of knowledge about me; you do not know a single
particular of my life before you knew me."

"I do not need to know," he answered gravely. "You are as genuine as
pure gold is genuine--it is in your voice, your smile, your eyes. It is
a crude simile perhaps, but one never asks where the pure gold was
dug--it stands for itself, for what it is, because it is what it
is--pure gold--at its face value."

The words seemed to stab at Helena, condemning, accusing; and yet, too,
in a strange, vague way, they seemed to bring her a hope, a promise for
the days to come--at face value! If she could live hereafter--at face
value!

"Listen," she said, and her voice was very low. "I do not know how to
say what I must say to you. Last night I knew that--that you loved me. I
had not thought of you like that, in that way, until then, or--or I
should have tried never to have let this hurt come to you. But last
night I knew, and since then I have known that sooner or later you
would--would tell me of it." She stopped for an instant--her eyes full
of tears now. "And so," she went on presently, "I have let you speak
to-night because it was better, it was even necessary that I should do
so at once--because this could not go on--because you must go away
and--"

"Necessary?" he repeated. "I--I do not understand."

"No," she said helplessly; "you do not understand--and I--I cannot
explain. Oh, I do not know what to say to you, only that you must take
what I say, as you have taken me--at face value."

"I do not understand," he said again. "Helena, I do not understand. Are
you in trouble--tell me?"

"No," she said.

"But I cannot go away like this!" he cried out suddenly. "I cannot go
and leave you, Helena. You have come into my life and filled it; and I
cannot let you pass out of it--like this--without an effort to hold what
has come to mean everything to me now. You may not love me now, but some
day--"

She shook her head, interrupting him once more.

"There can never be a 'some day,'" she said. "Oh, I do not want to hurt
you--you, to whom I owe more than you will ever know--but--but there can
never be anything between us, and--and we are only making it harder for
ourselves now--aren't we?"

And then he leaned abruptly toward her.

"Is there--some one else?" he asked in a strained voice.

And to Helena the question came as though it had been an inspiration
given him--for after that he would ask no more, seek no more to
understand, for he was too big and strong and fine for that; and even if
it was hopeless now this love that she had known for Madison, even if it
could never be again, still that love was hers, and she could answer
truthfully.

"Yes," she said beneath her breath.

For a moment Thornton neither moved nor spoke. Then he held out his
hand.

"Miss Vail," he said simply, "will you tell this 'some one else' that
another man beside himself is the better for having known you.
Good-night. And may God bring you happiness through all your life."

But she did not speak--they were standing by the rustic bench and she
sank down upon it, and, with her head hidden in one arm outflung across
the back of the seat, was sobbing softly.

And he stood and watched her for a little space, his face grave and
white; then taking the hand that lay listlessly in her lap, he raised it
to his lips--and turned away.

And so he left her--and so, because of this, he knocked upon another
door that night, and all unwittingly gave to that "some one else"
himself the message that he had asked Helena to deliver.

Madison, pacing his room like a caged beast, his teeth working upon the
cigar that he had never thought to light, paid no attention to the
summons until it had been repeated twice; then, with a glance around the
room, his eyes lingering for a critical instant upon the trunks, closed
now, the trays restored to their hiding places, he stepped to the door,
unlocked it, and flung it open. And at sight of Thornton, mechanically,
as second nature to him, outwardly, like a mask, there came a smile upon
his working lips, a suave, unconcerned composure to his face; while
inwardly, in his dazed, fogged brain where chaos raged, surged an
impulse to fling himself upon the other, wreck a mad vengeance upon the
man--and then swift upon the heels of this an impulse to refrain, for if
Helena was straight why should he harm Thornton--and then the shuttle
again--why should he not--hadn't Helena said that she had learned what
love was last night--and last night she had been with Thornton. How his
brain whirled! What had brought Thornton here, anyhow? If he stayed very
long perhaps he would batter Thornton to jelly after all! Quick, almost
instantaneous in their sequence came this wild jumble singing dizzily
its crazy refrain through his mind--and then to his amazement he heard
some one speaking pleasantly--and to his amazement it was himself.

"Come in, Thornton. Come in--and take a chair."

"Thanks," Thornton answered; and, entering the room, closed the door
behind him. "No; I won't sit down--I shall only remain a moment."

The lamp was on the washstand, and, intuitively again, Madison shifted
his position to bring his face into shadow--and leaned against the foot
of the bed. He stared at Thornton, nodding--Thornton's face was white
and exceedingly haggard--rather curious for Thornton to look that way!

"Madison," said Thornton abruptly, "I believe you to be a gentleman in
the best sense of the word, and because of that, and because of the
unusual circumstances that first brought us together and the mutual
interests that have since been ours, I have come to you to-night to tell
you, first, that I am going away from Needley and that I shall not
return--and then to ask a service and repose a trust in you. You have
said several times that you intended to remain here and take a personal
and active part in the work?"

Madison removed the chewed cigar end from one corner of his mouth--and
placed it in the other.

"Yes," said Madison.

"Then this is what I want to say," said Thornton seriously. "For my own
sake, because it was my wife's wish, and for other reasons as well, my
interest here, though I am going away, will be just as great as it has
ever been; and so I want you to keep me thoroughly posted, and when the
time comes that I can be of further material assistance to let me know.
I impose only one condition--you are to say nothing to Miss Vail about
it--you can make anything that I may do appear to come from yourself."

"Say nothing to Miss Vail!" repeated Madison vaguely--then a sort of
ironic jest seemed to take possession of him: "But Miss Vail keeps all
the funds."

"That is why I am asking you to represent me," said Thornton quietly. "I
am afraid that she might have a natural diffidence about accepting
anything more from me--I asked Miss Vail to marry me to-night, and she
refused."

The cigar kind of slid down unnoticed from the corner of Madison's
mouth--and he leaned forward, hanging with a hand behind him to the
bedpost--and stared at Thornton.

"You--_what_!" he gasped.

"Yes; I know," Thornton answered--and moved abruptly toward the door.
"Love makes one's temerity very great--doesn't it? I asked her to marry
me--because I loved her." He came back from the door and held out his
hand, "I've told you what I would tell no other man, Madison. You
understand now why--and you'll do this for me?"

What answer Madison made he never knew himself--he only knew that he was
staring at the door after Thornton had gone out, and that he wanted to
laugh crazily. Marry Helena! Thornton had asked Helena to marry him
because he loved her. God, there was humor here! His brain itself seemed
to cackle at it--_marry_ Helena!

And then suddenly there seemed no humor at all--only black, infamous
shame and condemnation--and he straightened up from where he leaned
against the bedpost, his face set and strained.

"Thornton had asked Helena to marry him because he _loved_ her"--the
words came slowly, haltingly, aloud--and then he covered his face with
his hands. But he, he who loved her too--what had _he_ done!

--XXII--

THE SHRINE

For a little time Madison stood there in his room, motionless, staring
unseeingly before him--and then, as one awakening from a dream that had
brought dismay and a torment too realistic to be thrown from him on the
instant, his brain still a little blunted, he took up his hat
mechanically, went out from the room, descended by the back stairs to
the rear door of the hotel, and took the road to the Patriarch's
cottage.

And as he walked in the freshness of the night, the restless turmoil of
his soul that since early afternoon had brought him near to the verge of
madness itself, that had robbed him of sane virility, that a moment
since in his room had suddenly begun to lift from him even as the leaden
clouds in the vault above him now were scattering, breaking, and through
the rifts a moon-glint and the starlight came, passed from him
utterly--and a strange calm, a strange joy, a strange sadness was upon
him--and his brain for the first time in many hours was rational,
keen--and he was master of himself again--and yet master of himself no
more!

He smiled a little at the seeming paradox--smiled a little wistfully. He
was beaten--by the game--he had won. How strange it was that sense of
more than resignation now--a sense that seemed like one of
thankfulness--a sense that bade him fling wide his arms as though
suddenly they had been loosed from bondage and he was free, free as the
God-given air around him.

He could understand Helena, and the Flopper, and Pale Face Harry now.
With them it had come slowly, in a gradual concatenation, a progression,
as it were, that had worked upon them, molding them, changing them day
by day--and he had been too blind to see, or, seeing, had measured the
changes only by a standard as false as all his life had been false. With
him it had come in a crash, unheralded, that had left him a naked,
quivering, stricken thing to know madness, terror and despair, to taste
of emotions that had sickened the soul itself.

On Madison walked--along the road, across the little bridge, into the
wagon track where, under the arched branches, it was utter dark. There
was no one upon the road--he passed no one--saw no one--he was alone.

He had lost Helena--but he understood her now--understood the depth of
remorse that she was living through, the terror and the dread as she
sought escape, the fear of him--yes, it would be fear now where once it
had been love! He had lost Helena--that was the price he had paid--but
he understood her now, and he was going to her to help her if he could,
going to tell her that he, too, was changed--as she was changed.

His hands clenched suddenly. God, the misery, the hopelessness, the
wreck and ruin that lay at his door! And amends--what amends could he
make--it was too late for that! How clearly he saw now--when it was too
late! Her life was a broken thing, robbed, stripped and despoiled for
all the years to come. Their love had not been love--she had given it
its name--"passion, vice, lust, sin, degradation and misery and shame."
And then love had come to her, into her life, love as God had meant love
to be, and she had learned what love was she had said--only that she
might never know its fulness, only that it might bring her added
bitterness and added sorrow! Thornton had asked her to marry him that
night--and she had refused him--because the past, it must have been as a
shuddering, hideous phantom that the past had risen before her, had left
her no other thing to do but turn away. It seemed he could see her--see
her bury her face in her hands and--

He stopped short in his walk. Was he changed so much as this! Did he
care so much that it was her happiness--even with another--that counted
most! Yes; it was true--he was changed indeed. And the change had
brought him too, it seemed, to learn what love was--too late.

He went forward again--a little more slowly; now; a sadness upon him,
but, through the sadness, an uplift from that new sense of freedom that
was as a balm, soothing him in the most curious way. His had been a rude
awakening--mind and body and soul had been torn asunder; but he knew
now, as he recalled the hours just past when he had looked on fear, when
the gamut of human passion had raged over him, when he had stood
staggered and appalled before, yes, before his God, that he had come
forth a new man. And how strange had been the ending, how strange and
simple, and yet how significant, typifying the broad, clean outlook on
life, bringing coherency to his tottering mind, had been those words of
Thornton's--"because he loved her."

He had reached the end of the wagon track now, and he walked across the
lawn, his steps noiseless on the velvet sward, and passed between the
maples; and the moon gleam--for the flying clouds, rear-guard of the
routed storm, were flung wide apart, dispersed--fell upon a coiled and
huddled little figure all in white, that was quite still and motionless
upon the rustic seat beside the porch.

She did not see him, did not hear him, until he stood before her and
called her name.

"Helena!" he said unsteadily. "Helena!"

She raised her head and looked at him; and then she rose from the bench,
and, still holding to it by one hand, drew back a little. There was no
outcry, no startled action. Her dark eyes played questioningly upon
him--and he could see that they were wet with tears, and that the face
from out of which they looked was very white.

"Why have you come back here to-night?" she asked in a low tone; and
then, suddenly, a fear, a terror in her voice, as the Flopper's warning
flashed upon her: "Thornton--you have seen Thornton?"

"Yes," he said, surprised a little that she should know; "I saw Thornton
a few minutes ago."

She came toward him now and clutched his arm.

"What have you done?" she cried tensely. "Answer me! You--you met him on
your way here?"

It was a moment before Madison replied. He had schooled himself of
course for more than this, yet the words hurt--that was why she had
asked for Thornton--she was afraid that he had harmed the man.

"No," he said; "I did not meet him. I think you must have been longer
here on that bench than you imagined--haven't you? He came to my room."

"Your room! What for? Tell me!"

Madison smiled with grave whimsicality.

"To call me a gentleman and repose a trust."

She stepped back again, uncertainly.

"I do not know what you are talking about," she said in a strained way.
"And you are talking very strangely."

"Yes," he said. "Everything is strange to-night. It is like a new world,
and--and I have not found my way--yet."

She drew back still further.

"Are you mad?" she whispered.

"No," he answered. "Not now--that Is past."

She looked at him for a little time; and, her hands joined before her,
her fingers locked and interlocked nervously.

"And--and Thornton?" she asked, at last.

"It was a trust," said Madison slowly; "but it was betrayed before it
was given. He did not know--the game. He did not know what was
between--you and me."

"No," she said--and the word came almost inaudibly.

"And so," he said, "I will tell you, for it cannot matter now in any
case. He told me that he had asked you to marry him to-night--and that
you had refused."

Madison paused, and swept his hand across his forehead--his voice
somehow had suddenly grown hoarse, beyond control.

"Yes," she said--and reached again for the back of the bench, supporting
herself against it.

"He is going away," Madison continued; "and he is to send more money
here for the 'cause'--when I ask for it--only you are not to know,
because you might be diffident about taking it after refusing him."

She stared at him numbly--there was no sarcasm in his words; in his
tones only a sort of dreary monotony. She shivered a little--how cold it
seemed! She did not quite grasp his words--and yet she shrank from them.
And then her very soul seemed to cry out against them, to pit itself
against their meaning, as their meaning surged upon her. And
unconsciously she drew herself up, and the whiteness of her face fled
before a rush of color.

"Oh, the shame of it!" she burst out. "The bitter shame of it! You shall
not touch the money--do you hear! You shall not touch it! I--I thought
that you had understood this afternoon. I am glad then that you have
come to-night--if I must say more to make you understand. This is the
end! I do not care what happens--the little I can do now to atone for
what I have done, I am going to do. The game is at an end--you shall not
touch another cent--and everything that we have taken goes back to those
whom we have worse than robbed it from! You hear--you understand! I will
cry it out in the town street if there is no other way--but it shall
stop--it shall stop to-night"--she was panting, breathless, the little
figure erect, outraged, quivering--and then suddenly the shoulders
seemed to droop, the lips to tremble, and she was on her knees upon the
grass beside the bench, and sobbing as a child.

"Helena!" Madison said hoarsely. "Helena! Listen! That is what I came
for to-night--to find a way out for you, for us all, if I can."

The passionate outburst passed--and she was on her feet again, facing
him.

"You are clever--clever!" she cried fiercely. "But you shall not play
with me--you shall not trick me--I meant every word I said!"

But now Madison made no answer. The moonlight bathed them both in its
clear, white radiance; and touched the sward, shading it to softest
green; and the trees limned out like fairy things against the night; and
the calm light flooded the little cottage with its hidden walls where
the ivy and the creepers grew, and lingered over the trellises to drink
the fragrance of the flowers that peeped out from their leafy beds. And
upon Madison's face crept slowly the anguish that was in his soul--until
it was mirrored there--until unconsciously it answered her where words
would have been useless things. Like some white-robed, sorrowing angel,
she seemed, as she stood there before him--the brown eyes full of
shadow, troubled; the sweet face tear-splashed; the little figure in its
simple muslin frock, pitiful in its brave defiance. And pure--just God,
how pure she looked!--the brow stainless white under the mass of dark,
coiled hair; the perfect throat of ivory. And--and the misery that was
in every feature of her face, in every line of her poise--and he had
brought her that--_he_ had brought her to that--and now when he loved
her as he might have loved her once and known her love in return, when
his heart cried out for her, when she was all in life he cared for, she
was gone from him, out of his life, and between them was a barrier he
could never pass--a barrier of his own raising.

And so he made no answer, for indeed he had not heard her; but she was
coming toward him now, her hands outstretched in a wondering way,
wistfully, pleadingly, as though to hold back a refutation that would
change the dawning light upon her face to dismay and grief again.

"It--it is true," she faltered. "It has come to you too--this change,
this new life that has come to me. It is true--I can see it in your
face."

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