Pippin; A Wandering Flame Part 33

Soon she came, with friendly hand extended; soon Pippin was sitting opposite her in the mission-furnished parlor, pouring out his artless tale of woe and bewilderment.

Mrs. Appleby had been expecting Mary for several days, had rather wondered at her non-appearance. She listened round-eyed to Pippin's account of the attempted burglary--his own part in the drama lightly dismissed with, "I knowed the guys, and I just put a spoke in their wheel. See?"

"Good gracious!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Why, they might have been murdered in their beds. Why, Pippin, your being there was simply providential."

Mrs. Appleby, like many another excellent person, had distinctly bia.s.sed views as to the part played by Providence in human affairs; not so Pippin, otherwise enlightened by his Elder.

"I view things generally in that light!" he said gravely. "All is, there's times when I can't understand 'em. Lemme tell you!"

He told her, with kindling eyes, of his discovery of the astonis.h.i.+ng fact that Mary Flower was May Blossom. Yes, she knew that, Mrs. Appleby said demurely. She did? _She did?_ Then why--Pippin stared at her a moment in blank bewilderment; then he smote his hand on his knee. That was right! He saw, he understood. That was why she wanted the letter from Elder Hadley; that was right! She couldn't have done no other way, she sure couldn't. And now, here was the Elder right in town here, and she could see him and make all the inquiries she--

But now the mobile face darkened, and the wail broke out.

"Mrs. Appleby, she's mad with me! Yes, ma'am, she is so! She won't look at me, nor yet hardly speak to me, excep' kind of cool and polite, like you'd speak to a stranger. Why--" he sprang up and paced the room, light-foot, absorbed, lifting his chin a little, unconsciously, as he reached either wall of the room, like a woodland creature in a cage.

"Why, Mrs. Appleby, I respect that young lady more than anybody in the world. We was friends, I want you to understand, till this come up, real good friends!" cried Pippin, clutching at his file and stabbing the air with it as he paced. "Nor I don't know no more than the dead what it _was_ come up! I never said anything anyways low to that young lady--my tongue would ha' withered in my mouth first. It makes me wild--"

Here he stopped, and, collecting himself with a great effort, sat down and begged Mrs. Appleby's pardon. He would ask the Lord to help him, he said gravely. 'Twasn't likely any one else could, and he'd no business to be bawlin' like he was a kid. He asked Mrs. Appleby's pardon again, and hoped she would overlook it. She, good lady, as much puzzled as he, tried to comfort him, as the chaplain had done, with hopes that all would come out right eventually. Mary was upset, and no wonder. This might make a great change in her life; Pippin must have patience.

"St. James!" Pippin's brow cleared, and he rose with his little bow which Mrs. Appleby privately considered the most graceful motion she had ever seen in her life. Talk of Russian dancers! "St. James! 'Let patience have her perfect work.' That's right! James, he's real good and searchin'; that takes holt of me. Well, ma'am, I'll wish you good day, and thank you kindly. You have helped me, too, you sure have."

At this moment a knock was heard, and the round-eyed pupil-teacher entered.

Please, ma'am, Jimmy Mather wanted to know could the--the gentleman [Janey did not think "my Grindy Man" would be polite or proper to repeat] come up to see him. He was flouncing about horfil, and she could not keep him quiet.

Mrs. Appleby hesitated. It was not usual, she said, but--the other children were at school, and Jimmy had been very poorly; if Pippin cared to go up for a few minutes--

"Sure I do! Tickled to death! Thank you, ma'am."

Mrs. Appleby led the way through cool, clean, stone-flagged halls and corridors to the pleasant infirmary with its yellow walls and snowy beds. Ten beds, and only one occupied, by a freckled, tousled quintessence of fractiousness in a blue wrapper.

"I _won't_ behave! I _will_ kick them off!" He did. "I want my grindy man, and I won't _ever_ behave unless he comes. I won't, I won't, I _won't_!"

"Dry up!" Pippin stood in the doorway, erect, with eyes of authority.

"What kind of way is this to act, I want to know? You lay down--" the boy obeyed instantly--"and you stay layin' down till I give you leave to set up. Now!" He nodded a.s.surance to Mrs. Appleby, who withdrew, drawing a reluctant Janey after her. Janey admired Pippin as much as anybody did, and had her own thoughts about the foolishness of letting that kid have his own way like that.

But Mrs. Appleby did not go far, only into the sewing-room close by, where she sat down and motioned Janey to a seat beside her. The door was open--it would have been close with it shut--and she had left the infirmary door on the jar. Sitting at their sewing, the two women listened.

No sound at first except Pippin's voice in a low admonitory murmur. Then louder, in clear, crisp tones: "What say, kid? Goin' to try? Shake!" Two voices now, in brisk and cheerful dialogue; then gurgles and crows of childish delight. (What could Pippin be doing? As a matter of fact, he was giving an exhibition of the Wig Wags, his fingers impersonating these mystic creatures, and performing unheard-of acrobatic feats in connection with the bedposts.)

Then--and this was what Mrs. Appleby had been waiting and hoping for, came the injunction: "Now sing, Grindy Man!"

Pippin sang; and the mite of fractious quicksilver lay back on the pillow with a happy sigh. The matron dropped her sewing, and took out her handkerchief; she was easily moved to tears, good Mrs. Appleby.

Downstairs from the housekeeper's room, upstairs from kitchen, dining-room, pantry, eager footsteps came stealing. Soon the whole household was sitting on the stairs, listening, and Mrs. Appleby was resolutely unaware of them, reflecting that some things were more important than others, and that n.o.body would die if dinner _was_ a little late.

Sing, Pippin! Pour your heart out, and lift up the hearts of all that hear you, sad hearts and merry, dull hearts and quick, for with them you shall lift up your own also, till your eyes s.h.i.+ne with their own glad light, and you go your way, once more joyful in the Lord:

"Fling out the life line with hand quick and strong: Why do you tarry, why linger so long?

See! he is sinking; oh, hasten today-- And out with the Life-Boat! Away, then, away!"

CHAPTER XXI

MARY BLOSSOM

To Pippin the last month had pa.s.sed like a watch in the night; say rather in the day, a watch on a hillside under a clear sky, with the sound of flutes in the air. But at Cyrus Poor Farm it had been a long month, and things had gone rather heavily. Brand, weaving baskets in his corner, thought it one of the longest months he had ever known. There had been many wet, cold days when the barn had been too chilly to work in, and though he loved the big kitchen, he preferred solitude for his work hours,--solitude, that is, enlivened by s.n.a.t.c.hes of cheery talk as Jacob Bailey came and went about his own work, by whiffs of fragrant clover and hay, by the sunlight that lay warm upon him as he sat in the wide doorway, by the friendly whinnying of Molly, the pretty black mare, in her loose box close by.

Then Flora May would come drifting in, and would sit down beside him, and rub her smooth cheek against his, and coo and murmur like a white pigeon. They were intimate, the blind man and the simple girl. He was Uncle Brand, she was his little gal. They spoke little as they sat together, but now and then he would pat her fair head and say, "We knowed it, little gal!" and she would nestle closer and repeat, "We knowed it!" That was all the speech they needed.

But now Flora May seldom came to the barn; she seemed almost to avoid him, Brand thought. Maybe it was just the bad weather; she was apt to be moody in bad weather. But even in the house she was changed, somehow.

She used always to give him a pat or a coo when she pa.s.sed him; now--but he must not be demanding. Blind folks were apt to be demanding, he had once been told, and had resolved no one should have cause to say it of him.

There were other trials, too, that month. Some tramps came, asking shelter for the winter, pleading illness, promising work. Jacob Bailey had taken them in, not too willingly, but feeling it his duty to do so; and had thereby roused the indignation of all his other "boarders,"

except Brand. For three days the usually cheerful house had seethed like a witches' cauldron; then the tramps departed by night, carrying with them such small personal property as they could lay hands on, and peace reigned again.

Meantime Old Man Blossom was growing weaker day by day. The poor old body, sodden with drink and worse than drink, was nearly worn out. The machine worked feebly; at any moment it might run down and stop. One thing only, Mrs. Bailey thought as she watched beside the bed, kept him alive: the longing for his child. She spent every moment she could spare, good soul, sitting beside him, knitting in hand, ready to answer the inevitable question when it came. He would lie for hours motionless, apparently sleeping. Then the lids would flutter open, the hands begin to wander and pluck at the bedclothes; the dim eyes, after rolling vacantly, would fix themselves on her, and recognition creep into them.

"Ain't he come yet?"

"Not yet, Mr. Blossom. He'll be here soon."

"You don't think--"

"Yes, Mr. Blossom?"

"You don't think he's slipped one over on me?"

"I think he will come as soon as he can; that is, as soon as he finds your daughter, you know. You don't want him to come without her, do you?"

"If he does--" the voice dies into a whisper, faint yet vehement.

Bending to catch his words, Lucy Bailey listens a moment, then straightens herself with compressed lips. Mr. Blossom is consistent, and expresses himself in his usual manner.

Presently he finds his voice again, a whimper in it this time. "But ain't it hard luck, lady? I ask you, lady, if it ain't hard luck that I have to get a crook to fetch me my little gal. I ain't a con, lady!

Booze was all my trouble--that an' not havin' the stren'th to work. I never got no longer jolt than a year. Now Pippin's a crook, born and bred. If he slips one over on me--" The voice sinks again into a hoa.r.s.e mutter, and so lapses into silence. The face, puckered into sharp wrinkles of anxiety, seems to flatten and smooth itself till it lies like an old wax mask, ugly but peaceful. He will be quiet now for some time; Mrs. Bailey settles the bedclothes tidily and steals away.

Her faithful attendance on the dying vagrant has not been fortunate for the other inmates; her firm gentle hand is missed everywhere in the house. Her husband confides to her, in the quiet hour before bedtime, that things have been kind of cuterin'. Aunt Mandy was some fractious to-day; she made Miss Pudgkins cry at dinner, callin' her a greedy old hadd.i.c.k; no way to talk to Miss Pudgkins, Lucy knew.

Miss Pudgkins ought not to mind Aunt Mandy, Mrs. Bailey said; she knew full well what Aunt Mandy was. Pepper gra.s.s had to grow the way it grew; you couldn't expect it to be sweet gale, nor yet garden blooms. Yes, Mr.

Bailey expected she knew that, but still, 'twas provoking, and in the face and eyes of the whole table. 'Twas true Miss Pudgkins had taken Brand's dish of prune sauce and put her empty one in its place.

"The mean old thing!" Mrs. Bailey spoke sharply, and a spark came into her kind eyes. She could not bear to see the blind man "put upon." "Now I am glad Aunt Mandy spoke out. I hope you took the dish right straight away from her, Jacob!"

Jacob looked troubled. "I couldn't do that, Lucy; women-folks, you know!"

"No, you couldn't. I wish I'd been there."