Laura Richards
Pippin; A Wandering Flame

CHAPTER XXIV
PRIMAL FORCES

COMIN' in to supper, Brand? The horn has blew!" Mr. Wisk paused, one foot uplifted for the next step.

To realize what a tribute to the blind man's personality lay in this pause, one must have known Mr. Wisk. As his internal clock pointed the approach of supper time he had been standing, poised for flight, an elderly and ramshackle Mercury on a half-dug potato hill. At sound of the horn he started, head bent forward, nose pointing as straight for the kitchen as ever porker's for the trough. He would not have stopped to put away his spade, because the corner behind the right-hand door jamb of the barn had been long since appropriated by him for this purpose; he could reach it without breaking step or slackening his pace. Probably nothing on earth would have checked him except the very sight that now met his eyes: the blind man standing just inside the door, feeling over various things on a shelf so high that he (a very tall man) could but just reach it. Mr. Wisk hesitated; it was his happy boast never to have been late to a meal since he came to manhood.

"Want – want I should help you?" he quavered.

"No, thank you, Wisk! I'll be in presently, tell Mrs. Bailey. I have to look for something just a minute, tell her."

He smiled at the sigh of conscious heroism which drifted back from the departing Wisk; but the smile faded quickly, and his face was anxious enough as his fingers closed round one object and another on the shelf; a bottle, a jar, a row of paper bags neatly tied with twine. To the casual eye these bags were all alike; one must read the label, see the skull and crossbones, to distinguish them; the blind man needed no labels.

"Lime, Paris green, Bordeaux mixture, arsenate of lead – one, two, three, four – there should be five. Lime, Paris green, Bordeaux mixture —where is the hellebore?"

He paused, his hand resting in an empty space between two bags. The hellebore should be there; it was always there. He had used it himself yesterday. He had counted these objects every night for the past ten years, and never before had one been missing. No one but he could reach the shelf; even Jacob Bailey had to stand on the bucket to get at it, and the rule was strict that none but one of these two was ever to touch any object on it. Brand stood pondering, with bent head, his hand still on the shelf. Who had been in the barn this afternoon? He himself, Jacob, Pippin, and the child. No one else – except the little girl; Brand always called Flora May the little girl. She had been there, not half an hour ago; he had heard her step, had spoken to her, but she did not answer. In one of her odd spells, probably, poor child! But she could not reach the shelf, even if —

The supper table was less gay than usual that evening; silence prevailed instead of the usual cheerful chatter. A stranger, glancing round the table, would have seen for the most part faces absent or absorbed. Jacob was thinking about Pippin, regretting that the chaplain had failed to have that talk with him, wondering how he should himself make the matter clear to the boy. His wife was disturbed about Flora May who was evidently on the verge of one of her odd spells, for she had acted strangely all day, and she looked wrong to-night. When she crumbled her bread and didn't seem to know the way to her mouth, look out for trouble!

In the minds of Miss Pudgkins and Mr. Wisk the same thought reigned supreme. The pie looked to be smaller than common; would she cut it in six and fetch in another, or would she make it go round? Miss Whetstone was inwardly lamenting that she had not told Mr. Hadley of Jonas Cattermole's having been two years in the legislature. He'd see plain enough then that folks was folks, even if they found it convenient to board a spell with relations that happened to hold a town office. Miss Whetstone raised her nose loftily, and told Mr. Wisk with a grand air that she would trouble him for just a mite of them pickles if he could spare any.

And Mary?

Mary had changed her seat, with a murmured excuse about a draft on her back. She had usually sat between Jacob Bailey and Flora May, sat there with an inward protest. She shrank from contact with the imbecile girl: the instinctive shrinking of the healthy from the sick, the unconscious cruelty of the normal toward the abnormal. Hitherto she had given no sign of this, ashamed of an instinct that was yet too strong for her; conscious, too, under the skin of her mind, of the warmth of compassion, the tenderness of courtesy, with which Pippin always treated the poor girl. If she had been the First Lady of the Land, he could have shown her no more attention, Mary thought.

But to-night there was something more; Mary was afraid. The look she had met, out there by the barn, the dreadful look which seemed to strike like a sword at her springing hope and lay it cold and dead – she shuddered now at thought of it; she would not meet it again. If she had turned her eyes toward Flora May, she would have seen the beautiful face sombre but quiet, the eyes cast down, the girl's whole air listless and brooding; only – if she had looked longer – she might have seen now and then the heavy white lids tremble, lift a little way, and a glance dart from under the long lashes toward Pippin where he sat opposite her.

Mary dared not look at Pippin either, for she felt his eyes upon her. Not yet, not before all these people, could she give him back look for look, tell him silently all that was crying out within her; but soon, soon, Pippin! Meantime she had drawn the child Peppino into the seat next her, and was lavishing on him all the innocent wiles of the child-hungry woman; and the child nestled close to her, and looked up at her with adoring eyes. Pippin would see, would understand. All would be well.

Pippin saw, but did not understand. He had wrestled and overcome, but the stress of conflict was still upon him, the air was still full of the clash of arms, the sound of great wings. His shadow world was gone, swept away into nothingness; and of the actual flesh-and-blood realities he saw nothing except Mary Blossom. There she sat opposite him, in all her loveliness; surely he might look at her now, might for once take his fill of gazing on the lovely head with its clustering hair ("The color of a yearlin' heifer – Poor old mutt! What a way to speak of it! Wouldn't that give you a pain?"), on the long dark lashes against the exquisite curve of the rose-white cheek, on the perfect mouth —

Pippin's eyes grew misty; the world fell away from him – say, rather, it narrowed to a point, and life and death and every other creature were merged in that fair head of the love he thought he had lost.

"Flora May!" Mrs. Bailey spoke abruptly, almost sharply; every one started. "Wake up, Flora, and set up straight; you're all slid down in your chair. Here! Take this cup o' tea to Miss Blossom, dear!"

The brooding face lightened, sharpened, in a strange way; the girl rose with a swift, sudden movement, and went obediently to the end of the table to take the cup. If Mrs. Bailey had looked up then – but she was busy over her tea things.

"You put the sugar in, dearie – she likes two lumps – and cream! Mr. Brand, you ready for another cup?"

Pippin had started with the rest, when Mrs. Bailey spoke. Now his eyes followed Flora May for a moment; she had turned her back to the table, and was – what was she doing?

An old-fashioned mirror hung against the wall, dim with age, yet not so dim but that Pippin saw in it the graceful figure of the girl reflected. She paused, the cup in her left hand, drew from her bosom a folded paper, shook into the cup what looked like a white powder, replaced the paper carefully. Now what was that poor thing doing? Putting salt in Mary's tea for a joke like? Lacking reason, they were like monkeys, some way —

Then the girl lifted her head, and Pippin saw her eyes. In a flash he was beside her, and had taken the cup from her hand; now he lifted it, smiling, as if to drink.

"I guess that's my cup, ain't it, Miss Flora May? I guess Mis' Bailey made a mistake for once!"

It all happened in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. Before the cup touched his lips, the girl struck it out of his hand. It fell with a sharp crash on the floor. She threw up her arms with a cry which rang through the house, and darted out into the night.

"She's got a spell on her!" said Jacob Bailey, rising quickly. "It's been coming on this week past, m' wife says. Come, Pippin; come, Wisk! We'll have to find the poor child and bring her home."

He spoke sadly, but without surprise, as of a thing well known.

"You come too, Brand! Oftentimes she'll answer your voice when she won't another. The barn first!"

"She was there this afternoon," said the blind man, following. "Likely she's gone to put back something she – borrowed!"

Not in the barn; not in the corncrib, where she used to sit by the hour, crooning her wordless songs; not in the kennel with old Rover, where they had found her more than once, poor thing, her arms around the dumb creature who perhaps – who knows? – was nearer her dumb mind than the human beings around her.

"This way!" said Brand. "Here's a thread of her dress on the gatepost. She's gone to the wood lot."

Not in the wood lot; no answer to the calls of friendly, tender voices.

"Flora! Flora May! Where be you, little gal? Speak up, won't you?"

Further on, through the meadows, guided by the blind man's unerring fingers which found here a broken twig, there a shred of cotton, here again a knot of ribbon caught in a bramble wreath; searching, calling, searching, through weary hours.

So at last to the distant pasture where the lily pond gleamed under the moon.

There they found her, poor Flora May. Lying among the lily pads, her lovely hair twined about the brown stems, her fair face turned upwards, the clear shallow water dimpling and wavering above her, so that she seemed to smile at them in faint, disdainful mockery; so they found her, lying quietly in the place of her rest.

"Don't cry, mother! don't ye! the Lord has took His poor lamb home. Don't take on so, Lucy!"

Thus Jacob, patting his wife's shoulder with clumsy, tender hand. He had never seen her so overcome; the calm, self-contained woman was crying and sobbing like a child.

But now she collected herself with an effort, and dried her eyes.

"I know, Jacob! I know I hadn't ought; I know she's better off; but – 'tis so pitiful! Oh, 'tis so pitiful! She couldn't help it, my poor girl; she couldn't help it. 'Twas stronger than her. And, oh, Jacob, I can't but think – if her father had been – different – "

"There, Lucy! There! Such things is beyond us."

"They hadn't ought to be!" cried Lucy Bailey, and her tears broke out afresh. "They hadn't ought to be beyond us. The Lord intended we should live clean and decent, and made us accordin'; and them as don't, it's their children must pay, like the Bible says. But what keeps comin' back and back on my mind is – she was so innocent and so pretty! Full as pretty as what Mary is, to my thinkin'. Seein' her lyin' there, so pretty – oh, so pretty! I couldn't but think – I couldn't but think – if she had had a fair chance – "

If she had had a fair chance! So Pippin thought, as he stood by the little white bed in the narrow room. He had carried her home in his young strong arms, had laid her here – reverently, as he would have laid a royal princess – on the bed where she had tossed and moaned her heart out for him; now she had no thought for him, she was all for sleep. He had left her to the women, and gone to join the older men, a sorrowful little group about the kitchen fire; but now, when all the house was still, there could be no harm in his entering the quiet room once more, humbly, with bowed head, to say a word of farewell to the poor sweet pretty creatur'; to say a little prayer, too, and maybe – whisperin' like, not to wake a soul – to sing a little hymn, seeing she used to set by his singing. He looked round the room, neat and bare, yet a girl's room, with pretty touches here and there: a bird's nest on a mossy twig, a bunch of feathery grasses in a graceful jug, bright Christmas cards framing the little mirror, drooping over them a necklace of wooden beads carved by Brand for his little girl. Beside these things, on a stand by the bedside, some pond lilies in a glass bowl, drooping with folded petals. Pippin shivered, and his eyes turned to the still figure, the white lovely face.

Kneeling humbly by the humble bed, he said his prayer; then raised his head, and softly, softly, a golden thread of sound – sure no one could hear! – his voice stole out in the hymn she had loved best:

 
"There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for you!
 
 
"On the other side of Jordan,
In the green fields of Eden,
Where the tree of life is blooming,
There is rest for your soul!"
 

Pippin rose and stood for some moments looking down on the quiet face; then he made his reverence – bowing lower than usual, with a gesture of his hands as if taking leave of something high and noble – and turned away.

Closing the door softly, he paused, looking into the darkness of the passage with wistful eyes. He was very, very lonely; his heart was sad as death. Could he – might he not, once more, call up to comfort him the shadow faces he had loved so well? Now? Just this once! He bent forward, his eyes fixed intently.

"Ma!" he said softly. "You there?"

A moment's pause; then a sob broke from him and he turned to go.

But then – oh, then! – came a rustle of something soft, came a flash of something white. Two arms were flung round his neck, pressing him close, close; a radiant head lay on his shoulder.

"Will I do?" cried Mary Blossom. "Oh, Pippin, Pippin! Will I do instead?"

CHAPTER XXV
PIPPIN OVERCOMES

WELL, how about it?" said John Aymer.

A council was being held in the pleasant parlor with the rose-colored shades. John Aymer, Lucy his wife, and Lawrence Hadley, his wife's brother, were sitting together, talking of things with which we have some concern.

"How about it?" repeated the hardware merchant. He planted both elbows on his knees, rested his chin on his hands, and, as he would have said, squared away for action. The others looked up inquiringly. "Pippin is your hunt, Larry, and from your point of view – and his – he is on the right track, and it's all highcockolorum Erin go Bragh. But Mary is our hunt, Lucy's and mine, and we don't feel so sure about all this."

"I do part of the time, John!" Mrs. Aymer spoke with a certain timidity, unlike her usual gay decisiveness. "When I talk with Larry, or see Pippin – even just look at him – it seems all as right as right; but then – "

"But then you look at Mary, and it doesn't. See here, Lar!" John Aymer laid down his pipe, a token of strong interest with him. "Pippin is what you call a mystic and I call a glorified crank. All he wants in the world – beside Mary – is a chance to help, as he says; and it's great. I know it is, and I'm proud to know the chap, and all that. But that isn't all Mary wants!"

The chaplain looked up with a grave nod of comprehension.

"Mary Blossom," John Aymer went on, "is a fine girl, and she's an ambitious girl. She has done well herself, got a first-rate education of its kind, made herself a first-rate all-round young woman, capable of doing – within limits – anything she sets her hand to. Now – she's as dead stuck on Pippin as he is on her – "

"John! What language! She adores him, if that is what you mean."

"Well, she adores him, then – doesn't sound half as real – but she doesn't adore the line of life he is laying out for himself and her. I don't believe she takes any more stock in it than – than I should. She would like to see her husband a church member in regular standing: a vestryman; doing no end of pious work, you know – he has to do that or bust; even I can see that – but doing it in a regular respectable kind of way: chairman of Boards – what? Frock coat, handsome rooms, subcommittees, secretaries, that kind of thing. She wants to see him a leader, and she believes he can be. This picking up a boy here and a tramp there, singing and praying, hurrah boys and God bless you, doesn't cut much ice with Mary. Poor little soul, she cried an hour on Lucy's shoulder the other night. Lucy cried, too, of course; water works all over the house, almost drowned me out."

"John!"

"Well, sir, that kind of thing – the chairman, frock coat, committee-room thing, is what Mary wants for her husband; and who can say but she's right? I don't say she is, mind! I'm not a spiritual kind of man, and I know it; but I do say that Pippin ought to realize how she feels and the kind of life she would choose. Then he can face it, squarely, and make his own decision, knowing what it means to her. You say – " he turned to his wife, who was listening intently – "he's had no education. Granted – in a way! But you can't keep Pippin from education any more than you can keep a dog from water when he's thirsty. (Nip's bowl is empty, by the way, Lucy; might cry into that next time, what?) I don't say it will be book education; much good my books have done me, and as you say, Lucy, my English resembles a tinker's – well, thought it, if you didn't say it – well – what do you say, Reverend?"

Lawrence Hadley threw his head back with a little reversed nod that was all his own.

"Give me a minute, Jack! I'm assimilating! Give me a minute!"

He took a minute, whistling "Am I a soldier of the Cross?" through slowly and carefully. Then he took three more in silence, walking slowly up and down the room, the others watching him anxiously.

All true – so far as it went. Pippin ought to see, ought to realize, what Mary wanted. Ought to realize, too, what power he would have in that way, the frock coat, roast-turkey, mahogany-and-brass-rail way. Popularity? He might become the idol of a day – of many days. Men's hearts would open to him like flowers to the sun. Mass meetings; hospitals; his voice floating through the wards; "the bright seraphim in burning row!" Yes! Mary beside him, glorified in him, shining with his light and her own – Yes! – On the other hand – what? A dying tramp comforted; a weak boy saved from ruin; a poor old sinner made happy. Not much, perhaps? And yet – had the Master founded hospitals there in Judea? Had He healed all the lepers? He healed one, and the world changed. The hospitals have been building ever since.

At last he spoke.

"Every word you say is true, Jack! Hold on!" as the other reached for his pipe with an air of relief. "Don't light up yet; you won't be so pleased in a minute. Every word is true, I say, but it's only half the truth, and the less important half!"

Hadley's eyes kindled, and he began to beat time with his fist on the arm of his chair. He was getting up steam.

"What do you mean?" said Aymer, rather shortly.

"You are right about Pippin's realizing Mary's point of view. He ought, and he shall; you shall put it to him yourself, as strongly as you like; but – here comes in my half – she must also realize his, and that is what she doesn't do."

"That is true, John!" Mrs. Aymer started forward, clasping her pretty hands in an adorable little way she had when strongly moved. "She doesn't realize, any more than you do; any more than I do, except just the least little bit. But, oh, I know Lawrence is right! I feel it in every bone I have. John dear, do as Lar says; put your side —our side, for, oh, I am such a worldly little animal! – before Pippin plainly, and then let Lar show Mary the other!"

"Agreed!" said John Aymer.

"No!" said Lawrence Hadley. "Pippin shall show her the other himself."

At this moment came a knock at the door.

"Come in!" said John Aymer impatiently.

The door flew open, and Mary entered, a Mary at sight of whom Mrs. Aymer sprang forward with inarticulate murmurs, while the two men rose to their feet in confusion. A wholly unfamiliar Mary; one would have said an impossible one. Crying, laughing, clasping and unclasping her hands wildly, she ran to the other woman, and melted into her arms as if there were no such things as class distinctions in the world.

"Oh! Mrs. Aymer!" she sobbed. "Oh, Mr. Aymer and Mr. Hadley! If you please! I have been a wicked, wicked girl!"

Sorely puzzled, the three friendly conspirators looked past the bright head, now resting on Mrs. Aymer's agitated shoulder, to the doorway, where stood Pippin, silent, motionless, but radiating light and joy and pride, "Like a torch!" "Like a blooming lighthouse!" said the two men, each to himself, in his own speech.

"I wouldn't cry, Mary!" Pippin spoke quietly, as he would to a child.

"You would!" Mary flashed round upon him. "You'd cry your eyes out, and wish you had more to cry out! I've been a wicked, wicked girl! Oh, Mrs. Aymer! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! No, my kind lady, don't stop me, for it has to come out. He took me – my Pippin took me – down – down to those dreadful places where he used to live. I went into a cellar, dark and cold – oh! and there was a little child, all thin and cold and dirty, not clothes enough to cover him; and bruises on his little flesh! Oh, my heart! And Pippin said – Pippin said – 'That might be me, Mary!' Oh, Mrs. Aymer! Oh, Mr. Hadley! It might have been me, too! It all came back. I remember – I remember – "

The sobs choked her, but she fought them back fiercely, and went on, struggling for utterance, still clasping and unclasping those eager hands. "He showed me more, but that was enough. I says to myself, 'Who am I, to turn him from his own work? Who am I, to come between him and the Lord? No! no!" She turned, and held out her hands with a passionate gesture. Pippin stepped forward and clasped the hands in his.

"We're going to work together!" said Mary Blossom. She spoke quietly now, though the sobs still tried to break out. "I'm going to follow him, help him, serve with him, every minute of my life from now on. He will do all the real work, everything that counts; but I can cook, and mend, and – oh, Mrs. Aymer, I can wa-wa-wash for them!"

She caught Pippin's hand to her lips, then flung it away and ran out. A silken flutter, and Lucy Aymer was after her like a flash. There was a tempestuous rustle of petticoats, and the sound of sobs and cooing; then silence.

The three men looked at one another. Presently John Aymer drew a long breath. "So that's all right!" he said. "One to you, Parson!"

The chaplain laughed, a contented little laugh. "Very handsome of you, Jack!" he said. "What do you say, Pippin? Is it all right?"

"It is, sir!" Pippin raised his head, which had been bent for a moment. "Yes, Elder, and Boss – I would say Mr. Aymer, sir; it is all right. I knew it would be; I never had no fears. I knew as soon as Mary sensed it she'd realize how 'twas. Yes, sir, I took her down – " he named a certain quarter of the city – "and showed her. I didn't need to say a word, hardly. She saw; Mary saw! And now, Elder – " he turned to Lawrence Hadley, and his eyes kindled. "Lemme tell you! It's like you said. I've got to get edication. I'm not fit to take holt of kids yet – not yet – but I will be! I'd like to start right away, if agreeable to you. You say where to go, and I'll go, if I have to wheel myself in a barrer!"