Pippin; A Wandering Flame. Richards Laura Elizabeth Howe
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so many boys go wrong. Green grass! Tell you what!" Pippin's eyes were shining now, and his hands clenched. "I've been sayin' along, this month past, I'd forget all that time when I was a kid; I'd forget everything up to where I found the Lord. I kind o' think there was where I was wrong, mister – ?"
"Call it Parks!" said the brown man. "Calvin Parks is what I was christened, and I'd like to know your name, son."
"Pippin!"
"Meanin' – ?"
"Just Pippin!"
"Christian name or surname?"
"All the name there is!"
"But Pippin ain't no given name; it's an apple!"
"That's right! But it's all the name I've got. Fur back as I remember, Granny Faa called me it, and Dod Bashford called me 'pup' or 'snipe.' That's all I have to go by, so you see how 'tis!"
How should you remember anything more, Pippin? You were a baby when Granny Faa, then still able to travel, living in and out of the tilt cart which was home to her, found you by the roadside with your dying mother. The woman was almost past speech. "Don't roof me!" she muttered, flinging her arms out as the old gypsy lifted her. "Don't roof me!" and so died. Granny Faa felt no responsibility for the corpse. She rifled the body methodically, but found nothing of value. The shoes were better than her own, so she put them on. As for the baby, she took it partly because it smiled in her face and made something stir in that withered region where her heart was still alive, but more because her son wished it. Gypsy Gil (short for Gilbert), bent over the child delightedly; he snapped his fingers, and the baby crowed and jumped in the withered arms that held it. "Hell! ain't he a pippin?" said Gil. "Say, kid, ain't you a pippin?" "Goo!" said the baby. That was all. It was very simple. During the week Gil had still to live, he was "wrop up," as his mother said, in the child, and declared twenty times a day, with a new oath each time, that it was a pippin sure enough. Then, a knife thrust in a drunken scuffle sent Gil wherever he was to go; but he had named the baby. The old woman, mourning like a she-wolf, tended the child grimly because Gil had liked it; called it, for the same reason, by the name-that-was-no-name which he had given it. It was all simple enough, you see, had Pippin but known.
"That's mighty queer!" the brown man ruminated. "I don't know as ever I heard of any one without two names to him, and yet it sounds all right, too. Pippin! Well – well, son, I will say you look it. And now, here we are at the Poor Farm, and I'm goin' in here in my reg'lar way."
"Poor Farm! is this a Poor Farm?"
Ever since it came in sight, Pippin had been looking with a lover's eye at the broad low house of mellow brick, standing back from the road under its giant elms, its neat garden skirts gathered round it, its prim, trim gravel path leading to its white steps and green fan-lighted door.
"This a Poor Farm!" he repeated.
"Sure! Jacob Bailey's idea of one, and I wish there was more like it."
"Jacob Bailey!" cried Pippin. "Why, green grass! Why – why, ain't this great? He's a gentleman I'm acquainted with; he asked me to come and see him, and I promised I would. Well, if this ain't a leadin', I never see one. Mr. Parks, I'm pleased enough at meetin' up with you, just your own self; but add on your bringin' me here – why, I don't know how to thank you, sir!"
"Nothin' at all! nothin' at all!" said Calvin Parks. "I'm just as pleased myself. Think of your knowin' Jacob! Well! well! He's pure fruit and cane sugar, Jacob is, not a mite of glucose in his make-up. Here he comes this minute!"
Such a welcome as they had! Good Mr. Bailey, coming out to welcome his old friend, was quite overcome with pleasure and amazement at finding his new one, too. He had been telling the woman about him ever since that day, he assured Pippin. Only this morning he had said he wished that young feller would turn up, and she had said she wished to goodness he would for there was nothing in the house that would cut except Aunt Mandy's tongue.
"One of the inmates!" he explained. "Poor old lady! M' wife was a mite worked up, and she is cuterin', times when her rheumatism ketches her. Come in! Come in, the two of ye! Make ye welcome, Pippin, to Cyrus Poor Farm!"
He led them through the neat vestibule, through – with a glance of pride – the chilly splendor of the parlor, with its embossed plush rockers and lace curtains, into the kitchen.
"We'll find the woman here!" he said. "Kitchen's home, I always say."
It was a large, brick-paved room, with four broad windows facing south and east. Most of one side was taken up by a black cavern of a fireplace, which sheltered grimly the shining trimness of a modern cookstove. There was plenty of room for the settles on either side, and warm though the day was, two or three old people were sitting there, rubbing their chilly knees and warming their poor old hands. They looked up, and their faces sharpened into lively curiosity at sight of the visitors; but the girl who sat at the window never glanced at them, only crooned to the cat in her lap. The blind man in the corner, weaving willow baskets, listened, and his face lightened at the sound of the brown man's voice.
"Howdy, folks!" he said. "Well, I am a stranger, as you were saying. Say we have a pep'mint all round, what? Or a marshmallow? Uncle Ammi, I've got a treat for you, come all the way from Cyrus!"
While he gossiped cheerily with the old people, a sweet-faced woman came from an inner room and was introduced by Jacob Bailey as "m' wife."
"This is the young man I was tellin' you about, Lucy!" he said. "Cur'us he should happen along to-day, what say?"
"That's right! Only I should call it providential myself, Jacob. Be seated, won't you, Mr. – now Jacob told me your name! – Pippin – to be sure! Be seated, Mr. Pippin. We'll be having supper soon, and you'll set right down with us, I hope."
"Thank you, ma'am! If there was some knives I could be sharpenin', to earn my supper, sort of, I should be tickled to death to stay. Or if there's anything else you'd rather – what I aim at is to please, you see. Them scissors the young lady has in her lap don't appear to be what I'd call real sharp, now."
Mrs. Bailey laid her hand gently on the girl's fair head.
"Flora May can't have sharp scissors!" she said. "She's good as gold, but she's a little wantin', and she might cut off her lovely hair, mightn't you, Flora?"
The girl raised a sweet, vacant face. "I might cut off my lovely hair!" she repeated in a musical singsong. "My lovely, lovely hair! My – " The quiet hand touched her again, and she was silent.
"After supper we'll have some singin'!" she said. "Flora May admires to sing."
"Does she?" Pippin looked earnestly at the young face, pure and perfect in form and tint. "It's like a lamp when you've blown it out!" he thought.
Now Mrs. Bailey brought an apronful of knives and scissors. Pippin retreated to the yard where he had left his wheel, and was soon grinding and singing away, oblivious of all else save flying wheel and shining steel. Glancing up after a while, he saw all the inhabitants of the Poor Farm gathered in the doorway, listening; he paid little heed; folks always listened. That was the way the Lord had given him, to pay folks for bein' so pleasant to him as they always was. He was real thankful.
"Look at the aidge on this knife, will you? Hardly you can't tell which is it, and which is air; see?"
He broke out into a wild, sweet air:
"Oh! carry me 'long!
Dar's no more trouble for me.
I's gwine away to a better land,
Where all de niggers am free.
Long, long hab I worked,
I'b handled many a hoe;
I'll turn my eye before I die,
And see de sugar cane grow."
Something moved near him. He glanced down and saw the girl Flora May. She had crept nearer and nearer, till now she was almost at his feet. She sat, or rather crouched, on the ground, graceful as a creature of the woods, her blue print gown taking the lovely lines of her figure, her masses of fair hair, neatly braided, wound round and round her head. Such a pretty head! Just a little too