A Sunny Little Lass

CHAPTER XII

News From The Lane

“Hmm, hmm, indeed! An’ what is ‘Loo-ee-gy’ anyhow? An’ what is the noise I hear save one them wore-out hurdy-gurdies, that do be roamin’ the country over, soon’s ever the town gets too hot to hold ’em? Wouldn’t ’pear that a nice spoken little girl as yon would be takin’ up with no Eyetalian organ-grinder,” grumbled Timothy, a trifle jealously. Already he felt a sort of proprietorship in Glory and the “Angel” and had revolved in his mind for several nights–that is when he could keep awake–what he could do to help her. He was as reluctant to place her in any institution against her will as she was to have him, but he had not known what else to propose to Mary’s common sense suggestion.

Both Timothy and Mrs. Fogarty watched the open gateway, through which Take-a-Stitch had vanished, for her to reappear, since the brick wall at the foot of the slope fully hid the road beyond.

The music had soon ceased, but not until all the seven had swarmed out of the house, excited over even so trifling a “show” to break the monotony of their lives. All seven now began to exercise themselves in the wildest antics, leaping over one another’s shoulders, turning somersaults, each fisticuffing his neighbor, and finally emitting a series of deafening whoops as Glory actually turned back into the grounds, her hands clinging to the arm of a swarthy little man, who carried a hand-organ on his back and a monkey on his shoulder. The hand-organ was of the poorest type and the monkey looked as though he had been “upon the road” for many, many years–so ancient and wrinkled was his visage. His jaunty red coat had faded from its original tint to a dirty brown; and the funny little cap which he pulled from his head was full of holes, so that it was a wonder he did not lose from it the few cents he was able to collect in it for his master.

But the vagrant pair might have been some wonderful grandees, so proudly did Goober Glory convey them up the slope to the very tree where Mary and her brood awaited them, crying joyfully:

“’Tis Luigi! Luigi Salvatore, Antonio’s brother! He knows me, he knows us all and he’s come straight from Elbow Lane. I mean, quite straight, ’cause he was there after I was. Wasn’t you, Luigi?”

Luigi stood bareheaded now, resting his organ-pole upon the ground and glancing from Glory’s eager face to the curious faces of these others. He understood but little of “United States language,” having come to that country but a short time before, and having hitherto relied upon his brother Toni to interpret for him when necessary. He was waiting permission to grind out his next tune, and not as surprised as Timothy was that the little girl should have recognized his organ from a multitude of others, which to the railroader sounded exactly the same.

Take-a-Stitch nodded her head, also freshly cropped like Bonny’s, and he began. For a time all went well. The seven young Fogartys were in ecstasies, and even their elders beamed with delight, forgetting that the one would be “docked” for his wasted time and the other that the cat and her kittens were at that moment helping to “clear the table” she had left standing. Even Bonny Angel gravely nodded approval from her perch in Timothy’s arms, save when the too solicitous monkey held his cap to her. Then she frowned and buried her pretty face on Timothy’s shoulder and raised it only when Jocko had hopped another way.

But suddenly out of his selections, Luigi began that ancient tune, “A Life on the Ocean Wave, A Home on the Rolling Deep”–and then disaster!

Almost as distinctly as if he stood there before her in the flesh, forsaken Glory saw her grandfather’s beloved form; clad in his well-kept old uniform, buttons shining, head thrown back, gilt-trimmed cap held easily in his wrinkled hand, with Bos’n sitting gravely upright beside him. There he stood, in her fancy; and the vision well-nigh broke her heart. Then down upon the grass she flung herself and all her brave self-repression gave way before the flood of homesick longing which besieged her.

Nobody quite understood what ailed her, though from having heard the captain sing that melody he had just ground out, Luigi dimly guessed. But the effect upon all was that there had been quite music enough for the time being, and Mary showed her wisdom by drawing the company away, counseling:

“Let her have her cry out. She’s kep’ in brave an’ ’twill do her good. More good’n a lickin’!” she finished, with a lunge at her eldest son, who was fast changing his playful cuffs of a twin into blows which were not playful; and all because between Jocko and that twin was already developing considerable interest, which the bigger boy wished to fix upon himself.

“Well now, ma! What for? ’Tain’t every day a monkey comes a visitin’ here an’ he’s had him long enough. My turn next, an’ that’s fair,” protested Dennis, junior, namesake of the gardener.

“No more it isn’t, an’ me forgettin’ my manners after the fine music he’s give us. Look up, Glory, an’ ask the gentleman, Looeegy yon, would he like a bite to eat.”

The girl raised her face, already ashamed of crying before other people, and instantly eager to do something for this visitor from “home”; and when she had repeated Mary’s invitation to Luigi the smiles came back to her own face at the smiles which lightened his.

Alas! It wasn’t very much of the good dinner was left, after the cat and her kittens had done with it, but such as remained was most welcome to the poor Italian. Accustomed to a dry loaf of bread washed down with water from the roadside, even the remnants of Mary Fogarty’s food seemed a feast to him; and he enjoyed it upon the door-step with Glory at his feet and Jocko coming in for whatever portion his master thought best to spare.

Afterward, comforted and rested, he would have repaid his hostess by another round of his melodies; but this, much to the disgust of seven small lads, Take-a-Stitch prevented.

Leading the organ-grinder from the threshold of the cottage to the tree beyond it, Glory made Luigi sit down again and answer every question she put to him; and though he did not always comprehend her words, he did her gestures, so that, soon, she had learned all he knew of the Lane since she had left it until the previous day when he had done so.

First, because to him it seemed of the greater importance, Luigi dwelt upon Toni’s disappointment, and divulged the great “secret” which had matured in the peanut-merchant’s brain, and was to have been made known to Goober Glory, had she not “runned the way.” The secret was a scheme for the betterment of everybody concerned and of Antonio Salvatore in especial; and to the effect that the blind captain and Goober Glory should form a partnership. She was to be given charge of Antonio’s own big stand; while comfortable upon a high stool, beside it, the captain was to sit and sing. This would have attracted many customers, Toni thought, by its novelty; and, incidentally, the seaman might sell some of his own frames. As for the proprietor himself, he was to have taken and greatly enlarged the “outside business”; Luigi assisting him whenever the organ failed to pay.

“Money, little one! Oh, mucha money for all! But you stole the baby and runned away,” ended this part of the stroller’s tale, as she interpreted it.

“I never! Never, never, never! She was sent! She belongs. Hear me!” cried Glory, indignantly, and forthwith poured into Luigi’s puzzled ear all her own story. Then she demanded that he should answer over again her first question when she had met him; hoping a different reply.

“Has my grandpa come back?”

But Luigi only shook his head. Even through his dim understanding, there had filtered the knowledge that the fine old captain never would so come. He had been killed, crushed, put out of this sunny world by a cruel accident. So Antonio had told him; but so, in pity, for her he would not repeat. Rather he would make light of the matter, and did so, shrugging his shoulders in his foreign fashion and elevating his eyebrows indifferently; then conveyed to her in his broken English that the seaman must have “moved,” because the landlord had come and sent all the furnishings of the “littlest house” to the grocer’s for safe keeping; and there she would find them when she wished.

As for Billy Buttons and Nick, his chum, they were as bad as ever; and Posy Jane had never a penny for his music, never; though Meg-Laundress would sometimes toss him one if he would play for a long, long time and so keep her children amused and out of mischief. She, too, had even gone so far as to bid him look out all along the road he should travel for Goober Glory herself; and if he found her and brought her back, why she would make him a fine present. Goober Glory had been the most inexpensive and faithful of nurses to Meg’s children and she could afford to do the handsome thing by any one who would restore her services.

“And here I find you, already,” said Luigi, accepting the wonderful fact as if it were the simplest thing in the world, whereas, out of the many roads by which he might have journeyed from the city, this was the one least likely to attract his wandering footsteps. And this strange thing was, afterward, to confirm good Meg-Laundress in her faith in “Guardian Angels.”

But when he proposed that they return at once to the Lane lest Meg’s promise should be forgotten and he defrauded of his present, Glory firmly objected:

“No, no, Luigi. I must find grandpa. I must find this baby’s folks. Then we will go back, you and me and all of us but her; ’cause then I’ll have to give her up, I reckon–the darlin’, preciousest thing!”

Luigi glanced at the sun, at the landscape, at the group of watchful Fogartys, and reflected that there was no money to be made there. The hand-organ belonged to Tonio, his brother, and the monkey likewise. Tonio loved money better than anything; and Luigi, the organ, and the monkey had been sent forth to collect it, not to loiter by the way; and if he was not to return at once and secure Meg’s present, that would have been appropriated by Antonio, as a matter of course, he must be about his business. When he had slowly arrived at this decision, he rose, shouldered the hurdy-gurdy, signaled Jocko to his wrist, pulled his cap in respect to his hostess, and set off.

“Wait, wait, Luigi! just one little minute! I must bid them good-bye, ’cause they’ve been so good to me, and I’m going with you! Just one little bit or minute!” cried Glory, clasping his arm, imploringly.

The organ-grinder would be glad of her company, of any company, in fact; so he waited unquestioningly, while Glory explained, insisted, and finally overcame the expostulations of Timothy and Mary.

“Yes, she must go. Not until she had looked forever and ever could she be shut up in a ‘’sylum’ where she could look no further. When she found him, they would come back, he and she, and show them how right she was to keep on and how splendid he was. She thanked them–my, how she did thank them for their kindness, and, besides, there was Bonny Angel. If she’d dared to give up lookin’ for grandpa, as he wouldn’t have give up lookin’ for her, she must, she must, find the Angel’s folks. She couldn’t rest–nohow, never. Think o’ all them broken hearts, who’d lost such a beau-tiful darlin’ as her!”

Then she added, with many a loving look over the whole group, “But I mustn’t keep poor Luigi. He belongs to Toni, seems if, an’ Toni Salvatore can make it lively for them ’at don’t please him. So, good-bye, good-bye–everybody. Every single dear good body!”

Turning, with Bonny Angel once more in her own arms, walking backward to have the very last glimpse possible of these new friends, with eyes fast filling again, and stumbling over her long skirt that had lost its last hook, Glory Beck resumed her seemingly hopeless search.

However, she was not to depart just yet nor thus. To the surprise of all, Dennis himself now appeared in the doorway and held up his hand to detain her. Until then, he had showed but slight interest in her, and his strange staring at Bonny had been unnoticed by his wife. Now his face wore a puzzled expression and he passed his hand across his eyes as if he wished to clear his sight. He gazed with intensity upon Glory’s “Guardian” once more, and at last remarked:

“Pease in a pod. ’Tother had yellow curls. Awful trouble for them, plenty as kids are the country over. Pease in a pod. Might try it;” and turning sidewise he pointed toward the distant great house on the hill. Then he retreated to his fireside again, and Mary was left to interpret. She did so, saying:

“He’s sayin’ the ‘family’ ’s in some sort o’ trouble, though I hadn’t heard it. Though, ’course, they’ve been home only a few days an’ whatever any the other hands what’s been down to see him sence has told him he hain’t told me. But I make out ’t he thinks Looeegy’s playin’ up there on the terrace might do noh arm an’ll likely cheer ’em up a mite. That’s what I make out Dennis means. You an’ the organ-man’d best make your first stop along the road up to the big house. If they won’t pay anything to hear him play, likely they will to have him go away, bein’s they’re dreadful scared of tramps an’ such. Good-bye. Come an’ see us when you can!”

CHAPTER XIII

The Wonderful Ending

“Sure, and it’s not meself can tackle the road, the day. As well be ‘docked’ for the end as the beginnin’, an’ I’m minded to keep that lot company a piece,” remarked Timothy Dowd, to his sister’s husband’s cousin. “That monkey is most interestin’, most interestin’ an’ improvin’; an’ ’tisn’t often a lad from old Ireland has the chance to get acquaintance of the sort, leave alone that Glory girl, what’s took up quarters in me heart an’ won’t be boosted thence, whatever. The poor little colleen! A-lookin’ for one lost old man out of a world full! Bless her innocent soul! Yes. I’ve a mind to company them a bit. What say, Mary, woman?”

“What need to say a word, sence when a man’s bent to do a thing he does it? But keep an open ear, Timothy, boy. I’m curious to know what sort o’ trouble ’tis, Dennis hints at, as comin’ to them old people yon. And he’d never say, considerin’ as he does, that what goes on in the big house is no consarn o’ the cottage, an’ fearin’ to remind ’em even’t we’re alive, lest they pack us off an’ fetch in folks with no childer to bless an’ bother ’em. Yes, go, Timothy; and wait; here’s one them handy catch-pins, that Glory might tighten her skirt a bit.”

Timothy’s usually merry face had been sadly overclouded as he watched the departure of Glory and her companions, but it lightened instantly when Mary favored his suggestion to follow and learn their fortune. With his hat on the back of his head, his stick over his shoulder, and his unlighted pipe in his mouth–which still managed to whistle a gay tune despite this impediment–he sauntered along the road in the direction the others had taken, though at some distance behind them. But when they passed boldly through the great iron gates and followed the driveway winding over the beautiful lawn, his bashfulness overcame him, and he sat down on the bank-wall to await their return, which must be, he fancied, by that same route; soliloquizing thus:

“Sure, Tim, me boy, if it’s tramps they object to, what for ’s the use o’ turnin’ your honest self into such? Them on ahead has business to tend to; the business o’ makin’ sweet music where music there is none; an’ may the pennies roll out thick an’ plenteous an’ may the Eyetalian have the good sense in him to share them same with my sweet colleen. It’s thinkin’ I am that all is spent on such as her is money well invested. So I’ll enjoy the soft side this well-cut top-stone, till so be me friends comes along all in a surprise to see me here.”

His own whistling had ceased, and though he listened closely he could not hear Luigi’s organ or any sound whatever. The truth was that the way seemed endless from the entrance to the house upon the terrace; and that having reached it at last, both Luigi and Glory were dismayed by the magnitude of the mansion and confused by its apparently countless doorways. Before which they should take their stand, required time to decide; but unobserved, they finally settled this point. Luigi rested his instrument upon its pole, loosed Jocko to his gambols, and tuned up.

The strains which most ears would have found harsh and discordant sounded pleasantly enough to the listening Timothy, who nodded his head complacently, wishing and thinking:

“Now he’s off! May he keep at it till he wheedles not only the pence but the dollars out the pockets o’ them that hears! ’Twill take dollars more’n one to keep Glory on her long road, safe and fed, and – Bless us! What’s that?”

What, indeed, but the wildest sort of uproar, in which angry voices, the barking of dogs, the screams of frightened women drowning the feeble tones of “Oft in the Stilly Night,” sent Timothy to his feet and his feet to speeding, not over the graveled driveway, but straight across the shaven lawn, where passage was forbidden. But no “Keep off the grass” signs deterred him, as he remembered now, too late, all that he had heard of the ferocity of the Broadacre dogs which its master kept for just such occasions as this.

“Bloodhounds! And they’ve loosed them! Oh, me darlin’ colleen! Ill to me that I let ye go wanderin’ thus with that miserable Eyetalian! But I’m comin’! Tim’s comin’!” he yelled, adding his own part to the wild chorus above.

He reached the broad paved space before the great door none too soon, and though, ordinarily, he would have given the yelping hounds a very wide berth, he did not hesitate now. Huddled together in a group, with the frantic animals bounding and barking all around them, though as yet not touching them, stood the terrified Luigi and his friends; realizing what vagrancy means in this “land of the free,” and how even to earn an honest living one should never dare to “trespass.”

But even as Timothy forced his stalwart frame between the children and the dogs, the great door opened and a white-haired gentleman came hurrying out. Thrusting a silver whistle to his lips he blew upon it shrilly, and almost instantly the uproar ceased, and the three hounds sprang to his side, fawning upon him, eager for his commendation. Instead of praise, however, they were given the word of command and crouched beside him, licking their jaws and expectant, seemingly, of a further order to pounce upon the intruders.

“Who loosed the dogs?” demanded the gentleman, in a clear-ringing, indignant tone.

Now that he seemed displeased by their too solicitous obedience, none of the gathering servants laid claim to it; and while all stood waiting, arrested in their attitudes of fear or defense, a curious thing happened. Glory Beck threw off the protecting arms of Timothy Dowd and, with Bonny Angel clasped close in her own, swiftly advanced to the granite step where the white-haired gentleman stood. Her face that had paled in fear now flushed in excitement as with a voice unlike her own she cried:

“You, sir! You, sir! What have you done with my grandfather?”

The gentleman stared at her, thinking her fright had turned her brain; but saying kindly, as soon as he could command his voice:

“There, child. It’s all right. The dogs won’t touch you now.”

“The dogs!” retorted the child, in infinite scorn. “What do I care for the dogs? It’s you I want. You, that ‘Snug-Harbor’-Bonnicastle-man who coaxed my grandpa Simon Beck away from his own home an’ never let him come back any more!”

Then her anger subsiding into an intensity of longing, she threw herself at his feet, clasping his knees and imploring, piteously:

“Oh! take me to him. Tell me, tell me where he is. I’ve looked so long and I don’t know where and–please, please, please.”

For a moment nobody spoke; not even Colonel Bonnicastle, for it was he, indeed, though he silently motioned to a trustworthy man who had drawn near to take the dogs away; and who, in obedience, whistling imperatively, gathered their chains in his hands and led them back to their kennel.

When the dogs had disappeared, the master of Broadacres sank into a near-by chair, wiping his brow and pityingly regarded the little girl who still knelt, imploringly. He was trying to comprehend what had happened, what she meant, and if he had ever seen her before. Captain Simon Beck! That was a familiar name, surely, but of that ungrateful seaman, who wouldn’t be given a “Snug Harbor” whether or no, of him he had never heard nor even thought since his one memorable uncomfortable visit to Elbow Lane.

“Simon Beck–Simon Beck,” he began, musingly. “Yes, I know a Simon Beck, worthy seaman, and would befriend him if I could. Is he your grandfather, child, and what has happened to him that you speak to me so–so–well, let us say–rudely?”

Then he added, in that commanding tone which few who knew him ever disobeyed:

“Get up at once, child. Your kneeling to me is absurd, nor do I know in what way I can help you, though you think I can do so–apparently. Why! How strange–how like–”

He had stooped and raised Glory, gently forcing her to her feet, and as he did so, Bonny Angel turned her own face around from the girl’s breast where she had buried it in her terror of the dogs.

Wasted and shorn of her beautiful hair, clothed in the discarded rags of a Fogarty twin, it would have taken keen eyes indeed to recognize in the little outcast the radiant “Guardian Angel” who had flashed upon Glory’s amazed sight that day in Elbow Lane; yet something about it there was which made the near-sighted colonel grope hastily for his eyeglasses and in his haste overlook them, so that he muttered angrily at his own awkwardness.

Into the blue eyes of the little one herself crept a puzzled wondering look, that fixed itself upon the perplexed gentleman with a slowly growing comprehension.

Just then, too, when forgetting her own anxiety, Glory looked from the baby to the man and back again, startled and wondering, a lady came to the doorway and exclaimed:

“Why, brother, whatever is the matter! Such an uproar – ”

But her sentence was never finished. Bonny’s gaze, distracted from the colonel to his sister, glued itself to the lady’s face, while the perplexity in the blue eyes changed to delight. With a seraphic smile upon her dainty lips, a smile that would have made her recognizable anywhere, under any disguise, the little creature propelled herself from Glory’s arms to the outstretched arms of Miss Laura, shrilling her familiar announcement:

“Bonny come! Bonny come!”

How can the scene be best explained, how best described? Maybe in words of honest Timothy Dowd himself; who, somewhat later, returning to the Queen Anne cottage, called the entire Fogarty family about him and announced to the assembled household:

“Well, sirs! Ye could knock me down with a feather!” after which he sank into profound silence.

“Huh! And is that what ye’re wantin’ of us, is it? Well, you never had sense,” remarked Mary, turning away indignantly.

Thus roused, the railroader repeated:

“Sure, an’ ye could. A feather’d do it, an’ easy. But sit down, woman. Sit down as I bid ye, an’ hear the most wonderful, marvelous tale a body ever heard this side old Ireland. Faith, I wish my tongue was twicet as long, an’ I knew better how to choose the beginnin’ from the end of me story, or the middle from any one. But sit down, sit down, lass, an’ bid your seven onruly gossoons to keep the peace for onct, while I tell ye a story beats all the fairy ones ever dreamed. But–where to begin!”