Pippin; A Wandering Flame

CHAPTER XXVI

PIPPIN PRAISES THE LORD

TWO years have passed, as yesterday, as a watch in the night. Once more the chaplain sits in his office, the bare, unlovely little room where we first saw him. Once more he is opening, sorting, reading his morning mail, his brow saddening, lightening, saddening again. Finally, once more the cloud rolls away entirely, and he settles himself in his chair with a comfortable sigh.

"Pippin!" he says, and composes himself to read. Let us look over his shoulder and read with him!

Honored and Respected Sir,

I take up my pen with pleasure, to express the hope that the present seasonable weather may find you in good health and the enjoyment of every blessing. Well, Elder, I haven't written this good while past, because I wanted to wait and see would I be able to tell you what I wanted to tell you. Well, Elder, I want you should know it's all right, I have got that degree! I had a talk with the Old Man last winter, and he surely is great. He said I was all right on chemistry and crops and soils and like that, and similar on social economics, and mathematics, but where I fell down was on rhetoric and English literature. I said did he think that cut any great amount of ice when all I wanted was know how to run a farm and bring up boys straight and white. He said he didn't know as it did, but yet I didn't want those boys to grow up speaking ignorant. You bet I don't says I, but what's to hinder me learning 'em? I says, and learning myself at the same time? Have the books, and study right along with 'em I says, and there would be others could teach me, I says. Then I told him how it was about me and Mary, and how it didn't seem as if I could wait any longer. He laughed real pleasant, and said he guessed I wouldn't be called upon to wait very long, and I should have the degree all right first minute he could give it to me. Then he explained just how it was, and of course I saw in a minute; he couldn't give a degree to a guy for knowing a thing when he didn't know it. He knew how 'twas with me, and that I was doing chores and odd jobs to pay my way. And grinding! Elder, I was thankful to Nipper for that wheel. I sure was. I kept the whole show sharpened up good, now I tell you.

Well, Elder, now I want to tell you. When you first said, and Mr. Bailey upheld you, that it behooved me wait two years, and go to State Agricultural, and do thus and so, before I'd be fit to handle boys and be trusted by them as had 'em in charge – I tell you, sir, it seemed as if I couldn't, no way in the world. It appeared like I couldn't do it. It was like as if I was in Heaven, and you took me by my scruff and pants and hove me out. "It's more than reason," I says to myself. "It's more than flesh and blood can stand; it's like I was white-hot metal, and they took and threw cold water over me!" Well, Elder! You see where that was leading me? I bet you do! But I didn't, not at first. I went out to the barn, you rec'lect, and just set there by myself, humped up on the meal bucket, sayin' over and over, "I was all white hot to do the Lord's work, and they've took and threw cold water over me!"

And then, all of a sudden, it come to me, and I laughed right out. You must have heard me over to the house, I expect. Mary did, and she come running – bless her! "You lunkhead!" I says. "You lunkhead from way back everlasting, how do they temper metal but with cold water? Nice kind of steel you'd get without it, what say? Like to shave with soft iron, what say? And when you put it in the water it hisses," I says, "and so does the old gander hiss, and I know which you are most like!" I says.

I was laughing, you rec'lect, when I come back to tell you 'twas all right; I expect you knew pretty well how twas. You were whistling "Soldier of the Cross," and that showed me.

Well, Elder, I have had a great time over to State Agricultural, I sure have. The folks have been dandy, sir, simply dandy. Folks couldn't be no dandier than what they have to me. I used to think college folks and like that was wanting somehow, but I found the boot was on the other leg, it was me that was a nut to think so. I've made friends – why, they are all friends, I do believe. I'll tell you all about it first chance I get, but what I want to say now is, Elder, my time is up! I've got my degree, and Mr. Bailey is satisfied, and the cottage is ready (I've put in all my vacations on it, you know, and Mr. Bailey and the selectmen have been more than kind, the neighbors too), and Mary is ready; bless her heart! and Mrs. Aymer can spare her all right, or at least she says she can't, but she will, the kiddo learning to walk and like that; and she's got Mary the dandiest outfit ever you saw, Elder! If she was the President's wife, it couldn't be no dandier. And I've been to see all those gentlemen you said, the Boards and like that, and they was all dandy too, and said "Go ahead," and I'm going! So name the day you can come over, Elder, and Mary and I will be there. The Lord is so good to me – I don't know why He is so good, except that He is good. And all my life long, sir, I'll try my best to make other folks happy, I sure will. So no more but thanking you Elder, because under the Lord you really done it all sir. With a grateful heart though faltering pen I beg to convey to you, reverend and highly respected Sir, the assurance of my being

P.S. I could have written and spelled it better if I had have taken time and followed this book, the "Polite Letter Writer"; a guy loaned it to me over to State Agricultural. I began this letter with it, but it balled me up so I couldn't keep on and I'm in hopes you will excuse bad writing and spelling. But I aim at a correct and elegant style, dear Sir, in epistolary communication – green grass! maybe when I have more time, Elder, I can do it, but it's no use, I cannot now.

The chaplain read this letter through twice. Then, after docketing and filing it carefully, he rose, and tucking his coat tails under his arm, proceeded to dance gravely up and down the little bare room, singing the song that was his high water mark of joy and triumph:

The day was named; the day was here. Boards, councils and committees sent each a kindly delegate to the opening of the new Boys' Cottage at Cyrus Poor Farm. The opening was to take place in the afternoon; eight of the ten boys were to be brought over from the city by the president of a certain institution; there were to be addresses and formalities. But a few delegates had been asked to come early, to attend the wedding of the young couple who were to take charge of the new cottage. These delegates came smiling, full of cheerful expectation. This, they told one another, was Lawrence Hadley's venture. Good fellow, Hadley, excellent fellow! Yes, he vouched for this young chap, absolutely. Seemed to be an extraordinary chap; State Agricultural College gone wild over him. Kind of athletic evangelist, it appeared; led 'em all by the nose, they say. This cottage was his idea; yes. And there it was; pretty cottage!

A pretty cottage indeed; red brick, like the mother building which smiles friendly upon it across the green yard; its creepers already started, its flower beds already in bloom; its brass knocker defying the sun. Inside, all fresh and bright, homelike and – full! Full to overflowing, so that the kindly delegates pause astonished, and wonder whence all these people have found their way to so remote a district as North Cyrus. Who are all these people? Come and see!

First, in the shining kitchen, which has walked bodily over, it would appear, from Mr. Aymer's home in the city suburb, who are these two busy, rosy, white-capped and aproned people, man and woman? Why, these are Mr. and Mrs. Baxter, who are preparing the wedding breakfast. Who else should prepare it, they would like to know? Weren't they the first to welcome Pippin when he came to Kingdom? Wasn't he like their own, a son to them, a brother to Buster? Buster is in the shed now, "spelling" Myron at the ice cream freezer, both so eager that they are making five-minute shifts at the handle. Glancing through the open shed door, you may see Jacob Bailey in his Sunday suit, deep in talk with Father O'Brien and Elder Stebbins – pleasant talk, to judge from their faces. From the barn comes Brand, he too in his decent best, threadbare but spotless, carrying in careful hands the wonderful nest of baskets on which his spare hours for the past year have been spent: his wedding present for Pippin and Mary. Look at him! He has never seen light, but we see it in his face.

Who is in the dining-room of the cottage? Mrs. Bailey, of course, with Aunt Mandy Whetstone and Miss Pudgkins. Miss Whetstone opines that if there was need of city folks to do their table settin' for them, it was time they give up! With trembling hands she is laying out on the table the four silver teaspoons and the gravy ladle which commonly repose with her burial money at the bottom of her trunk. The trunk is kept locked, strapped and corded, the key hangs round Miss Whetstone's neck on a string; you never know, and in case of fire, there you are! Miss Pudgkins has no teaspoons, but she has "loaned" for the occasion the chief ornament of her bedroom, a magnificent wreath of "preserved" funeral flowers in a glass case. The cloud on her brow at this moment comes from Mrs. Bailey's kindly but firm refusal to use the wreath for a centrepiece.

"Fresh flowers is rill common!" Miss Pudgkins thinks.

One cannot say that Mr. Wisk is in any special room, because he is in them all, following his unerring nose from dining-room to kitchen, from kitchen to pantry, wherever the smell of food leads him; pointing industriously, and whispering in any willing ear that that ham, sir, is the "pick and peer of swine p'dooce the country over, let the others be who they will." Mr. Wisk has unearthed from some mouldering portmanteau an enormous red velvet waistcoat with glass buttons, reaching halfway to his knees. He is proud of every inch of it, and struts gloriously when glances are cast toward it.

Who is in the parlor? Why, who but Mrs. Appleby and Mrs. Faulkner, both in holiday guise; both beaming with the same effulgence of joy that lights every face in this astonishing cottage? Here in the parlor also is the chaplain, holding in either hand Peppino and Jimmy Mather, who are straining like puppies on a leash.

"Keep still, youngsters!" commands the chaplain. "You nearly had me over that time. I'll tell you as soon as I see – ah! there they are!"

The mellow note of a Gabriel horn is heard; an automobile comes dashing down the road. It is John Aymer's new car, the "Son and Heir," and John Aymer is driving it. Beside him sits Mrs. Aymer, all smiles and roses and pink muslin, as becomes a matron of honor, in her arms the son and heir himself, almost big enough, she thinks, for a page, (but not quite, since every third step still brings his nose to the earth). And in the tonneau – are these two glorified spirits from another world, radiating light and joy and triumph? No! These are Pippin and Mary; she in white, with white roses in her pretty hat, he – but no one could ever tell what Pippin had on.

At sight of him the chaplain looses his hold of the two boys. They make one bolt for the door, fall out of it together, wriggle up again, and rush like a double whirlwind to the gate, rolling under the wheels of the car, which has fortunately come to a standstill.

Pippin and Mary spring down. Seeing them, the cottage becomes all eyes, guests, helpers, delegates, crowding to the windows. Most of the women begin to cry. Foolish creatures! What is the matter with them? And why, on the other hand, do most of the men suddenly develop head colds, and flourish handkerchiefs violently? Is it just because it is the common way at weddings? Or is it because these two young people have been patient, valiant, and steadfast, and now, after the long days of their waiting, there is something in their faces that brings the tear as well as the smile to all that see?

Here they are, hand in hand. Everybody is shouting, "Pippin! Pippin!" and crowding round him and Mary. The delegates rather think everybody has gone suddenly mad, but they don't feel quite sane themselves somehow. Something in the air, something in Pippin's face and voice, goes to their heads too, and they find themselves shaking hands with everybody, and echoing the chaplain's shout,

"Glorious! Glorious! Great guns, this is glorious!"

The time has come. The workers hurry in, breathless but demure, the guests smooth their dresses and settle with a solemn gesture.

"Dearly beloved – "

Then, the seven minutes over that have made Pippin and Mary man and wife, what a rush of kisses, slaps on the back, handshakings, good wishes, congratulations! Amid all which Mrs. Baxter and Mrs. Bailey nod to each other and steal out, beckoning to their aids. "Dish up!" the word passes round, low and emphatic. The Baxters fly, the Baileys flutter, Mr. Wisk and his pointing nose get in everybody's way and narrowly escape upsetting Mr. Baxter as he comes proudly into the dining-room, carrying his life's masterpiece, the wedding cake. Such a cake! Frosting as many inches deep as frosting can be; citron and angelica, plums and comfits – even Solomon in all his glory had no cake like this. Mr. Baxter, in his rapture hinting at this, is promptly rebuked by Mrs. Baxter, and told not to be profane, father; before the boy, too!

"Breakfast is served!" says Mr. Baxter, as if he were reading the Declaration of Independence.

In they all come, Pippin and Mary leading off, the guests following in a joyous mob, the delegates bringing up the rear, smiling twice as hard as when they came. Most extraordinary occasion! Must remember all this to tell the wife. Most extraordinary people!

They have all got round the table, no one knows how. Pippin and Mary are standing, still hand in hand, all heaven in their faces. Pippin looks round, and his eyes fill with tears like all the rest. He bows his head for a moment, his lips moving silently; then he looks up, and his smile lightens the room.

Once more his eyes make the circuit of the table, every face kindling from his glance. He lifts his hand, and makes his reverence like a young birch tree in the wind.

"Mary and folks," says Pippin; "seein' the Lord has dealt with us not accordin' to – I would say my sins, Mary not havin' any, nor I wouldn't presume likely any of you dandy folks – what I would say – shall we praise Him in song?"

He lifts his head; his voice breaks out, solemn, jubilant, triumphant.

1

Dr. S.G. Howe to one of his blind pupils.