Pippin; A Wandering Flame

"What's the matter?"

"Search me!" said Pippin cheerfully. "You appear to have had a fit, or something. You'll come out all right."

"Where is it?"

"Where's what? Your wheel? Right handy by; I expect it dropped when you did, but it looks to be all O.K. Took up grindin', eh? Good trade, is it?"

A cunning look crept into the dim eyes.

"Good enough. Gets you into the house, and then – " his breath failed; he lay back, gasping, in Pippin's arms.

"Now wouldn't that give you a pain?" muttered Pippin. "Nipper," he said aloud, "you're feelin' bad, ain't you? Now here we be on a good road leadin' to a town only a mile off. There's three things to do: I can carry you a little ways at a time till we get to a house; or we can set right here and wait till somebody comes along; or I can lay you so you'll rest easy – as easy as you can – and go and fetch somebody. Now – "

"Don't go!" It was only a whisper, but the groping fingers caught Pippin's sleeve and held it convulsively.

"Go! Not likely, if you feel that way!" Pippin sat down cheerfully. "It's nice to sit down, anyway. Say we put your head on my knee – so! That's easier? Good enough! Why, we've been – not to say pals, Nipper, but we sat side by each for a matter of a year. It's not likely I'd leave you, is it?"

The man shook his head feebly.

"I ain't comin' out!" he whispered. "I'm goin'! I'm used up, Pip!"

"Sho! What a way to talk!" Pippin glanced round him uneasily. "Somebody'll be comin' along in a minute, and we'll get you into the city, into a nice hospital – "

The man shook his head feebly, but vehemently.

"No you don't!" he said. "No more hospital in mine! They had me in one, and I shammed well till they let me out. No more of that for me! I'll die on the road."

No one came; it was a lonely road at best, and at this twilight hour the Kingdom folk were at their suppers. Impossible to leave the man, who was evidently dying! Pippin rolled up his coat and put it under the sufferer's head. Still looking about him with keen anxious glance, he spied a tiny runnel near by, wet in it one of the two new handkerchiefs the Warden's wife had given him, and bathed the gray face which seemed to sharpen as he watched it. He bent lower.

"Crewe! Nipper! Have you got any folks? Can I take any message?"

"No! All gone!"

"Nipper!" Pippin's voice grew eager, his face glowed. "You have got some one! You've got the Lord, and He's got you. You're goin' to Him. Ain't that great? Listen!"

The sick man raised himself suddenly.

"The wheel!" he said. "Take the wheel, Pippin! You was always white – I bought it; I leave it to you – "

He was gone. Pippin laid him down gently, and covered his face with the hankerchief.

"Poor old Nipper!" he said. "But there! He's better so. He hadn't hit it off, as you may say, Nipper hadn't. I never knew much about him, but I knew that much. Give him a new start, some place where there's no rum, and he might do great things. Now what comes next? I expect we've just got to wait here till somebody comes along. I couldn't leave him this way, what say?"

Pippin sat down by the roadside. He made no pretense of regret for the departure of Nipper; seeing that he hadn't hit it off here, what object in his remaining, bein' he was let to go?

"Nipper's ma, now, may have thought he was a nice kid, and no doubt done her best by him, but if she'd had any idea how he was goin' to look an' act when he growed up, why that lady would have been discouraged, she sure would. Hark! there's somebody comin' at last!"

The disposal of poor Nipper's earthly part was a tedious business, but it was accomplished finally. Pippin followed the coffin to its resting place as in duty bound. The authorities questioned him pretty sharply, but finally let him go with an admonition not to go sittin' round the ro'ds, but get to work at something. There had been one doubtful moment by the roadside, when the man who picked them up (he chanced to be a selectman of Kingdom) asked who owned the wheel. Pippin looked at him with puzzled eyes, and fingered his file. Why not? he was saying to himself. He knew scissor-grinding, knew it from A to Z. Why not take hold, now, since it had dropped right into his hand, so to say? Yes, but how did he know – he, Pippin, was on the straight now, forever-and-ever-give-glory-amen, and Nipper was a crook from 'way back. How did he know – but then again, did he know? 'Twas all right to stand straight, but no need to straighten so far you fall over backwards! See? Mebbe this was what the Lord had in view, he wouldn't wonder!

"I expect it's mine!" he said.

The man looked him over sharply. "You expect it's yours?" he repeated. "What do you mean by that?"

"It's mine, then!" said Pippin, decidedly, and laid his hand on the wheel. It was a leading, he decided. The man stood irresolute a moment, but Pippin smiled at him, and nodded assurance. "It's all right, boss!" he said. "It's mine right enough, see? And I'll see to it. What we've got to do now is to get this poor old guy buried, what?"

Finally, here was Pippin with a trade ready to his hand.

"Temp'ry!" he assured himself. "I don't feel that the Lord picked out scissor-grindin' for me, but while I'm lookin' about, 'twill keep the pot a-b'ilin', and while I'm grindin', I'll grind good, just watch me!"

Pippin had spent for supper and lodging one of the dollars Elder Hadley had given him, but he had no idea of spending the other. Sharp-set for breakfast, he carried his wheel through the main street of Kingdom, his quick eyes glancing from side to side, and stopped before a door bearing the legend, "Bakery and Lunch." The window beside the door was polished to the last point of brilliance; the loaves, rolls, pies and cakes displayed within were tempting enough. "This for mine!" said Pippin, and stepped in.

"Mornin'!" he said to the crisp, fresh, rosy-cheeked woman behind the counter. "Nice mornin', ain't it?"

"It sure is!" was the reply. "What can I serve you?"

"Well! I was wonderin' if we could do a little business, you an' me. Say I sharpen your knives and you give me a mite of breakfast; how would that suit?"

The woman looked him over carefully. "You a knife-grinder?" she asked.

"And scissors! Wheel right outside here. I'll grind while you get the coffee. That's straight, isn't it?"

"'Pears to be! What do you ask for a bread knife?"

"You tell me what you're in the habit of payin', and I'll ask that. I'm new to the trade, and I aim to please. Here, sonny!" as a black-eyed urchin bobbed in from the bakery, his arms full of loaves. "Gimme your jackknife and I'll sharpen it just for luck, so your ma'll see I mean business! Sing you a song, too! Hand it over. My! that's a handsome knife!

"'There was an old man – '"

The stroke succeeded. The jackknife brought to murderous sharpness, the mistress of the bakery declared that the others could wait. Soon Pippin was enjoying to the full what he declared a breakfast that a king would cry for: eggs and bacon, coffee and rolls, all excellent of their kind.

"I wonder why they call it coffee over there!" he confided to his stick. "'Cause if this is, that ain't, you see! But 'twas good as I deserved! That's the way they look at it, I take it; and I expect they're right. No, ma'am, not another morsel. I'm full as much obliged to you. That sure was a good meal! Now I'm ready to sharpen all the knives and scissors in the county. I'll stand my wheel close to the door where it won't be in folks' way, and then just watch me!"

The baker's wife brought an apronful of knives and scissors, and Pippin set to work, blessing the Old Man, who had put him in the tool shop for six months and made him keep the tools in order while old Grindstone was laid up with rheumatism. Old Grindstone! Pippin wondered what his real name was. "They called him Grindstone, account of a song he used to sing when he was grindin'. He said 'grinstone' where I say 'grindstone,' and I always maintained I had reason, because it grinds; but he thought otherwise, and he'd grind away – wonderful hand he was at it; in for twenty years, and ground all the time except when laid up as he was now and again; arson, though he says he never knew there was any one in the house, and anyway they was got out alive, though some damaged – well – so he'd grind away, the old man would, and all the time he'd sing in a kind of dry, wheezy voice:

"Grin, grinstone, grin!Grin, grinstone, grin!When you're outYou roam about,But it's otherwise when you're in – grin!It's otherwise when you're in! Grin!It's otherwise when you're in!"

Pippin's voice rang out round and full; his wheel turned merrily, the blades flashed in the sun. A little crowd gathered round him, watching the whirling wheel. Looking up, he saw some children among them. Was this quite the song for them? He checked himself and broke out with

"There was an old manAnd he was mad – "

The children clustered nearer.

"Sing another!" said a little flaxen-haired girl in a pink pinafore.

Pippin looked at her approvingly, and reflected that she was the very moral of the "little gal," that little sister he had – or as good as had, almost! He ran over his repertory: most of the prison songs were not what her ma would choose – certainly not! But – there was one the cook's boy used to sing – how did that go?

"Dum de rido! dum de rido!I had a little dog, and his name was Fido – "

"What's that?" Something seemed to speak in his heart. "Why not sing one of the Lord's songs? Well, I am a duffer! And tryin' to think of some that would do!"

He threw back his head, and let out his voice in a shout that made the listeners start:

"Oh, Mother dear, Jerusalem,When shall I come to thee?When shall my sorrows have an end,Thy joys when shall I see?"

The baker's wife came to the door and stood, wiping her eyes with her apron. The baker, flushed and floury, left his ovens and came to peer over her shoulder, open-mouthed; people appeared in the neighboring windows and doorways, and the crowd on the sidewalk thickened silently. Pippin neither saw nor heard them; his voice poured out in waves of song, longing, rejoicing, triumphant.

"Thy gardens and thy goodly walksContinually are green,Where grow such sweet and pleasant flowersAs nowhere else are seen."

"You bet they do!"

"Right through the streets with silver soundThe living waters flow,And on the banks on either sideThe trees of life do grow."

"There, ma'am, there's your knives and scissors as good as I can do 'em, and I hope it's pretty good, to pay for that good breakfast. I surely do."

"Good land, young man!" cried the baker's wife. "Who learned you to sing like that? Why, you'd sing the heart out of a stone statue!"

Pippin laughed joyously, eyes and teeth flashing together.

"I expect the Lord did, ma'am!" he said. "Anyhow it's His song, and you have to sing it as good as you can, ain't that so? Don't know of a job goin' beggin', do you, ma'am?"

"What kind of job?"

"'Most any kind! I'm lookin' for a trade to work in with my grindin' for a spell. I'm handy, var'ous ways: make brooms, set glass, carpenter or solder, I've done 'em all."

"Ever been in a bakery?"

"Not yet, but I'd admire to, if there was a chance."

Pippin's face kindled, and he looked eagerly from the baker's wife to the baker himself who was considering him gravely. He was a stout, kindly-looking man; his right hand was bandaged, and he wore his arm in a sling.

"I'm in need of an extry hand myself," he said slowly, with a glance at the bandage. "I don't know – " He looked at his wife, who nodded emphatically.

"Step inside a minute, young man! Move on, boys, if you'll be so good! You're cluttering up the whole sidewalk."

The crowd slowly dispersed, one or two neighbors lingering to question the good woman of the shop about the young stranger who sang so wonderfully. Who was he? Where'd he come from? Good-lookin', wasn't he? Their own knives would be none the worse for goin' over —

Inside the neat, fragrant shop, with its tempting display of coffee cakes, brown and varnished, of shapely loaves and rolls, cookies and doughnuts, the baker questioned Pippin. At first the questioning promised to be brief, for when, in response to "Where do you come from?" he heard, "State Prison!" the good man shook his head resolutely.

"I guess that isn't good enough!" he said, not unkindly. "I'm sorry, young feller, for I like your looks, and you sing like a bird; but – my shop has a good name, and – "

"Hold on!" Pippin laid a hand on his arm. "I know how you feel, sir! I'd feel the same in your place; but it would be because I didn't know. I won't hurt your shop, nor you! I'm straight! Lemme tell you!"

He told his story briefly, the baker listening with anxious, doubtful looks.

"So you see," he ended, "I couldn't go on the crook again, not if I wanted to, and I don't!"

Still the comfortable-looking baker shook his head. "I've heard pious talk before," he said; "it don't always hold good. I'm afraid – " he rose, as if to close the interview; Pippin rose too. His eyes roved round the pleasant shop, and came back, meeting the baker's squarely. "This is a dandy place!" he said slowly; "and you have the look of a dandy person, if you'll excuse the freedom. I'd like to work for you, and – I'd hate – to think – that you wouldn't help a guy that wanted help and wanted to work for it. I think you make a mistake; but it's your store, and what you say goes."

With a little bow and another regretful look around him, Pippin turned toward the door. A moment, and he would be gone. His hand was on the latch.

"Hold on!" said the baker. "I didn't say positive. I'm not a hard man by nature, only – "

"I bet you ain't!" said Pippin. "That's why I say I think you make a mistake – " He turned back with his smile that seemed to warm and brighten the whole shop. "Try me, Mister! Try me a week, and see for yourself. No satisfaction, no pay, as it says on the medicine bottles. And I couldn't pinch anything off'n you now if I wanted to. I've put you wise, and you'll be on the watch, see?"

The baker laughed in spite of himself. "We'll make it a week, then!" he said. "But not a word to my wife of where you come from. She's timoreous, and she wouldn't sleep a wink all night."

"Now!" said Pippin, "I wouldn't break that good lady's rest, not for all the elegant things in this bakeshop."

CHAPTER IV

PIPPIN GOES TO CYRUS

PIPPIN always looked back on the weeks he spent in Kingdom as one of his good times. Folks were so everlastingly good to him; they couldn't hardly have been better, he thought, not unless they had been your own. Mrs. Baxter, the baker's wife, was like – well, call it an aunt. Yes, she sure was like a good aunt, and equally so was her uncle; as for Buster, the boy – well, that was Pippin's moral of a boy. Buster would grow up a fine man, you see if he didn't. He'd better! As to looking for the grace of God like he promised Elder Hadley, why, he didn't have to. It stuck right out of 'em, like – like electric lights!

Pippin lodged with the Baxters and paid his board in work, lighting the fires in the morning, heating the ovens, sweeping out the shop, and doing a "hand's turn" in many directions. Mrs. Baxter declared Providence sent him just at that time, when Father had caught his hand in the oven door and lamed him so; she did not know what upon earth they would have done without Pippin. Indeed he showed himself so handy that after the first week Mr. Baxter offered him a permanent job, declared he would make him the smartest baker in the county. Pippin promised to think it over. He loved the smell of new bread; he loved to handle the dough, and rake out the glowing coals; yes, it was a pleasant trade, it sure was; but yet – but yet —

Other offers came to him. Among the crowd who had gathered to hear him sing that first day were Father O'Brien of St. Bridget's and Elder Stebbins, the Methodist Minister. Both were music-lovers. Both made it in their way to drop in at the bakery in the course of the next few days, and invite the young scissor-grinder to sing in their choir while he sojourned in their midst. Was he a Catholic? Father O'Brien asked. No? More was the pity, but let him come and sing in the church, and 'twould be good for him and the rest besides. Pippin assented joyfully. He would be real pleased to come, and sing the best he knew how. Then came Elder Stebbins, ostensibly to buy a coffee cake for supper. Was his young friend a Christian? "You bet!" replied Pippin, wrapping up the cake with deft fingers. "I'd have to be, wouldn't I? Unless that the Lord had seen fit to have me a Chinee, or like that, and I'm just as glad He didn't!"

Mr. Stebbins hoped his young friend was also a Methodist; but Pippin shook his head; he guessed not. They were all good, he guessed; he presumed he belonged to every church there was, in a general way, you know. Mr. Stebbins looked grave, and said that was not a very safe doctrine. He hoped his young friend would join their service of song on Sunday evening; it might be helpful to him, and would assuredly minister to the enjoyment of others. Pippin assented joyfully, after ascertaining that service would be over in time for him to set his sponge to rise.

So on Sunday, and other happy Sundays, he went to St. Bridget's in the morning, and sang stately old Latin hymns and chants; inhaled incense (which he thought real tasty, but yet nothing to what the Lord could do with a field of white clover), kneeled reverently with the rest, listened respectfully to Father O'Brien's excellent little sermon, and liked it all. And the evening found him behind the green moreen half-curtains in the Methodist meetinghouse, pouring out his soul in gospel hymns and assuring his hearers that they would meet beside the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river, in such tones and with such feeling that every woman in meeting wept, and there was a mighty blowing up of nasal trumpets among the men. Elder Stebbins' discourse was rather long-winded and rambling, but when Pippin lost the thread, he would take refuge in a psalm, or recall one of Elder Hadley's brief, pistol-shot addresses, or think how the buttercups shone in the field that day he found the Lord. And here, too, he loved it all, every bit, and came home in a glow of happiness and fervor that was enough to make the dough rise at the sight of him.

The baker was puzzled at first by his new assistant; as the good man himself expressed it, he didn't get on to Pippin's curves. There were things that jarred – for a time – on his sensibilities; as thus. They were together in the shop one evening, and a customer came in for his evening loaf; the shoemaker it was, Jere Cargo, a man of dry, critical humor. He commented on the loaf; it was a shade deeper brown than usual.

"One minute more, young man, and that loaf would have been burnt, that's what!"

Pippin scanned the loaf carefully. "Is that so?" he said. "Now! Why, I was pleased with this batch, I thought the Lord give me an elegant bake on it: that's what I thought! But if folks likes 'em pale, why, pale it is!"

The shoemaker stared; Mr. Baxter coughed apologetically as he accompanied him to the door, and – on a summoning jerk of the head – followed him outside.

"What have you got there?" asked the shoemaker. "A preacher? Where'd you get him?"

"No, he isn't a preacher, though I dare say he might have been, if he'd had education. He's just pious, that's all. It's his way of talking."

His tone was conciliatory, but the shoemaker sniffed.

"'Just pious!'" he repeated. "Look out for 'em, I say, when they're just pious. They'll bear watching. Where'd you say he come from?"

"He's traveling!" Mr. Baxter knew his customer, and had no idea of telling him whence Pippin came. "He's a scissor-grinder by trade, and a master hand at it. I hurt my hand last week, and he come along just in the nick of time and has been helping me since. Real good help he is, too."

"Humph!" said Jere Cargo, shrugging his dry shoulders. "You look out for him, that's all I say. Sharp-looking chap, I call that; he'll bear watching."

Returning to the shop, Mr. Baxter coughed again, this time with his eye on Pippin, who was arranging a tray of creamcakes with a lover's ardor.

"Ain't them handsome?" he cried. "I ask you, Boss, ain't them handsome? And dandy to eat – green grass! Mis' Baxter give me one. They drop fatness all right, no two ways about that!"

Here Pippin broke into song, proclaiming joyously that he was a pilgrim, he was a stranger, he could tarry, he could tarry but a night.

"Do not detain me,For I am going – "

"Ahem!" said Mr. Baxter, "I was thinking, Pippin – "

Pippin came to attention instantly. "Yes, sir! You was thinkin' – "

"I was wondering – " the baker spoke slowly, in a tone half admonitory, half conciliatory, and wholly embarrassed – "whether maybe you – just in a manner, you understand, just in a manner – was in the habit of making a mite too free with – with your Maker, so to speak."

Pippin's eye grew very round. "Meanin' – with the Lord?" he said.

"Yes! with – with – as you say, with the Lord!" Mr. Baxter was a godly man, but his Deity lived in the meetinghouse and was rarely to be mentioned except within its four walls. "For example," he went on, "I was wondering whether it was exactly a good plan to bring the – the Almighty – into the bakeshop."

"Gorry!" said Pippin. "I'd hate to leave Him out of it!" His eyes, still round and astonished, traveled slowly about the pleasant place. Three sides of it were filled with glass counters displaying a wealth of pies, pumpkin, apple, mince and custard, with cakes of every variety, from the wedding cake which was Mr. Baxter's special pride, to his wife's creamcakes, eagerly sought by the neighborhood for ten miles round. Behind the counter, on neat shelves, were stacked the loaves of bread, white and brown, the crisp rolls and melting muffins. The shop looked as good as it smelled; "ther nys namoore to seye!"

"I'd hate to leave Him out of it!" repeated Pippin. "Dandy place like this! Don't know as I get you this time, Boss!" He turned bewildered brown eyes on Mr. Baxter, who coughed again and reddened slightly.

"What I meant – " the baker ran his eye along a pile of loaves, and straightened one that had slipped out of place – "isn't it making rather free with – ahem! what say?"

"Oh!" Pippin's face lightened. "I get you! Now I get you, sir! Lemme tell you! Lemme tell you just the way it is." Fairly stammering in his eagerness, Pippin leaned across the counter, his eyes shining. "You see, sir, I was raised a crook!"

"Hush!" Mr. Baxter looked over his shoulder. "No need to speak out loud, Pippin. Just as well to keep that between ourselves, you know."

"I was raised," Pippin repeated in a lower tone, "a crook, and I heard – and used – crooks' language. Nor it isn't only crooks!" he cried, smiting the counter. "Where I was raised, 'most everybody had the name of God on their tongues every hour in the day, but not in the way of praisin' Him; no, sir! There's plenty folks – good folks, too – they can't name hardly anything, whatever be it, without 'God damn' before it. You know that, Mr. Baxter. You know what street talk is, sir." The baker nodded gravely. "Well, then! That's what I was raised to, and it run off my tongue like water, till – till I come to know Elder Hadley. I'm tol'able noticin', sir; I expect crooks is, when they're all there; you have to be, to get on. I noticed right off the way he spoke, clean and short and pleasant, no damnin' nor cussin'; and I liked it, same as I liked clean folks and despised dirty ones. That was all there was to it at first. But yet I couldn't stop all of a sudden; it took time, same as anything does, to learn it. Then – come to find the Lord, like I told you, sir, why – I dunno how to put it. I'd ben askin' Him all my life to damn everything, this, that, and the other, folks, and – everything, I say; I didn't mean it, 'twas just a fool way of speakin', but what I thought was, supposin' I was to ask Him to help right along, 'stead of damn, and make it mean something! What say? You get my idea, Mr. Baxter, sir?"

Mr. Baxter nodded again. "I get it, Pippin. I won't say anything more."

"But yet – but yet – " Pippin was stammering again, and halfway across the counter in his passion of eagerness. "I get you, too, Boss! I do, sure thing. You mean it brings some folks up short, like that gen'leman that stepped in just now? He's no use for me, I see that right off; I wondered why, and now 'tis clear as print. I'd oughter sized him up better. Take that kind of man, and he may be good as they make 'em, prob'ly is; but yet – well – you say the Lord's name excep' in the way of cussin' – I don't mean that he's that kind himself – but —it's like he stubbed his toe on the Lord's ladder, see?"