Pippin; A Wandering Flame Part 20

CHAPTER XIII

ENTER MARY-IN-THE-KITCHEN

In a certain pleasant suburb--yes, the city has pleasant suburbs, though when you are in the slums you do not believe it--stands a white house with green blinds. It stands in the middle of a square yard (by which I mean an inclosure, not a measure of s.p.a.ce); its front looks on a pleasant street, with a sidewalk, and sentinel maples set at regular intervals; the back gives, as the French say, on a road that is not yet paved, with neither sidewalk nor maples, only a straggling procession of elms, with gra.s.s or dust, as may happen, under foot. Yet it is more sympathetic, some people think, than the proper street, and Mary-in-the-kitchen, whose windows both above and below stairs look out upon it, privately thinks she has the best part of the house. So thinks the visitor in the back corner room, too; but we have not come to him yet.

Mary-in-the-kitchen is not in it just now. She is in the yard, hanging out the clothes, for all the world like the maid in the nursery song.

She is standing on a raised platform; her face is toward the house, her back toward the road. So standing, with her arms raised, pinning linen along a line, Mary is such a picture that you really must stop and look at her. She is neither tall nor short, but just the right height, and her blue cotton gown takes the lines and curves of as pretty a figure as ever sculptor sighed for. Her forehead is broad and smooth, and her hair ripples round it as if for pure pleasure. Her brows are black and straight, her lashes black and curled, and her eyes violet blue with brown shadows; you may see the color in clear water when the wind ruffles it. A short straight nose, a chin like Mary Donnelly's, "very neat and pert, and smooth as a china cup," a mouth with kisses tucked in at the corners: all these things Mary has, and her hair beside. Hair too dark for gold, too bright for brown; rather like October oak leaves when the sun s.h.i.+nes through them at a certain angle--but you must know the right kind of oak. Well, then, like a red heifer, a yearling, when her coat is new and glossy in the spring. There is so much of it that Mary hardly knows what to do with it; being a very tidy girl, she has it well braided and pinned in s.h.i.+ning coils at the back of her head, but little tendrils will escape and curl round her face just because they cannot keep away; and on the nape of her neck are two little curls that know themselves for the prettiest in the world.

If you asked Mary what she was, she would reply promptly, "A scientific general." By this she would not mean that she was prepared to conduct warfare on approved modern principles; not at all. She means that she has taken courses in General Housework at a certain Inst.i.tute; and that she is able to do (and does) the work of two "domestics" of yesterday's cla.s.s, with ease and precision. It stands to reason--Mary's favorite phrase--that she would. Knowing not only how but why a thing should be done, you know what came next, and there you were, all ready. So Mary was the joy and comfort of her employers ("the nicest folks in the world!") and the distraction of all the youthful tradesmen of the suburbs. And here I am still keeping her standing on that platform with her arms uplifted, pinning the tablecloth on the line. Scientific generals do not wash clothes nowadays, nor any other generals for that matter, but this was the employeress's best tablecloth, and Mary knew the stuff the laundry put in, and see beautiful linen destroyed was a thing she could not; it stood to reason.

The intelligent reader knows why I am keeping her there; I do not even attempt to deceive him. Yes, Pippin is coming round the corner this moment. Here he is, wheel and all; high time, too, says the intelligent reader. He is walking slowly, not looking round him, as is his wont, with quick, darting glances, but with intent look fixed on the ground a little way ahead, as if he were searching for something; as indeed he is. Pippin is very busy this morning. He has just established ten or twenty boys (he is not sure which) in Cyrus Poor Farm, and he is now looking for the right kind of guy to teach them the use of their hands.

He has never heard of manual training--Bashford taught it in a way, but it was called by other names--but there were several guys in There (remember that this meant Sh.o.r.eham) that would have made first-rate mechanics, give 'em the chance. Now take 'em young, and--why--why--

At this point Fate tapped Pippin smartly on the shoulder. He looked up, and saw Mary on the platform, with her back to him, pinning out the tablecloth.

Cyrus Poor Farm vanished, boys and all! "Green gra.s.s!" said Pippin. He stopped short, and silently bade himself see if there wasn't some pictur to look at. He joyfully absorbed Mary, from head to trim feet and back again, his eyes resting finally on the nape of her neck where the two little curls were displaying themselves, and on the heavy coils of s.h.i.+ning hair. Now _there_ was a color! 'Twas the color of a hoss chestnut--no! lighter than that. A bay hoss, then--bright bay, kind o'

squintin' toward sorrel; no! lighter than that. Green gra.s.s! 'Twas like a heifer, a yearlin' heifer. Now--Pippin smote his thigh lightly--that was the very color Old Man Blossom named in regards to his little gal.

Now would you call that a reminder, p'inter like, fear he should forget?

Or was it showin' him that gals as had a chance might grow up beauts like this young lady? No, he hadn't see her face, that was a fact, but--here Mary turned round.

Probably neither thought anything in that minute they stood at gaze, save that here was the goodliest person ever seen of their respective eyes; as to how the Fates busied themselves at the time, I am not in a position to say, but the next moment, when Pippin pulled off his cap and smiled, and Mary smiled back, possibly--I cannot say--exceptionally keen ears might have heard the whir of Clotho's distaff.

To both the smile seemed somehow familiar; it was as if--this was not thought, only a sunlit gleam of something too far and bright to recognize--as if each had known how the other would smile; thus, and not otherwise the gracious lines would curve and melt and deepen. How is this? Is there no flash of vision, Pippin? Think! Pippin is too bewildered to think.

"Mornin'!" said Pippin. "Nice day!"

"Real nice!" Mary a.s.sented.

"Havin' nice weather right along; seasonable, you might say. Any knives or scissors to grind, lady?"

"Why, I don't know!" Mary came daintily down the steps of the platform (demonstrating the while a seeming impossibility, that her foot was as pretty as the rest of her), and advanced, looking from Pippin to the wheel and back again. "Are you a p'fessional?" she asked.

"That's what! I expect I can give satisfaction, knives, scissors, or tools; anything except razors; them I don't undertake. Like to have a look at the wheel, lady? She's a beaut, too--what I would say, Nipper is her name, not a female name, but all she's got--same as me."

"Nipper!" the girl paused a fraction of a second. It was as if some faint air stirred, not enough to ruffle ever so delicately the clear pool of memory; it pa.s.sed and was gone. "'Tis a pretty wheel!" said Mary.

"Take it from me, lady, she's O.K., the Nipper is. Runs slick as greased lightning; I'd show you if you had a knife handy."

"I'll fetch the carving knife!" said Mary. "It's dull as anything."

She vanished, to the perceptible darkening of the daylight, but soon reappeared, bringing not only the sun but a handful of knives, big and little.

Looking at them, and still more closely at the strong shapely hand that proffered the first of them, an idea came to Pippin, which he withheld for the moment. He took the carving knife, p.r.o.nounced it a dandy but been used some.

"Now watch me, lady!" he said.

A pretty trade! Temp'ry, as Pippin never failed to a.s.sure himself, but pretty. See now how lovingly he lays the blade to the wheel. His foot presses the pedal, and the wheel turns; slowly at first, then faster and ever faster till all Mary sees is a blur of gray and blue with now and then a darting spark. Pippin, holding the blade tenderly yet firmly against the flying stone, bends over it intent; then as the edge begins to fine and taper, he whistles, then hums under his breath, finally breaks out into full-throated song:

"Knives and scissors to grind, oh!

Have 'em done to your mind, oh!

Large and small, Damaged and all, Don't leave any behind, oh!

"Knives and scissors to grind, oh!

Every specie and kind, oh!

Bring 'em to me, _And_ you will see Satisfaction, you'll find, oh!"

Mary looks and listens; looks first at the wheel, then at the man. On him her eyes linger, studying his trim khaki-clad figure (his new road suit, a parting gift from Mrs. Baxter, a good wish set in every st.i.tch), his close-curling hair, the sharp, bold chiseling of cheek and chin. My!

thinks Mary, if he's as good as he is lookin'!

A distant whistle sounds; a clock in the kitchen strikes twelve, with an insistence almost personal. Mary jumps up from the step where she has been sitting with her feet tucked under her and her hands clasping her knees. There! She's no idea 'twas so late. She must go in and get dinner. She thanks him ever so; that is an elegant edge. How much, please?

Pippin, resisting the impulse to say, "Nothing at all to _you_!" names his lowest price. Mary runs into the house for the change, and again the sun goes and comes with her. "How about the other knives?" she asks, a little breathless with her run. Will he finish them now, and bring them in, or--

Pippin will come again, if 'tis all the same to her. He does not think it necessary to say that this was the idea that had come to him, winning his instant approval. If he times his coming so as to do one knife a day--why--there's quite a plenty of knives and mebbe she'd scare up some scissors too--Pippin sees a long vista of Mary-brightened days stretching before him. He bids her good day--since it must be so--almost cheerfully. Then, if agreeable, he'll see her again soon. "So long, lady!"

Mary stands looking after him--it is strange (or not, 'cordin' to, as Mrs. Baxter would say) how often people stand looking after Pippin when he goes away--till conscience nips her sharply; and she flies into the kitchen and all in a moment becomes severely scientific and unbelievably general, executing amazing manoeuvres with saucepans and double-boilers. So scientific is she that when an amorous greengrocer looks in with suggestions of spinach and strawberries, he is hustled off in short order with a curt, "Nothing to-day, thank you!" He hesitating in the doorway with the information that it is a fine day, Mary, with some asperity, presumes likely, but has not time to look. Now, Mary! As if you had not been a good half-hour out on that clothes platform!

She is even a little--a very little short with her employeress, who saw the departing grocer from her window and thinks they might have liked a box of strawberries. Her brother is fond of--

"He's fonder of shortcake!" Mary says briefly, "and it's all ready in the 'frigerator." Relenting, she explains with her own particular smile that there was enough strawberries left from supper last night, and she remembered that the Elder liked her shortcake last time he was here.

"Besides," she adds irrelevantly, "'twas that fellow with the crooked nose, and I do despise him. He's always making excuses to hang round when I'm extra busy."

This was not really meant as a hint, but still the employeress vanished promptly; to see to something, she said. Mary's smile was even more in evidence at dinner, when the employer complimented her on the carving knife.

"Mary, what have you been doing to this knife? It was dull as a hoe yesterday, and now it's a Toledo blade. I didn't get you the steel you asked for, either!"

Mary, standing at attention with an extra plate, an entrancing vision in blue and white, just enough flushed from her manoeuvres over the stove, dimples and smiles and says it _is_ a lovely edge, she does think. A knife-grinder came along, this morning, and he did appear to be a master hand. He did it just as easy!

"Knows his business!" The employer, who is "in" wholesale cutlery, runs the eye of a connoisseur along the blade. "I'd like to turn him on to my pruning shears. Keep a lookout for him, will you, Mary? He may come by again!"

Mary demurely promises to do so. The visitor, who is the employeress's brother, a quiet man in clerical dress, yet with a certain military air and carriage, and blue eyes as keen as they are kind, notices that the girl's color deepens a little, and that a new and distracting dimple appears at the corner of her mouth, as if a smile were trying to escape.

"If I were in the habit of betting," he says when Mary has left the room, "I would lay a considerable sum that the knife-grinder will come again, and moreover, that he is young and possibly not ill looking!"

"I certainly would if I were he!" says the employer heartily. "I'd go round a block just to look at Mary!"

The employeress here develops dimples of her own, and says there is a pair of them, and they'd better let her Mary alone, or there will be trouble.

"There are enough people going round blocks to look at Mary as it is!"

she says. "She's not that kind, either. She huffed Babbitt's man right out of the kitchen to-day, before I had time to get downstairs."

The visitor says nothing. He did not see the knife-grinder, being too busy with his writing--he was preparing a paper for a conference--to look out of the window; but he has a strong impression that he, the knife-grinder, had not been huffed out of the yard an hour or so ago.

And here was Mary with the shortcake!