The Rich Little Poor Boy Part 57

The picture brought him peace.

There followed one of his thinks. He brought Cis back into the little room, seated her on her narrow bed, with her slender shoulders leaned against the excelsior pillow which once she had prized. In her best dress, which was white, she showed ghostily among the shadows. But he could see her violet eyes clearly, and the look in them was tender and loving.

He held out his arms to her.

Somewhere, far off, a bell rang. It was like a summons. The wraith of his own making vanished. He wiped his eyes, now with one fringed sleeve, now with the other, stooped and felt round just inside the little room for his sc.r.a.p of mattress and the quilt, took them up, softly shut the door, and turned about.

That same moment the hall door began slowly to open, propelled from without by an unseen hand. "St!" came a low warning. Next, a dim hand showed itself, reaching in at the floor level with a large yellow bowl.

It placed the bowl to one side, disappeared, returned again at once with a goodish chunk of _schwarzbrod_, laid the bread beside the bowl, traveled up to the outside k.n.o.b, and drew the door to.

He knew that the dim hand was plump and brown, and that it belonged to the little Jewish lady, who never yet had been forgetful of him, who was always prompt with motherly help. He knew that; and yet, as he watched it all, there was something of a sweet mystery about it, and he was reminded of that wonderful arm, clothed in white samite, which had come thrusting up out of the lake to give the sword Excalibur to great King Arthur.

He did not go to get what had been left (noodles, he guessed, tastily thickening a broth). Grandpa was already fed for the night, and asleep in the wheel chair, where Johnnie intended to leave him, not liking to rap on the bedroom door and disturb Big Tom. As for his own appet.i.te, it seemed to have deserted him forever.

Noiselessly he put down his bedding beside the table. And it was then that he made out, by the faint light coming in at the window, the two dolls, Let.i.tia and Edwarda, huddled together on the oilcloth. Let.i.tia, small, old, worn out in long service to her departed mistress, had one sawdust arm thrown across Edwarda. And Edwarda, proud though she was, and beautiful in her silks and laces, had a smooth, round, artfully jointed arm thrown across Let.i.tia. It was as if each was comforting the other!

Johnnie picked up the old doll. Somehow she seemed closer and dearer to him than the new one. Perhaps--who knew?--she, also, was mourning the absent beloved. (If there was any feeling in her, she had been inconsolable this long time, what with being cast aside for a grander rival.) "Well, Let.i.tia," he whispered, "here we are, you and--and me!"

It was growing dark in the kitchen. Besides, no one was there to mark his weakness and taunt him with it. He put his face against faithful Let.i.tia's faded dress--that dress which Cis herself had made, p.r.i.c.king her pink fingers scandalously in the process, and had washed and ironed season after season. That was it! He loved the old doll the better because she was a part of Cis.

"Oh, dear Let.i.tia!" he whispered again, and strained the doll to his heart.

Then he took up Edwarda, who opened her eyes with a sharp click.

Edwarda, favorite of her young owner, smelled adorably--like the tiny room, like the birthday roses, like apples. And her dainty presence, exhaling the familiar scent of the dressing-table box, brought Cis even nearer to him than had Let.i.tia. With a choking exclamation, he caught the new doll to him along with the old, and held both tight.

Then dropping to the mattress, he laid the pair side by side before crumpling down with them, digging his nose into one of Edwarda's fragrant sleeves. The instant her head struck the bed, Edwarda had clicked her eyes shut, as if quite indifferent to all that had happened that day (not to speak of the previous night), and had fallen asleep like a shot. Not so the sterling Let.i.tia, who lay staring, open-eyed, at the ceiling.

But Johnnie, worn with emotion, weak from yesterday's whipping, sick and weary from last night's long hours across the table edge, sank into a deep and merciful and repairing sleep.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

UPS AND DOWNS

HE awoke a changed boy. How it had come about, or why, he did not try to reason; but on opening his gray eyes at dawn, he felt distinctly two astonishing differences in himself: first, his sorrow over Cis's going seemed entirely spent, as if it had taken leave of him some time in the night; second, and more curious than the other, along with that sorrow had evidently departed all of his old fear of Big Tom!

The fact that Johnnie no longer stood in dread of Barber was, doubtless, due to the fact that he had seen the giant outmatched and brought to terms. He hated him still (perhaps even more than ever); yet holding him in contempt, did not indulge in a single revenge think. He understood that, with Cis away, the longsh.o.r.eman needed him as he had never needed him before. So Barber would not dare to be ugly or cruel again, lest he lose Johnnie too. "If I followed Cis where'd he be?" the boy asked himself. "Huh! He better be careful!"

As to Cis, now that he had had a good rest, it was easy for him to see that this change which had come into her life was a thing to be grateful for, not a matter to be mourned about. After her trouble with Barber, she could not stay on in the flat and be happy. Granting this, how fortunate it was that she could at once marry the man she loved. (And what a man!)

He saw her in that splendid, imaginary apartment in which he had long ago installed Mr. Perkins. And was he, John Blake, wishing that she would stay in a tiny, if beautiful, room without a window?

"Aw, shucks, no!" he cried. "I don't want y' back! I miss y', but I'm _awful_ glad y'r gone! And I don't mind bein' left here."

He felt hopeful, ambitious, independent.

He rose with a will. He was stiff, just at first, but strong and steady on his feet. As in the past he had never made a habit of pitying himself, he did not pity himself now, but took his aches and pains as he had taken them many a time before, that is, by dismissing them from his mind. He was hungry. He was eager for his daily wash. He wanted to get at his morning exercises, and take with them a whiff of the outdoors coming in at the window. By a glance at his patch of sky he could tell that this whiff would be pleasant. For how clear and blue was that bit of Heaven which he counted as a personal belonging! And just across the area the sun was already beginning to wash all the roofs with its aureate light.

Three sparrows hailed him from the window ledge, shrilly demanding crumbs. Crumbs made him think of Mrs. Kukor's stealthy gift. Sure enough, the yellow bowl held soup. In the soup was spaghetti--the wide, ribbony, slippery kind he especially liked, coiled about in a broth which smelled deliciously of garlic. As for the black bread, some nibbling visitor of the night had helped himself to one corner of it, and this corner, therefore, went at once to the birds.

"My goodness!" soliloquized Johnnie. "How the mice do love Mrs. Kukor's bread!" And he could not blame them. It _was_ so good!

Then, a trifle startled, he noted that the wheel chair was not in the kitchen; but guessed at once that Barber had quietly rolled Grandpa into the bedroom at a late hour. Next, his roving glance dropped back to the old mattress, and he caught sight of the dolls. Forgetting what a comfort they had been to him the evening before, this while feeling boyishly ashamed and foolish at having had them with him, in a panic he caught them up and flung them, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, out of sight upon Cis's couch; after which, looking sheepish, and wondering if Big Tom had, by any chance, seen them, he put away his bedding, filled the teakettle, and reached down the package of oatmeal.

It was not till he started to build a fire that he remembered! In the fire box still was all that remained of his uniform, his books, and the Carnegie medal. He lifted a stove lid; then as a mourner looks down into a grave that has received a dear one, so, for a long, sad moment, he gazed into the ashes. "Oh, my stories!" he faltered. "Oh, my peachy suit o' clothes!"

But it was the medal he hunted. On pressing the ashes through into the ash-box, something fell with a clear tinkle, and he dug round till he found a burned and blackened disk. Fire had harmed it woefully. That side bearing the face of its donor was roughened and scarred, so that no likeness of Mr. Carnegie survived; but on the other side, near to the rim, several words still stood out clearly--_that a man lay down his life for his friends_.

After more poking around he found all the metal b.u.t.tons off the uniform, each showing the scout device, for, being small, the b.u.t.tons had dropped into the ashes directly their hold upon the cloth was loosened by the flames, and so escaped serious damage. Also, following a more careful search, he discovered--the tooth.

The clock alarm rang, and he surmised that Big Tom had wound it when he came out for Grandpa.

"John!"

Somehow that splintered bit of Barber's tusk made Johnnie feel more independent than ever. With it between a thumb and finger, he dared be so indifferent to the summons that he did not reply at once. Instead, he took the b.u.t.tons to the sink and rinsed them; rinsed the tooth, too.

Then he put the medal into the shallow dish holding the dead rose leaves, filled a cracked coffee cup with the b.u.t.tons, and tossed the tooth into the drawer of the kitchen table.

"John!"--an anxious John this time, as if the longsh.o.r.eman half feared the boy was gone.

"I'm up."

"Wish y'd come here."

Johnnie smiled grimly as he went. That "wish" was new! Always heretofore it had been "You do this" and "You do that." Evidently something of a change had also been wrought in Big Tom! The bedroom door was ajar an inch or two. Through the narrow crack Johnnie glimpsed Grandpa, in his chair, ready to be trundled out. But Barber was lying down, his face half turned away.

"Wheel the old man into the kitchen," said the latter as he heard Johnnie. He spoke with a lisp (that tooth!), and his voice sounded weak.

"And then bring me somethin' t' eat, will y'?"

Having said Yes without a Sir, Johnnie wagged his head philosophically, the while he steered the chair skilfully across the sill. "Plenty o'

good turns t' do now," he told himself; "and all o' 'em for _him_!"

But--a scout is faithful. He built the fire and cooked a tasty meal--toast, with the grease of bacon tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs soaking it, coffee, and rolled oats--and placed it on Grandpa's bed, handy to the longsh.o.r.eman.

Then he shut the bedroom door smartly, as a signal that Big Tom was to have privacy, and returned to his own program.

He scampered downstairs for Grandpa's milk and his own, taking time to exchange a grin with the janitress, to whom Barber's defeat of yesterday was no grief. Then back he raced, washed, combed and fed the little, old soldier, helping him to think the gruel a "swell puddin'," and the service Buckle's best. After that there was a short trip to Madison Square Garden where, despite all facts to the contrary, a colossal circus had moved in. Johnnie summoned lions before the wheel chair, and tigers, camels, Arab steeds and elephants, Cis's room serving admirably as the cage which contained these various quadrupeds. And, naturally, there was a deal of growling and roaring and kicking and neighing, while the camels barked surprisingly like Boof, and the elephants conversed with something of a Hebrew accent. All of which greatly delighted Grandpa, and he cackled till his scraggly beard was damp with happy tears.

When he was asleep there was sweeping to do (with wet, scattered tea leaves, and a broom drenched frequently at Niagara falls, all this to help keep down the dust). A few dishes of ma.s.sy gold needed washing, too. The stove--that iron urn holding precious dust--called for the polishing rag. Of all these duties Johnnie made quick work.

Then, without a thought that Big Tom might come forth, see, and seeing, disapprove, Johnnie switched to the floor that square of oilcloth which so often covered the Table Round, rolled the wash-tub into place at the cloth's center, and partly filled it. At once there followed such a soaping and scrubbing, such a splashing and rinsing! Whenever the cold water struck a sore spot there were gasps and ouches.

A close attention to details was not lacking. Ears were not forgotten, nor the areas behind them; nor was the neck (all the way around); nor were such soil-gathering spots as knee-k.n.o.bs and elbow-points; nor even the black-and-blue streaks across an earnest face. And presently, the drying process over, and Cis's old toothbrush laid away, a pink and glowing body was bending and twisting close to the window, and shooting out its limbs.

When Johnnie was dressed, and stood, clean and combed and straight on his pins, his chest heaving as he glanced around a kitchen which was shipshape, and upon his aged friend, who was as presentable as possible, it occurred to him that when a caller happened in this morning--Mrs.

Kukor, Father Pat, or Cis; or when he, himself, fetched King Arthur, or Mr. Roosevelt, or Robinson Crusoe, no excuses of any kind would have to be made. He and his house were in order.