Читать книгу Rose O'Paradise - Grace Miller White - Страница 22

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The fifth day of Jinnie’s stay in the cobbler’s home crept out of the cold night accompanied by the worst blizzard ever known along the lake. Many times, if it had not been for the protecting overhanging hills, the wood gatherers’ huts would have been swept quite away. As it was, Jinnie felt the shack tremble and sway, and doubted its ability to withstand the onslaught.

After breakfast found Lafe and Jinnie conversing interestedly in the shop. The cobbler allowed several bright nails to fall into his palm before he answered the question which was worrying the girl.

“There ain’t no use troublin’ about it, child,” commented he. “We can’t starve.”

“If I could only work,” said Jinnie gloomily, “I bet Peg’d soon like me, because she wouldn’t have to go out in the cold at all. But you think it’d be bad for me, eh, Lafe?”

“Well, you couldn’t go around to the factories or stores very well,” replied Lafe. “You see your uncle’s tryin’ to trace you. I showed you that this mornin’ in the paper, didn’t I, where he mourned over you as lost after findin’ your father dead?”

Jinnie nodded.

“Yes, I read it,” she said.

“An’ he can’t get your money for seven years. That makes him madder’n a hatter, of course.” 71

“If he’d let me alone, I’d just as soon give him the money,” Jinnie said mournfully.

Lafe shook his head.

“The law wouldn’t let you, till you was of age. No, sir, you’d either have to die a natural death or—another kind, an’ you’re a pretty husky young kid to die natural.”

“I don’t want to die at all,” shivered Jinnie.

Lafe encouraged her with a smile.

“If he finds you,” pursued Lafe, “I’d have to give you up. I couldn’t do anything else. We might pray ’bout it.”

A wistful expression came over Jinnie’s face.

“Is praying anything like wishing, cobbler?”

“Somethin’ the same,” replied Mr. Grandoken, “with this difference—wishin’ is askin’ somethin’ out of somewhere of some one you don’t know; prayin’ is just talkin’ to some one you’re acquainted with! See?”

“Yes, I think I do,” responded the girl. “Your way is mostly praying, isn’t it, Lafe?”

“Prayin’s more powerful than wishin’, lass,” said Lafe. “When I was first paralyzed, I done a lot of wishin’. I hadn’t any acquaintance with anybody but Peggy. After that I took up with God, an’ He’s been awful good to me.”

“He’s been good to me, too, Lafe, bringing me here.”

This seemed to be a discovery to Virginia, and for a few minutes her brain was alive with new hopes. Suddenly she drew her chair in front of Grandoken.

“Will to-morrow ever be to-day, cobbler?”

Lafe looked at the solemn-faced girl with smiling, kindly eyes.

“Sure, kid, sure,” he asserted. “When you get done wishin’ an’ there ain’t nothin’ left in the world to want, then to-morrow’s to-day.”

Jinnie smiled dismally. “There’d never be a day, cobbler, 72 that I couldn’t think of something I’d like for you—and Peg.”

Lafe meditated an instant before replying. Then:

“I’ve found out that we’re always happier, kid, when we’ve got a to-morrow to look to,” said he, “ ’cause when you’re just satisfied, somethin’s very apt to go smash. I was that way once.”

He paused for some seconds.

“Jinnie,” he murmured, “I haven’t told you how I lost the use of my legs, have I?”

“No, Lafe.”

“Well, as I was sayin’, there didn’t used to be any to-morrow for me. I always lived just for that one day. I had Peg an’ the boy. I could work for ’m, an’ that was enough. It’s more’n lots of men get in this world.”

His voice trailed into a whisper and ceased. He was living for the moment in the glory of his past usefulness. The rapt, wrinkled face shone as if it had been touched by angel fingers. Virginia watched him reverently.

“It’s more’n two years ago, now,” proceeded the cobbler presently, “an’ I was workin’ on one of them tall uptown buildin’s. Jimmy Malligan worked right alongside of me. We was great chums, Jimmy an’ me. One day the ropes broke on one of the scaffoldin’s—at least, that’s what folks said. When we was picked up, my legs wasn’t worth the powder to blow ’em up—an’ Jimmy was dead. … But Peg says I’m just as good as ever.”

Here Mr. Grandoken took out his pipe and struck a match. “But I ain’t. ’Cause them times Peg didn’t have to work. We always had fires enough, an’ didn’t live like this. But, as I was sayin’, me an’ Peg just kinder lived in to-day. Now, when I hope that mebbe I’ll walk again, I’m always measurin’ up to-morrow––Peg’s the best woman in the world.” 73

Jinnie shivered as a gust of wind rattled the window pane.

“She makes awful good hot mush,” she commented.

“Anyhow,” went on Lafe, “I was better off’n Jimmy, because he was stone dead. There wasn’t any to-day or to-morrow for him, an’ I’ve still got Peggy.”

“And this shop,” supplemented the girl, glancing around admiringly.

“Sure, this shop,” assented Lafe. “I had clean plumb forgot this shop—I mean, for the minute—but I wouldn’t a forgot it long.”

He knocked the ashes out of his pipe and set to work.

Neither girl nor man spoke for a while, and it wasn’t until Lafe heard Peg’s voice growling at one of Milly’s kittens that he ceased his tick-tack.

“You wouldn’t like to join my club, lass, would you?” he ventured.

Jinnie looked up quickly.

“Of course I would,” she said eagerly. “What kind of a club is it?”

The girl’s faith in the cobbler was so great that if Lafe had commanded her to go into danger, she wouldn’t have hesitated.

“Tell me what the club is, Lafe,” she repeated.

“Sure,” responded Lafe. “Come here an’ shake hands! All you have to do to be a member of my club is to be ‘Happy in Spite’ an’ believe everythin’ happenin’ is for the best.”

A mystified expression filled the girl’s earnest blue eyes.

“I’m awful happy,” she sighed, “and I’m awful glad to come in your club, but I just don’t understand what it means.”

The cobbler paid no attention for some moments. He was looking out of the window, in a far-away mood, dreaming 74 of an active past, when Jinnie accidentally knocked a hammer from the bench. Lafe Grandoken glanced in the girl’s direction.

“I’m happy in spite—” he murmured. Then he stopped abruptly, and his hesitation made the girl repeat:

“Happy in spite?” with a rising inflection. “What does that mean, Lafe?”

Lafe began to work desperately.

“It means just this, kid. I’ve got a little club all my own, an’ I’ve named it ‘Happy in Spite.’ ” His eyes gathered a mist as he whispered, “Happy in spite of everything that ain’t just what I want it to be. Happy in spite of not walkin’—happy in spite of Peg’s workin’.”

Virginia raised unsmiling, serious eyes to the speaker.

“I want to come in your club, too, Lafe,” she said slowly. “I need to be happy in spite of lots of things, just like you, cobbler.”

A long train steamed by. Jinnie went to the window, and looked out upon it. When the noise of the engine and the roar of the cars had ceased, she whirled around.

“Cobbler,” she said in a low voice, “I’ve been thinking a lot since yesterday.”

“Come on an’ tell me about it, lassie,” said Lafe.

She sat down, hitching her chair a bit nearer him, leaned her elbow on her knee, and buried a dimpled chin in the palm of her hand.

“Do you suppose, Lafe, if a girl believed in the angels, anybody could hurt her?”

“I know they couldn’t, kid, an’ it’s as true’s Heaven.”

“Well, then, why can’t I go out and work?”

Lafe paused and looked over his spectacles.

“Peggy says, ‘Every hand should do its share’,” he quoted.

Jinnie winced miserably. She picked up several nails 75 from the floor. It was a pretext for an activity to cover her embarrassment.

The cobbler allowed her to busy herself a while in this way. Then he said:

“Sit in the chair an’ wrap up in the blankets, Jinnie. I want to talk with you.”

She did as she was bidden, sitting quietly until the man chose to speak.

“I guess you’re beginnin’ to believe,” said he, at length, “an’ if you do, a world full of uncles couldn’t hurt you. Peg says as how you got to work if you stay, an’ if you have the faith––”

Jinnie rose tremblingly.

“I know I’ll be all right,” she cried. “I just know you and me believing would keep me safe.”

Her eagerness caused Lafe to draw the girl to him.

“Can you holler good an’ loud?” he asked.

The girl shot him a curious glance.

“Sure I can.”

“Can you walk on icy walks––”

“Oh, I’m as strong as anything,” Jinnie cut in, glancing downward at herself.

“I know a lot of kids who earn money,” said Lafe meditatively.

“What do they do?”

“Get wood out of the marsh behind the huts there. Some of ’em keeps families on it.”

“Sell wood! And there’s lots of it, Lafe?”

“Lots,” replied Lafe.

Sell wood! The very words, new, wonderful, and full of action, rang through Jinnie’s soul like sweet sounding bells. Waves of unknown sensations beat delightfully upon her girlish heart. If she brought in a little money every day, Peggy would be kinder. She could; she was 76 sure she could. She was drawn from her whirling thoughts by the cobbler’s voice.

“Could you do it, kid? People could think your name was Jinnie Grandoken.”

Jinnie choked out a reply.

“And mebbe I could make ten cents a day.”

“I think you could, Jinnie, an’ here’s Lafe right ready to help you.”

Virginia Singleton felt quite faint. She sat down, her heart beating under her knit jacket twice as fast as a girl’s heart ought to beat. Lafe had suddenly opened up a path to usefulness and glory which even in her youthful dreams had never appeared to her.

“Call Peggy,” said Lafe.

Soon Peg stood before them, with a questioning face.

“The kid’s goin’ to work,” announced Lafe, “We’ve got a way of keepin’ her uncle off’n her trail.”

Mrs. Grandoken looked from her husband to Virginia.

“I want to work like other folks,” the girl burst forth, looking pleadingly at the shoemaker’s wife.

Peggy wiped her arms violently upon her apron, and there flashed across her face an inscrutable expression that Lafe had learned to read, but which frightened the newcomer.

Oh, how Jinnie wanted to do something to help them both! Now, at this moment, when there seemed a likelihood of being industriously useful, Jinnie loved them the more. She was going to work, and into her active little brain came the sound of pennies, and the glint of silver.

“I want to work, Peggy,” she beseeched, “and I’ll make a lot of money for you.”

“Every hand ought to do its share,” observed Peg, stolidly, glancing at the girl’s slender fingers. They looked so small, so unused to hard work, that she turned away. 77 An annoying, gripping sensation attacked her suddenly, but in another minute she faced the girl again.

“If you do it, miss, don’t flounce round’s if you owned the hull of Paradise Road, ’cause it’ll be nothin’ to your credit, whatever you do. You didn’t make yourself.”

At the door she turned and remarked, “You’ve got t’have a shoulder strap to hold the wood, an’ you musn’t carry too much to onct. It might hurt your back.”

“I’ll be careful,” gulped Jinnie, “and mebbe I could help make the strap, eh, Lafe?”

An hour later Jinnie was running a long needle through a tough piece of leather. She was making the strap to peddle shortwood, and a happier girl never breathed.

Peg watched her without comment as Lafe fitted the strap about her shoulders. In fact, there was nothing for the woman to say, when the violet eyes were fixed questioningly upon her. Peggy thought of the hunger which would be bound to come if any hands were idle, so she muttered in excuse, “There’s nothin’ like gettin’ used to a thing.”

“It’s a fine strap, isn’t it, Lafe?” asked the girl, “It’s almost as good as a cart.”

“You can’t use a cart in the underbrush,” explained Lafe. “That’s why the twig gatherers use straps.”

“I see,” murmured Jinnie.

When the cobbler and girl were once more alone together, they had a serious confab. They decided that every penny Jinnie brought in should go to enriching the house, and the girl’s eyes glistened as she heard the shoemaker list over the things that would make them comfortable.

Most delightful thoughts came to endow the girl’s mental world, which now reached from the cobbler’s shop to the marsh, over a portion of the city, and back again. It 78 was rosy-hued, bright, sparkling with the pennies and nickels she intended to earn. All her glory would come with the aid of that twig gatherer’s leather strap. She looked down upon it with a proud toss of her head. Jinnie was recovering the independent spirit which had dominated her when she had wandered alone on the hills away to the north.

“I wouldn’t wonder if I’d make fifteen cents some days,” she remarked later at the supper table.

“If you make ten, you’ll be doin’ well, an’ you and Lafe’ll probably bust open with joy if you do,” snapped Peg. “Oh, Lord, I’m gettin’ sick to my stomick hearin’ you folks brag. Go to bed now, kid, if you’re to work to-morrow.”

Jinnie fell asleep to dream that her hand was full of pennies, and her pockets running over with nickels. She was just stooping to pick up some money from the sidewalk when Peg’s voice pierced her ear,

“Kid,” said she, “it’s mornin’, an’ your first workin’ day. Now hurry your lazy bones an’ get dressed.”