Pippin

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FAQE

Pippin Goes Off to See the World . . 1

Pippin Meets the Shepherds and Goes to

Breakfast .16

Telling How the Farmer Brought Home

the Priest .25

Pippin Falls in with the Gentleman

Tramp S6

The Story of the Gentleman Tramp 48 The Story of the Gentleman Tramp

(Continued) 62

Pippin Meets a Poor Shopkeeper and

Some Rich Ones 73

Pippin Spends a Day with a Pedlar . 88 The Road and the Field . . . .101 Pippin Walks On and Meets Many Kinds

op People Ill

The Old Clergyman and His Story . .122 Pippin Goes to the Circus and Has a

Passage with a Lion-Tamer . . .132 Pippin Sups with the Ring-Master . . 146

Pippin Leaves the Circus . . . .219 Pippin Acquires a Friend_, and Walks On 231 Pippin Hears a Tale and Gives Advice 244 vii

Vlll

CHAPTBE

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XXXI

CONTENTS

Pippin is Preached at ...

Pippin Works and Gets Tired of It .

One Tavern and Another .

Pippin Looks for Work and Finds It

Pippin Starts for Home and Meets an

Old Acquaintance 356

Journey's End 369

FAGB 282

296 309 322 334 337

CHAPTER I PIPPIN GOES Orr TO SEE THE WOEU)

Pippin shut to the house door and stood outside in the fresh air of the morning.

It was very early. He had caught the world half awake, half asleep. The grass was white with dew, the shadow of night still clung about the trees of the orchard, the birds in the lilacs were only twittering. The house behind him was in a dead sleep. Its deep eaves hung over blinded windows and no breath of household life went up from its chimneys.

Pippin opened the garden gate, and let it fall to with a clatter behind him. He threw one glance back at his home, old and warm and patient, and swung off up the hiU with the strong step of youth. He walked fast because he was setting out to see the world, and the world won't wait for youth, although age finds it in less of a hurry.

As he strode up the hiU, between high banks starred with primroses and crowned with budding beeches, the earth suddenly stretched itself and woke up.

Some men and women, and nearly all children, who live close to nature, know this moment when the earth springs up from its sleep, although most miss it, and cannot tell why the birds suddenly begin to shout in chorus. It is a

Httk lighter than it was a minute ago, but it was a little lighter then than a minute before. What has happened? The birds know. A minute ago there was some doubt as to whether the sun would really rise again. Now there is nc doubt at all. There is at least one more jolly day to come before the end.

Young Pippin was good to look at as he strode up the hill, with all the world to himself and life in front of him. His fair hair curled crisply, his eyes were blue and merry, his face freckled, his mouth kind and sensitive. He was dressed in a suit of rough homespun. He carried a pack, and a stout ash sapling with a natural crook — none of your curved handles bent with steam for him ! — served for swinging to his stride and cutting at the wayside weeds. He would have small need of it for supporting his steps. But a good honest stick is company for a man, and the hand likes it, being a little jealous of the stout work committed to the feet, when the master of both walks abroad.

When he had paid due toll to the promise of another day with a quick laugh of pleasure, and a sniflBng of the nostrils at the virginal keen air, he fell silent and thoughtful for a time, looking on the ground as he walked. He was thinking of the farewell he had taken of his old father and mother the night before; and this is the picture his memory laid out for him.

On either side of the deep hearth was an old wooden chair, with arms and a high back and a cushioned seat. There is no chair like a wooden chair for comfort and self-respect combined. Our fathers knew nothing of those big, low, heavily padded chairs for the enjoyment of which you must give up your will to rise and go about your business if the spirit moves you. Besides, they woo you to sleep, and the proper place for sleep is a bed, whether of hay or feathers.

In one of these chairs sat Pippin's father, and in the other his mother, for the best part of the day. For they were both old. Pippin was the child of their middle-age. The name they had given him at the font was almost forgotten, for immediately afterwards they had given him another. He was like a red, sweet, juicy, lusty apple of the orchard; and, out of all the foolish names with which they had mocked lovingly at his helplessness, that of Pippin had clung to him throughout his years.

Pippin's father sat hour after hour by the hearth, on which the great logs blazed merrily, or flickered on their bed of grey ashes, their fire dying down like the fire of his life. Out of all that he had done and desired and fought for, there remained to him the hearth and the good roof above his head; a little food and a little sleep; his old wife, whose continual presence stirred him now a little less than her absence woidd have done; his long, long thoughts of the past, so clear, so wise, and so fruitless; and his son.

When Pippin was in the room his thoughts left the fire in which he saw so much, and followed him. His son stood for everything he had lost, the hope and the strength and the passion of manhood. He was the fruit of his own loins, and would carry on in himself and in his children's children that joyful tussle with fate, in which a man is beaten before he enters the ring, but never admits it, untn his enemy, having let him play for a while, robs him of his weapons and makes an end of him. ' Pippin's mother was not so old as his father by some years, but she could not walk without help and sat perforce in her chair with a table by her side busying herself with whatever lay to her hand. She beguiled the long hours with talk, uttering whatever came into her mind, as is the way with women, in whom a seed of thought immediately becomes a flower of speech, but, as it has had little time to germinate, not always a very good one, though better than a man's would be if forced in the same way. For the top soil of a woman's mind is commonly productive, but you must dig deeper into a man's.

So the old woman talked, and the old man sat silent. But beneath the cover of her chatter there was experience as deep as his. She had been his willing helpmate through their life together, and the things that he had desired and worked for she had desired and worked for too, not that she might enjoy them, but that he might. She had gone through pain and trouble to bear him the child in whose begetting he had known only delight. Hers had been the care, and hers the fears. And she could not stay herself with the thought that her child would grow more like her, for the older a son grows the more he loses that part of herself which his mother gave him, however strong the love that may bind them together.

The old woman chattered and the old man sat silent, piling up mountains of slow orderly thoughts. And of the two perhaps she was the happier, for she lived more in the present, and, if she searched in the cupboard of her mind for memories, she took out only the happy ones and let the bitter lie. This again is the way of a woman, and she is not to be blamed for it.

Well then, the two old folk sat by the fire after their evening meal, and their son sat between them, or walked up and down the length of the room as he talked. For he had something very serious to impart and was all astir in mind and body until the matter should be settled.

He must go out and see the world. That was the end of it all. Home was a very good place, but a young man could have too much of it. This he wrapped up a little, but it was plain what he meant. The spring pricked his blood and he was for starting at once.

It took him a long time to say it, for at the first word of leaving home his mother's fears arose, and his plea was much broken by her complaints and reproaches. Indeed, before the end she had spoken more words than he had.

First of all she lauded his home. What young man had a better one, or more freedom to come and go within its confines .f

None, said Pippin. It was a very pleasant home and he would come back to it.

"To find our places empty, very like. Do you grudge your old father and mother their places by the fire. Pippin.'' AU the rest is yours, the fields and the woods and the barns. You are as good as master. And you will only have to wait a little while until you are master in name as well as deed."

"I do not want to be master," said Pippin. "Nothing is further from my mind. But as the time must come — may it be far distant — ^when I shall be, I must see the world before I settle down in this little corner of it."

"I have lived here all my long life," she said, "in this house or my father's — in two houses and the same beautiful country all my years."

"But my father hasn't. He would not have been the man he is, or done what he has done, if he had not seen the world in his jouth. You are a woman, mother. You don't understand."

"I understand this," she said, "that a man always wants some new thing. It was just the same when you were a child. Pippin; if I gave you one toy, which you asked for, and thought to have a moment's peace, you were crying for another before I had time to settle to anything."

And so it went on between them, the old man sitting silent looking into the fire, and seeing there, perhaps, pictures of the adventures of his own youth.

But when his mother found she could not move him by argument she stretched out her arms to him and cried, "Oh, Pippin, stay with us. We love you, and we shall keep you such a little time. In a few years at most you may go where you will. We shall not be here to stop jrou."

Pippin was moved by her tears, and might have put off: his purpose. But at this point his father spoke, in his thin, slow voice.

He spoke to his wife. "Let us hear what it is that he wants," he said. "And he must speak to us quite plainly. Freedom is a good thing for a young man. I do not blame him for desiring that."

Then Pippin understood two things : first that he must speak out freely all the discontent that had been growing in his mind now for weeks past, even at the risk of hurting those whom he loved ; and second, that if his mother would hold him back his father would help him to know his mind, wise old man that he was, and with something to show for his close upon eighty years of experience.

But his mother broke in. "Freedom !" she echoed. "I tell him that he is free now, in the house and on the land. Both are as good as his already, and will be his very own in a few years, when we are both gone."

"He is not yet of an age to be held by possessions," said the old man. "And no man is quite free who is tied to a house and land."

"How you talk!" said his wife sorrowfully. "It is what you have worked for night and day, year in and year out ever since we were married."

"Ever since we were married," the old man acquiesced with a bend of the head. "Pippin, do you not value what I have gained for you by the toil of my hands and my brain?"

"Oh, yes, I do," cried Pippin. "I love my home, and yet I want to leave it. I don't know why."

"You must find out why, if we are to give our consent to your going," said his father drily. "You are young yet, but you are old enough to know what is in your own mind, and if you do not, to discover it."

"Well then," said Pippin shamefacedly. "I find life very dull."

"Dull !" echoed his mother, shrilly, holding up hands of horror. "You have your own horse to ride. You are not tied to any work that you need do. You can hunt in the winter and play games in the summer. You have friends to play with, boys and girls, and they are made welcome here."

"I see no new faces," said Pippin.

"Old faces are better than new," said his mother.

The old man spoke again, holding up a thin hand for silence. "Now listen," he said. "I have seen this coming ; for I see many things, though I do not stir from my chair by the hearth. Pippin, you have everything that a man can desire, and yet you find it dull. Why ?"

"I don't know," said Pippin after a pause. "I find it dull, but I don't know why."

"Then I will tell you. It is because you have not won it for yourself. If you had you would cling to it, as I do still, though I am very old."

Pippin had nothing to say to this. He only knew that the good house in which he had been born, and the fair acres around it, seemed like a cage to him. His life weighed heavily. There was nothing to look forward to. He was tired of play, and it was true, as his mother had said, that there was no work he need do unless he liked. He had everything that he ought to have wanted, and he wanted none of it. But for the old folks, how gladly would he have given up his inheritance and gone out into the world to make his own way. Anything would be better than this life of stagnation, which, stretching in front of him through illimitable years, now seemed insupportable.

His father spoke again. "You shall go away," he said. "You shall go away for a year ;" with his hand he stilled his wife's cries of remonstrance; "for a year you are not to come back for any reason, and you may stay longer if you wish. I will give you a little money, but not enough to keep you for a year. You must work for your living, in any way that pleases you."

"I am strong enough," said Pippin. "I can do that if you wish it." He did not want work at that moment. He wanted freedom.

"I do wish it. You must learn to value what I have gained for you, and that is the only way. I tell you that you are a fool to hold it so lightly, but my telling will not mend your disease, which is that of youth. You want to see the great city?"

"Yes," said Pippin.

"Very well, then. Go and see it, and find out for yourself that if its streets were paved with gold, as foolish people think them, they would not he worth exchanging for the pleasant acres you will soon call your own. See the crowds of people who live there, and then think of the faces of your friends whom you now despise. See strange and curious sights, and learn to hunger for the quiet familiar places. Earn your bread and remember the plenty that you had for the asking. Go where you will and do what you will, and find out that a man without a tie is like a kite without a string. I do not blame you for not knowing these things. But they are true, and that you must learn for yourself."

Pippin was quite prepared to accept all this as true; but all the same he wanted to get away.

"You must take the road," his father went on. "Travel light and make friends with all sorts. Hear what you can of the lives of other men and women."

"That is what I want to do," said Pippin eagerly.

"You have your share of the curiosity of youth," said his father drily; "and a knack of sympathy. You will hear stories, and you must try and profit by them. Walk through the country till you come to the city, and walk back again when your time is up. Never care about where your next meal is to be found, or where you are to lay your head at night. You will get most out of your journey in that way."

And now Pippin was gay and excited again. His father had called him a fool and gone near to chiding him, but he had shown too that he knew what a young man wanted. To walk through the fair country in the budding spring, to meet unknown and therefore interesting people, to see how life went, away from this quiet patch of country soil, to eat and drink and sleep where he pleased, and in a new place every time, to have the desired city as his goal : this was enough for him at present. What should come after could wait. "When may I set out?" he asked.

His mother, almost weeping, began to babble of clothes and provisions and countless preparations, but his father cut her short.

"Set out to-morrow at dawn," he said. "We will bid you good-bye to-night. When you have learnt wisdom from the men and women you meet on your travels, a little pity and perhaps a little love, come back to us, my son. You will find us waiting here for you, if you do not put off your coming too long."

That was the memory Pippin bore with him as he breasted the long hill between the primrose-studded banks : two old people by the hearth by his home, one bidding him go forth from it, the other pleading with him to stay ; and it made him a little sad, even on the threshold of his adventure. For in both voices he had heard the note that comes before the end, and, old as his parents were, he had never yet thought of them as ready to leave him, however ready he might be to leave them.

He was glad that it had not been necessary to tell them that he had meant to set out at dawn that morning in any case.

He came to the crown of the hill, and his spirits rose again. He was in a country of rolling down, grey-green on the chalky ridges, with the cloudy purple of massed budding trees in the hollows, and little farms and cottages sheltering among them, here and there, as far as the eye could reach. The blue sky and the strong upland wind were aU about him, and he stepped out bravely down the long descent of the curving road.

On the slope of a hillside a mile away, flanked by ricks and barns and a dotted orchard, he could see a white house with a red roof, and he kept his eyes fixed on it as he strode down the broad hedgeless road, until he dropped into a furrow of the downs and lost it for a while.

But presently he came up to the house. It stood very pleasantly, its shoulder towards the sun now topping the hill which sheltered it from the keen easterly winds. A little river, crossed by a hand-bridge and widening below into a gravelly ford, ran between it and the road. Beyond the water was a grassy slope ; and a long white paling with a little gate in the middle of it enclosed a garden which the flowers of early spring were already beginning to make gay. There were clumps of daff^odUs, manycoloured primroses, white arabis and yellow alyssum, modest hepatica and violets, and a shrub of daphne, whose pink flowers are braver than its leaves. Other plants, more lie-a-bed than these early heralds of colour, were pushing .up strong tufts of green in the borders, and against the wide porch of the house a tree of japonica stained the white wall red.

But pleasanter to Pippin's eyes than these gathered signs of the happy spring was the house-door open, and, framed in the doorway, the figure of a girl looking across the flowers and the grass and the brook to the white road along which he was coming.

This was his cousin Alison, whose grandfather had been cousin to his own, — ^Alison, whom he loved, not as a man loves his mistress, but as he loves the sister with whom he has laughed and played in his childhood, with perhaps a little love of another quality added, because they have not quarrelled so often.

She loved him too, whether as a brother or not she kept to herself, for women do not tell those things until they are asked. At any rate there was no more than sisterly regard in her kind brown eyes and on the full red lips of her mouth as she came down the brick path between the flower beds and through the gate to meet him.

She came down the grassy slope to the little bridge. The wind sliding down the hill caught the skirts of her dress and blew them about her straight young limbs. And it made tiny pennants of the looser locks that crowned her broad brow. A splendid type of budding womanhood she was as she leant against the slant of the wind, not caring for it at all. The flesh on her face was firm, and her soft skin seemed to glow with the warmth of sunlight. She had been bred in the sun and the wind ; she was clean and sweet and supple ; a girl to delight any man's eyes, even the eyes of a brother.

Pippin came on to the bridge to meet her, and they stood together leaning against the rail, in full view of the windows of the house. They had nothing to hide, neither lover's shame nor lover's sweetness.

"Alison !" cried Pippin. "I am so glad. Why are you up so early? Did you get up to say good-bye to me?"

She might have said that that was the last thing in her mind; that she had risen early for her own purposes, and had chanced to see him coming. Many girls would have said that. But it would not have been true, and Alison was very frank and truthful.

"I thought," she said, "that if you went away this morning you would go very early and by this road. So I sat at my window, and when I saw you at the top of the hill over there, I dressed and waited for you."

"That was like you, Alison," he said. "Of course I should come by this road — the road to the town — for I must get to know men and women. And I should start at dawn, so as not to lose a moment of my first day. You always understand."

She looked at him squarely, her eyes limpid and searching. "Do they understand?" she asked.

"My father does. He told me to go. He knows that every man must follow his desire, whether it keeps him at home or drives him out into the world."

"Yes ; a man must follow his desire, but a woman must sit still and wait till hers comes to her."

"Why, Alison, how wise you have grown in a night! You did not talk like that when I told you of my plans only yesterday."

"Little shreds of wisdom often come to one in the night. Pippin. I suppose your mother took it hardly."

Pippin's honest face clouded, and he looked down at the running water. "Yes, she did," he said. "She is growing old — I never thought of it till yesterday — and she wants to keep me at her apron strings."

"TiU the time comes when she wears none. It is the way of mothers. You must not think too much of it. Pippin. You will have a merry time, in spite of your mother's tears."

He looked at her doubtfully. "You mean that I ought not to go," he said.

She looked away from him, with a flush on her cheek. "Oh, I don't know what I mean," she said. "If you must go, you must. It is not for me to blame you. But a man's 'must' often brings grief to a woman. Their ways are not the same."

His gaze rested on her, still doubtful. She met it, and her mood changed, April-wise. "That is all, dear Pippin," she said, smiling at him, though her eyes were a little moist. "I came out to wish you good luck and the best of journeys. I don't feel bitter about your going — not at all. You will come back and find us all just the same. And oh, how glad we shall be to see you !"

"I don't know that I ought to go after aU," he said.

She gave a little clear laugh. "Of course you must go," she said. "I will not keep you a moment longer. See all that you can. Be kind to old people and poor people, and women and children ; but I know you will be that. It is what you do for others that will teach you things, not what you do for yourself. There! That is another little piece of wisdom that came to me in the night. Take it with you. Pippin. It is the parting gift of your friend Alison."

Her eyes were more than a little moist now, and his were soft as he looked into her brave clear face. "I will remember that, dear Alison," he said gravely. "I need not go just yet," he added, as she held out her hands to him again with a gesture of farewell.

PIPPIN OFF TO SEE THE WORLD IS

"Yes, go now," she said. "When you have something in front of you, don't linger. But tell me one thing. Was it only because this road leads to the town that you came by it this morning?"

"That was the reason," he said stupidly, "The other leads to the sea."

"Well, good-bye. Pippin," she said, with a little sigh, "and don't forget the people of your little world when you find the big one. We shall always be thinking of you."

So a second time he was bidden to fulfil his purpose, and at once. He went ofF long along the chalky road into the eye of the sun. Three times he turned back to look at her standing on the bridrc with hand-shaded eyes. When he had topped the hill and waved her a last farewell, she turned too, and went up the grassy slope, through the little white gate, and along the brick path between the flower-beds into the house.

Chapter II Pippin Meets The Shephekds And Goes To Breakfast

On these rolling downs innumerable sheep were feeding. It was now the heart of the lambing season. The winds had been teen, but there had been little rain, and ewes and lambs alike were strong and healthy. Pippin's practised eye marled them with pleasure as they moved over the short grass in pairs, the big mothers with their load of fleece, and the little, white, long-legged lambs with their innocent faces, never far away from the source of their life.

The ewes would stand to look at him as he passed by on the road, bleating a warning message to their lambs if they should be more than a yard or two away; and the lambs would look up at him too, with more confidence, and, it really seemed, with some curiosity.

What was this tall creature with no wool on its body, moving along on that hard place where there was no grass, and never turning aside to crop any? No lamb, certainly, and if a grown sheep then a very poor sort of one, with none of the habits or qualities which made of a sheep the chief being in the universe. Useful, perhaps, if a lamb should find itself lying on its back in a deep rut and unable to move. Then a mother could do nothing but bleat, not even give a prod of the nose to help; but one of these rather suspicious-looking creatures would come along — they were always about with their long