by Nell Speed
CHAPTER XVI
TOM TIT
"I'm dying to know who he is and what he is," whispered Lil to Lucy, asthey tidied themselves up a bit in the neat little room to which thegray-bearded host had shown them.
"So'm I! Did you ever see such a cute little room? It looks like astateroom on the steamboat. Do you reckon we will sleep in here?"
It was a tiny little room with one great window. Two bunks were built inthe wall opposite the window, one over the other. A little mirror hungover a shelf whereon the girls found a white celluloid comb and brush,spotlessly clean--indeed, the whole room was so clean that one doubtedits ever having been occupied. The floor was scrubbed until Lucy saidit reminded her of a well-kept kitchen table. A rag rug was the onlydecoration the room boasted and that was a beautiful thing of brillianthue. The walls were whitewashed, also the doors, of which there weretwo, one opening into the main room and the other one, the girlsfancied, into a cupboard.
"Ain't it grand we got lost?" from Lil, as she made a vain endeavor tosee her sunburned nose in the mirror that was hung so high she was sureMr. Spring-keeper had never had a female visitor before, or if he had,it had been a giantess.
"Hurry up! Your nose is all right.--Maybe we can help him some, and I'mjust dying to hear the story of his life. Do you reckon he will tell usall about himself and poor Tom Tit without our pumping him? I believe heis a king or something."
Whether the old gentleman were a king or not, he could certainly cooka supper to a king's taste. Skeeter's nostrils were quivering withanticipatory enjoyment as the lost ones took their seats around themassive table in the comfortable living room.
"It looks like a room I saw at the movies last spring," Frank had saidto Skeeter, as they waited for the girls to finish dolling up. "Thatone had a stone fireplace and furniture that looked just like this,great big tables and chairs that must have been made out of solid oakor walnut or something. The hero had fashioned them himself with ajack-knife, I believe. The mantelpiece was high just like this one,but there were skins spread on the floor instead of these rag rugs."
"It is a bully room, and, gee, what a good smell of eats."
The supper was a simple one, consisting of corn pone and buttermilk,bacon and scrambled eggs.
"I am giving you exactly what Tom Tit and I were to have. I only tripledthe quantity," said their host, as they drew up the chairs to the greattable.
"Then we aren't so very much trouble?" asked Lil.
"Trouble! Why, my dear young lady, Tom Tit and I would not live on thisthoroughfare if we did not love visitors."
"Thoroughfare!" gasped Lucy. Maybe the old gentleman was daffy.
"Why, certainly! You don't know how many things happen in the mountains.Someone is always turning up. Eh, Tom Tit?"
"Yes, indeed! We uns finds something every day. One time it was a babyfox and one time it was a man in ugly striped pants."
"He means our convict. It was a poor fellow who had escaped from a roadgang and took refuge in the mountains and Tom Tit found him almoststarved to death. We fed him up until he could go back to work."
"You didn't give him up!" asked Frank, his eyes flashing.
"Oh, no; he gave himself up. I got him to tell me just exactly why hewas put in the penitentiary, and since his crime surely warranted somepunishment, I made him understand that the best thing for him to do wasgo back to his road making and expiate his crime. That was much betterthan being hounded for the rest of his time. What do you think aboutit?"
"Y-e-s, you are right, but I'm glad you didn't give him up."
"Tom Tit and I go see him every now and then. Tom Tit feels sorry forhim because his trousers are so ugly. He likes to work and wouldn't mindroad-building a bit."
"When we uns digs, we uns finds so many things, but we uns couldn't wearsuch ugly pants. Sometime we uns is a-goin' to make the poor sick mansome pretty pink ones like these," and he stood up to show his brightpink trousers. They were strangely fashioned, looking rather likeTurkish trousers.
"Was the man sick?" asked Lucy, devoutly praying that a fit of thegiggles would not choke her.
"You see, Tom Tit and I think that when persons are what the world andthe law calls bad, they are really sick. Sometimes they are too sick tobe cured, but not often. It is the fault of the doctors and the systemand not theirs when they are not cured."
"Do you live here all the time?" asked Lil. She was dying of curiosityabout the strange pair who were so ill assorted and still so intimate.
"Tom Tit does, but I have to go away for a time every fall and winterand Tom Tit keeps house for me while I am gone. He is a famoushousekeeper."
"Do you get lonesome all by yourself?" asked Lucy.
"We uns ain't never alone. There's the baby fox and the cow and thechickens, and every day we uns tries to find something and then we unshas to write it down for the spring-keeper 'ginst he comes home. Everyday we uns has to go to the post office for the letter, too, and thattakes time. The days in winter are so short."
"Oh, do you get a letter every day? How jolly! My mother doesn't writeto me but once a week," said Lil, "--although of course she 'phones mein the meantime and sends me candy and things."
"We uns never does git letters from maw," and poor Tom Tit's eyesclouded sadly. "Ever since the men came and found her and hid her inthat hole she ain't writ a line to poor Tom Tit."
"But you write to her every time you write to me, don't you, Tom Tit?"and the old gentleman put a calming and kindly hand on the shoulder ofthe trembling youth. It seemed that at every mention of mothers thethought of his own mother came back to him and the agony he went throughwith at the time of her death seized hold of him. The young peoplelearned later from their host, while Tom Tit was washing the supperdishes, all about the poor boy's history.
"Tom Tit's mother was a very fine woman of an intelligence and characterthat was remarkable even in these mountains where intelligence andcharacter are the rule rather than the exception. She had no education,but the things she could accomplish without education were enough tomake the ones who have been educated blush to think how little they dowith it. She had evolved a philosophy of her own of such goodness andserenity that to know her and talk with her was a privilege. She seemedto me to be like these mountains, where she was born and where shedied. She had had trouble enough to break the spirit of any ordinarymortal, but she said her spirit was eternal and could not be broken.
"Her husband was a very desperate character. Convicted of illicitdistilling, he was sentenced to serve a term in the penitentiary, but hemanaged to escape and for one whole year he evaded the sheriff, hidingin the mountains. Of course his wife had to go through the agony of thislong search. She told me she had never slept more than an hour at a timewhile her husband was in hiding. That was the one thing she was bitterover--that long hounding of her husband. She used to say if thegovernment had spent the money and energy in educating the mountaineersthat they had in hunting for them, there would have been no cause forhunting for them. Moonshining is to them a perfectly reasonable andlawful industry, and nothing but education can make them see itdifferently. His hiding place was finally ferreted out and he wassurrounded and captured, but not before he had managed to shoot fivemen, killing two of them and being fatally wounded himself.
"That was many years ago when Tom Tit was a little chap of three.Melissa, the mother, was wrapped up in the child. His intelligence thenwas keen and his love of Nature and beautiful things was so pronouncedfrom the beginning that if this cloud had not come over his intellect hewould surely have been a great artist of some kind, whether poet,painter or musician, I can't say."
"Perhaps all of them, like Leonardo da Vinci!" exclaimed Lil, who alwaysdid know things.
The old gentleman smiled at her appreciatively.
"What is an artist but a person who finds things, just like my poor TomTit, and then is able to tell to the world what he has found?"
"When he writes to you, does he tell you things in poetical language?
"asked Lucy, her gray eyes very teary as she listened to the story of themountain youth.
"My dear, his writing is not ordinary writing. He can neither read norwrite as you think of it. His letters to me are written in another way.He tells me what he has found each day with some kind of rude drawing orwith some device of his own."
"Please show us some of them!" begged all four of the guests.
"I am going to let you guess what he meant." He took from his desk inthe corner a packet of large envelopes. "I leave with my friend enoughaddressed and stamped envelopes to run him until I return, and all hehas to do is put in his letter and seal it and drop it in the box atBear Hollow, our post office. Sometimes he draws me a picture andsometimes he just sends me something he has found. What do you thinkhe intended to convey by this?"
On a sheet of paper were drawn many stars of various kinds and sizes,and down in the corner was what was certainly meant for an axe.
"Clear night and going coon hunting, I think," said Skeeter solemnly.
"No!" cried Lucy and Lil in a breath. "Those are meant for snow flakes!It has begun to snow!"
"Right you are! Good girls, go up head! And how about the axe, since itis not meant to signify coon hunting?"
"It is going to be cold," suggested the practical Frank, "and he must goto work and lay in wood before the snow gets deep."
"Fine! I am glad to see there are others who can interpret my poor TomTit's letters. Now this is the one I received the next day."
It was evidently meant for a deep snow. The roof of a house and a fewbare branches were shown but from the chimney a column of smoke ascendedand in that smoke was plainly drawn a grin: a mouth with teeth.
"Snowed under!" cried Skeeter.
"But he got his wood cut and is now sitting by the fire quite happy,even grinning," declared Lucy.
"Right again! Now comes a piece of holly and a pressed violet. Thatmeans that he finds a little belated violet in our flower beds in spiteof the fact that the holly is king at this season. Sometimes he has somuch to tell me that he must make many pictures. Here he found a sunsetand it was so beautiful that he had to paint it with his coloredcrayons. This is where he fed the birds during the deep snow. He has atrough where he puts grain and seeds and crumbs for his winged friends.This is a picture of the trough and see the flocks of birds he has triedto draw to show how many are fed in his trough. This means a strangerhas come in on him!" It was a picture of a hat and staff and down oneside of the page were many drops of water, at least that was what theinterested audience thought they were. At the top was an eye.
"Oh, I know!" exclaimed Lil. "If a hat and staff mean a stranger, thosedrops of water must mean rain."
"The eye looks like a Mormon sign," suggested Skeeter.
"I bet it means this," said Lil, studying the page intently. "It meansthe stranger is old, or he would not have a staff, and it means he isunhappy. Those drops are tear drops. See how sad the eye looks!"
"'Oh, a Daniel come to judgment!' Young lady, you are right. That was atired, sick traveler that our Tom Tit found and brought in and lookedafter for two weeks last winter. He was trying to cross the mountainsand got lost and Tom Tit picked him up, almost starved and frozen. Inthis one, he shows the sick guest is still with him and in bed. Hecannot draw faces well and hates to make anything too grotesque, so heusually has a sign or symbol for persons. The staff and hat in bed meanthe guest is there. These little saddle-bags and hat mean he had to sendfor the doctor. Look at the medicine the poor staff and hat must takefrom the cruel saddle-bags! His own symbol is usually a jew's-harp,although sometimes he makes himself a kind of butterfly----"
"Just like Whistler!" cried Lil.
"Yes, and in his way he is as great an artist as Whistler," said theold man sadly. "If he had only had his chance! Well, well! Maybe heis happier as he is. I never saw a happier person, as a rule, than mypoor boy. Tom Tit could never have written letters that would havebeen put in a book and called 'The Gentle Art of Making Enemies,' asthat other great artist did. He makes friends with every living thing,and inanimate objects are friendly to him, too, I sometimes think. Ifhis wits had been spared him, the world would have called him and thepeace of the mountains would no longer have been his."
The old man fingered the packet of letters tenderly while the youngguests sat thoughtfully by. They could hear the cheerful Tom Tit inthe kitchen washing dishes and whistling a strange crooning melody.
"Here it is spring and he has found the first hepatica. See, he sends mea pressed one! And this is my love letter. What do you make of it?"
It was six little stamped envelopes, all with wings, and in the cornerwas a jew's-harp unmistakably dancing a jig.
"I know! I know!" cried Lucy.
"So do I!" from Lil.
"I can't see any kind of sense in it!" pondered Frank.
"Nor I," grumbled Skeeter. "You girls just make up answers."
"I'm going to whisper my answer to Mr. Spring-keeper," suggested Lil.
The old man smiled as Lil whispered her answer.
"Good! Splendid! And now what do you think?" turning to Lucy.
"I think that he has only six envelopes left, and that means you will beback in six days. He is so happy he is dancing and he is so busy thedays are just flying away."
"Well, if you girls aren't clever! No wonder they say women are the mostappreciative sex although men are the creative. A few men create whileall women appreciate. And now, my dear young people, this is so pleasantfor me that I am afraid of being selfish, so I am going to insist onyour going to bed. You have had a hard day and must be tired."
"We have had a wonderful day with a wonderful en----" said Lil, a yawnhitting her midway so she could not get out the "ding."
"But I hate to go to bed until you tell us something about yourself,"blurted out Skeeter.
The story of the half-witted young mountaineer was very interesting, nodoubt, but Skeeter wanted to know why this highly educated gentleman wasspending so much time in the mountains, cooking for himself and takingcare of lost sheep.
"Oh, my story is such an ordinary one I can tell it while I light acandle for these young ladies," laughed their host, not at all angryat Skeeter's curiosity, although Lil and Lucy were half dead ofembarrassment when Skeeter came out so flat-footed with the questionwhich was almost bubbling over on their lips, but which they felt theymust not put.
"I am a successful manufacturer---- I have made enough money sellingclothes pins and ironing boards and butter tubs to stop. In fact, Istopped many years ago and now I do nothing but enjoy myself in my ownway."
"And that way is----?"
"Trying to help a little. In the winter I live in New York and teach theboys' clubs on the East Side, and in the summer I am spring-keeper inthe mountains."
"But isn't your name Mr. Spring-keeper?" asked Lil.
"No, my dear, spring-keeping is my occupation. My name is Walter McRae.Here is your candle, and pleasant dreams."
"Won't you tell us some more about yourself?" asked Lucy as she took thecandle from him.
"Another time! Anything so dry as my story will keep."
