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Jack-Knife Man

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<h2> XVII. FUNNY CATS </h2> PETER avoided the main street, for he was aware he was a curious sight in his blanket serape, and it was too comfortable to throw away, and, in addition, would be his only bed clothing when he reached his boat. He hurried along Oak Street as less frequented than the main street, for he had almost the entire length of the town to pass through. As it was growing late he was anxious to strike the bluff road in time to catch a ride with some homeward-bound farmer. His bag of provisions was still at the farmer's on the hillside; the shanty-boat awaited him, and he must take up his life where it had been interrupted. For the present he was powerless to aid either Susie or Buddy. Peter had a long walk before him if he did not catch a ride, and he started briskly, but in front of the Baptist Church he paused. A bulletin board stood before the door calling attention to a sale to be held in the Sunday-school room, and the heading of the announcement caught his eye. “All For The Children,” it said. It seemed that there were poor children in the town—children with insufficient clothes, children with no shoes, children without underwear, and a sale was to be held for them; candy, cakes, fancy work, toys and all the usual Christmas-time church sale articles were enumerated. Peter read the bulletin, and passed on. He was successful in catching a ride, and found his sack of provisions at the farmer's and carried it to the boat on his back. The boat was as he had left it, and little damage had been done during his absence. The river had fallen and his temporary mooring rope—too taut to permit the strain—had snapped, but the shanty-boat had grounded and was safe locked in the ice until spring. Inside the cabin not a thing had been touched. The shavings still lay on the floor where they had fallen while he was making Buddy's last toy, and the toys themselves were under the bunk just as he had left them. Peter felt a pang of loneliness as he gathered them up and placed them on his table with the new stockings and the A. B. C. blocks. He put the new “Bibel” on the clock-shelf. The toys made quite an array, and Peter looked at them one by one, thinking of the child. There were more than a dozen of them—all sorts of animals—and they still bore the marks of Buddy's fingers. It was quite dark by the time Peter had stowed away his provisions, and he lighted the lamp, with a newly formed resolution in his mind. He dropped the A. B. C. blocks into the depths of his gunny-sack and, looking at each for the last time, let the crudely carved animals follow, one by one. He held the funny cat in his hand quite a while, hesitatingly, and then set it on the clock-shelf beside the Bible, but almost immediately he took it down again and dropped it among its fellows in the sack. The Bible, too, he took from the shelf and put in the sack, and, last of all, he added the few bits of clothing Buddy had left in his flight. He tied the neck of the sack firmly with seine twine and set it under the table. All his mementos of Buddy were in that sack, and Peter, with a sigh, chose a clean piece of maple wood, seated himself on the edge of the bunk, and began whittling a kitchen spoon. Once more he was alone; once more he was a hermit; once more he was a mere jack-knife man, and Buddy was but a memory. Peter tried to put even the memory out of his mind, but that was not as easy as putting toys in a gunny-sack. If he tried to think of painting the boat, he had to think of George Rapp, and then he could think of nothing but the hasty parting in Rapp's barn and how the soft kinks of Buddy's hair snuggled under the rough blanket hood. If he tried to think of wooden spoons he thought of funny cats. And if he tried to think of nothing he caught Booge's nonsense rhymes running through his head and saw Buddy clinging eagerly to Booge's knee and begging, “Sing it again, Booge, sing it again.” “Thunder!” he exclaimed at last, “I wisht I had that clock to take apart.” He put the unfinished spoon aside and, choosing another piece of maple wood, began whittling a funny cat, singing, “Go tell the little baby, the baby, the baby,” as he worked. It was late when his eyelids drooped and he wrapped himself in his blanket. Three more cats had been added to the animals in the gunny-sack. “Some little kid like Buddy'll like them,” he thought with satisfaction, and dropped asleep. Early the next morning he tramped across the “bottom” to the farmer's. “You said you was going to town to-day,” Peter said, “and I thought maybe you'd leave this sack at the Baptist Church for me, if it ain't too much out of your way. It's some old truck I won't have any use for, and I took notice they were having a sale there today. You don't need to say anything. Just hand it in.” Before the farmer could ask him in to have breakfast Peter had disappeared toward the wood-yard, and when, later, he started for town he could hear Peter's saw. At the Baptist Church the farmer left the sack. A dozen or more women were busily arranging for the sale, and one of them took the sack, holding it well out from her skirt. “For our sale? How nice!” she cried in the excited tone women acquire when a number of them are working together in a church. “Who are we to thank for it?” “Oh, I guess there ain't no thanks necessary,” said the farmer. “I guess you won't find it much. I just brought it along because I promised I would. It's from a shanty-boatman down my way—Lane 's his name—Peter Lane.” “Oh,” said the woman, her voice losing much of its enthusiasm. “Yes, I know who he is. He's the jack-knife man. Tell him Mrs. Vandyne thanks him; it is very kind of him to think of us.” “All right! Gedap!” Mrs. Vandyne carried the sack into the Sunday school room and snipped the twine with her scissors, which hung from her belt on a pink ribbon. She was a charming little woman, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, and she was the more excited this afternoon because she had been able to bring her friend and visitor, Mrs. Montgomery, and Mrs. Montgomery was making a real impression. Mrs. Montgomery was from New York, and just how wealthy and socially important she was at home every one knew, and yet she mingled with the ladies quite as if she was one of them. And not only that, but she had ideas. Her manner of arranging the apron table, as she had once arranged one for the Actors' Fair, was enough to show she was no common person. Already her ideas had quite changed the old cut and dried arrangements. At her request ladies were constantly running out to buy rolls of crêpe paper and other inexpensive decorative accessories, and the dull gray room was blossoming into a fairy garden. “And when you come to-night, I want each of you to wear a huge bow of crêpe paper on your hair, and—what have you there, Jane?” Mrs. Montgomery, although beyond her fortieth year, had the fresh and youthfully bright face of a girl of eighteen. She was one of those splendidly large women who retain a vivid interest in life and all its details, and Mrs. Vandyne, who was smaller and lesser in every way, was her Riverbank counterpart. “Nothing much,” Mrs. Vandyne answered, dipping her hand into the sack. “But it was kind of the man to send what he could. Wooden spoons, I suppose. Well, will you look at this, Anna?” It was one of the “funny cats.” Mrs. Vandyne held it up, that all the ladies might see. “How perfectly ridiculous!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilcox. “What do you suppose it was meant to be? Do you suppose it is a bear?” “Or an otter, or something?” asked Mrs. Ferguson. “Oh, I know! It's a squirrel. Did you ever see anything so—so ridiculous!” The ladies, all except Mrs. Montgomery, laughed gleefully at the funny cat Buddy had hugged and loved. “We might get a dime for it, anyway, Alice,” said one. “Are there any more? They will help fill the toy table. Do you think they would spoil the toy table, Mrs. Montgomery?” The New Yorker had taken the cat in her hand, and Mrs. Vandyne was standing one after another of Peter's toys on the table. “Spoil it!” exclaimed Mrs. Montgomery enthusiastically. “I have not seen anything so naïve since I was in Russia. It is like the Russian peasant toys, but different, too. It has a character of its own. Oh, how charming!” She had seized another of the funny animals. “But what is it?” asked Mrs. Wilcox. “Mercy! I don't know what it is,” laughed Mrs. Montgomery. “What does that matter? You can call it a cat—it looks something like a cat—yes! I'm sure it is a cat. Or a squirrel. That doesn't matter. Can't you see that no one but a master impressionist could have done them? Just see how he has done it all with a dozen quick turns of his—his—” “Jack-knife,” Mrs. Vandyne supplied. “Do you think they are worth anything, Alice?” “Worth anything?” exclaimed Mrs. Montgomery. “My dear, they are worth anything you want to ask for them. Really, they are little masterpieces. Can't you see how refreshing they are, after all the painted and prim toys we see in the shops? Just look at this funny frog, or whatever it is.” The ladies all laughed. “You see,” said Mrs. Montgomery, “you can't help laughing at it. The man that made it has humor, and he has art and—and untrammeled vision, and really the most wonderful technique.” Peter Lane and the technique of a jack-knife! The ladies of the Baptist Aid Society were too surprised to gasp. The enthusiasm of Mrs. Montgomery took their breath away, and Mrs. Montgomery was not loth to speak still more, with a discoverer's natural pride in her discovery. She examined one toy after another, and her enthusiasm grew, and infected the other women. They, too, began to see the charm of Peter's handiwork and to glimpse what Mrs. Montgomery had seen clearly: that the toys were the result of a frank, humorous, boyish imagination combined with a man's masterly sureness of touch. Here was no jig-saw, paper-patterned, conventional German or French slopshop toy, daubed over with ill-smelling paint. She tried to tell the ladies this, and being in New York the president of several important art and literary and musical societies, she succeeded. “We must ask twenty-five cents apiece for them,” said Mrs. Ferguson. “Oh! twenty-five cents! A dollar at least,” said Mrs. Montgomery. “The work of an artist. Don't you see it is not the intrinsic value but the art the people will pay for?” “But do you think Riverbank will pay a dollar for art?” asked Mrs. Vandyne. Mrs. Montgomery glanced over the toys. “I will pay a dollar apiece for all of them, and be glad to get them,” she said. “I feel—I feel as if this alone made my trip to Riverbank worth while. You have no idea what it will mean to go home and take with me anything so new and unconventional. I shall be famous, I assure you, as the discoverer of—” “His name is Peter Lane,” said Mrs. Vandyne. “He is one of the shanty-boatmen that live on the river. A little, mildly-blue-eyed man; a sort of hermit. They call him the Jack-knife Man, because he whittles wooden spoons and peddles them.” “Oh, he will be a success!” cried Mrs. Montgomery. “Even his name is delicious. Peter Lane! Isn't it old-fashioned and charming? Peter Lane, the Jack-knife Man! How many of these toys may I have, Anna?” “I want one!” said Mrs. Wilcox promptly, and before the ladies were through, Mrs. Montgomery had to insist that she be permitted to claim two of the toys by her right as discoverer. Later, as they went homeward for supper, Mrs. Vandyne gave a happy little laugh. “That was splendid, Alice,” she said. “To think you were able to make them pay a dollar apiece for those awful toys!” “Awful!” exclaimed Mrs. Montgomery. “My dear, I meant every word I said. You will see! Your Peter Lane is going to make me famous yet!” That evening, while Peter sat in his shanty-boat, lonely and thinking of Buddy as he whittled a spoon, Mrs. Montgomery stood, tall and imposing and sweet-faced, behind the toy table on which all of Buddy's toys stood with “Sold” tags strung on them, and told about Peter Lane, the Jack-knife Man. “I'm very sorry,” she said time after time, “but they are all sold. We do not know yet whether we can persuade the Jack-knife Man to make duplicates, but we will take your order subject to his whim, if you wish. We cannot promise anything definite. Artists are so notably irresponsible.” But there was one voice which, had Peter been able to hear it, would have set him making jack-knife toys on the instant. While the ladies of the Baptist Church were exclaiming over the toys in the Sunday school room a small boy with freckles and white, kinky hair, was leaning on the knee of a harsh-faced woman in a white farm house three miles up the river-road. “Auntie Potter,” he said longingly, “I wish Uncle Peter would come and make me a funny cat.” “If he don't,” said Mrs. Potter with great vigor, “he's a wuthless scamp.” <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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