CHAPTER VIPEPSIE
Everyone about that part of Good Children Street knew Pepsie. She had been a cripple from infancy, and her mother, Madelon, or “Bonnie Praline,” as she was called, was also quite a noted figure in the neighborhood. They lived in a tiny, single cottage, wedged in between the pharmacist, on the corner, and M. Fernandez, the tobacconist, on the other side. There was a narrow green door, and one long window, with an ornamental iron railing across it, through which the interior of the little room was visible from the outside. It was a very neat little place, and less ugly than one would expect it to be. A huge four-post bed, with red tester and lace-covered pillows, almost filled one side of the room; opposite the bed a small fireplace was hung with pink paper, and the mantel over it was decorated with a clock, two vases of bright paper flowers, a blue bottle, and a green plaster parrot; asmallarmoire, a table above which hung a crucifix and a highly colored lithograph of the Bleeding Heart, and a few chairs completed the furniture of the quaint little interior; while the floor, the doorsteps, and even the sidewalk were painted red with powdered brick-dust, which harmonized very well with the faded yellow stucco of the walls and the dingy green of the door and batten shutter.
Behind this one little front room was a tiny kitchen and yard, where Madelon made her pralines and cakes, and where Tite Souris, a half-grown darky, instead of a “little mouse,” washed, cooked, and scrubbed, and “waited on Miss Peps” during Madelon’s absence; for Madelon was a merchant. She had a stand for cakes and pralines upon Bourbon Street, near the French Opera House, and thither she went every morning, with her basket and pans of fresh pralines, sugared pecans, and calas tout chaud, a very tempting array of dainties, which she was sure to dispose of before she returned at night; while Pepsie, her only child, and the treasure of her life, remained at home, sitting in her high chair by the window, behind the iron railing.
And Pepsie sitting at her window was as much a part of the street as were the queer little houses, thetiny shops, the old vegetable woman, the cobbler on thebanquette, the wine merchant, or the grocer. Every one knew her: her long, sallow face with flashing dark eyes, wide mouth with large white teeth, which were always visible in a broad smile, and the shock of heavy black hair twisted into a quaint knot on top of her head, which was abnormally large, and set close to the narrow, distorted shoulders, were always visible, “from early morn till dewy eve,” at the window; while her body below the shoulders was quite hidden by a high table drawn forward over her lap. On this table Pepsie shelled the pecans, placing them in three separate piles, the perfect halves in one pile, those broken by accident in another, and those slightly shriveled, and a little rancid, in still another. The first were used to make the sugared pecans for which Madelon was justly famous; the second to manufacture into pralines, so good that they had given her the sobriquet of “Bonne Praline”; and the third pile, which she disdained to use in her business, nothing imperfect ever entering into her concoctions, were swept into a box, and disposed of to merchants who had less principle and less patronage.
All day long Pepsie sat her window, wielding herlittle iron nutcracker with much dexterity. While the beautiful clean halves fell nearly always unbroken on their especial pile, she saw everything that went on in the street, her bright eyes flashed glances of recognition up and down, her broad smile greeted in cordial welcome those who stopped at her window to chat, and there was nearly always some one at Pepsie’s window. She was so happy, so bright, and so amiable that every one loved her, and she was the idol of all the children in the neighborhood—not, however, because she was liberal with pecans. Oh, no; with Pepsie, business was business, and pecans cost money, and every ten sugared pecans meant a nickel for her mother; but they loved to stand around the window, outside the iron railing, and watch Pepsie at her work. They liked to see her with her pile of nuts and bowl of foaming sugar before her. It seemed like magic, the way she would sugar them, and stick them together, and spread them out to dry on the clean white paper. She did it so rapidly that her long white fingers fairly flashed between the bowl of sugar, the pile of nuts, and the paper. And there always seemed just enough of each, therefore her just discrimination was a constant wonder.
When she finished her task, as she often did before dark, Tite Souris took away the bowl and the tray of sugared nuts, after Pepsie had counted them and put the number down in a little book, as much to protect herself against Tite Souris’s depredations as to know the exact amount of their stock in trade; then she would open the little drawer in the table, and take out a prayer-book, a piece of needlework, and a pack of cards.
She was very pious, and read her prayers several times a day; after she put her prayer-book aside she usually devoted some time to her needlework, for which she had real talent; then, when she thought she had earned her recreation, she put away her work, spread out her cards, and indulged in an intricate game of solitaire. This was her passion; she was very systematic, and very conscientious; but if she ever purloined any time from her duties, it was that she might engage in that fascinating game. She decided everything by it; whatever she wished to know, two games out of three would give her the answer, for or against.
Sometimes she looked like a little witch during a wicked incantation, as she hovered over the rows of cards, her face dark and brooding, her long, thinfingers darting here and there, silent, absorbed, almost breathless under the fatal spell of chance.
In this way she passed day after day, always industrious, always contented, and always happy. She was very comfortable in her snug little room, which was warm in winter and cool in summer, owing to the two high buildings adjoining; and although she was a cripple, and her lower limbs useless, she suffered little pain, unless she was moved roughly, or jarred in some way; and no one could be more carefully protected from discomfort than she was, for although she was over twelve, Madelon still treated her as if she were a baby. Every morning, before she left for the Rue Bourbon, she bathed and dressed the girl, and lifted her tenderly, with her strong arms, into her wheeled chair, where she drank her coffee, and ate her roll, as dainty as a little princess, for she was always exquisitely clean. In the summer she wore pretty little white sacks, with a bright bow of ribbon at the neck, and in winter her shrunken figure was clothed in warm, soft woolen.
Madelon did not sit out all day in rain and shine on Bourbon Street, and make cakes and pralines half the night, for anything else but to provide this crippled mite with every comfort. As I said before, thegirl was her idol, and she had toiled day and night to gratify her every wish; and, as far as she knew, there was but one desire unsatisfied, and for the accomplishment of that she was working and saving little by little.
Once Pepsie had said that she would like to live in the country. All she knew of the country was what she had read in books, and what her mother, who had once seen the country, had told her. Often she closed her eyes to shut out the hot, narrow street, and thought of green valleys, with rivers running through them, and hills almost touching the sky, and broad fields shaded by great trees, and covered with waving grass and flowers. That was her one unrealized ideal,—her “Carcassonne,” which she feared she was never to reach, except in imagination.