_very_ wrong. The nights are so long, and when I tried to sleep my
eyes wouldn't shut; for I kept thinking of him (indicating reverently
the corpse), and of the other, too. Peter says _he's_ crazy, and awful
wicked, and down there in the dungeon with the rats, an' all in irons!
And when I thought of it, I got wider and wider awake, and then I came
to father. When he was alive (apologetically), of course, he didn't
care to have me around, and so I stayed mostly with Uncle Tim and
Peter, and the others; but I thought he might be glad, up in heaven,
if he saw me staying with him _now_ when he is all alone."
"It was not at all wrong, dear child," says Miss Paulina; "but come
away with _me_ now. I am your father's cousin, my child, your Aunt
Paulina. You shall try _my_ bed to-night, and see if you cannot sleep
_there_."
Permitting the child a last good-night kiss, Miss Paulina re-covers
the dead face of Warden Flint, upon which the sharp agony of that
cruel exit from life yet lingers, and the two pass reverently from the
chamber.
Never, in all May-blossom's unmothered life, has there been a night
like this. The warm cuddling in tender arms, two fairy tales, the
tucking up in bed, and, last of all, the singing of a Scotch ballad,
sweet as April rain, upon whose soothing rhythm the weary little soul
floats awhile in semi-consciousness, and, at last, falls deliciously
into the soft arms of sleep.
* * * * *
We may be sure that all the veteran funeralgoers (those irrepressible
"mutes") were on evidence at the funeral of Warden Flint; that his
most sequestered virtues were brought to the front, and put on parade
for the occasion, and that the usual number in attendance pronounced
the remarks "excellent." After the service the coffin is borne
uncovered through the guard-room, and deposited in the prison yard.
The convicts filing thither, in reverent procession, are permitted a
last look at their warden. Hodges, the murderer, taken from his
rayless dungeon, and blinking dazedly at the light, is (after the
old-time experimental fashion) brought face to face with the corpse.
He neither weeps nor smiles. His face wears the blank expression of
utter imbecility. After much prodding from his attendants, he
recognizes the warden, and babbles, "O dear! have I killed him?" When
bidden to put his hand on the body, he recoils and shudders. He
exhibits no other emotion, and, clanking his irons, is led supinely
back to the "Lower Arch." The convicts retire in slow, orderly
procession, and the coffin is returned to more private quarters. The
lid is screwed down. Mrs. Jones, standing at the front window, counts
the carriages, and, as the body is being adjusted on its hearse, Mrs.
Miller, in a resonant whisper, asks Mrs. Brown, "How soon they expect
to get into the new house, and if she's weaned the baby?" Amid this
easy chit-chat, the mourning carriages fill, the procession starts.
After this, the Joneses, Millers, and Browns go their ways. The
funeral is over.
Warden Flint's successor, an oldish man with grown-up sons, promptly
appointed by the governor, arrived upon the scene directly upon the
heels of _his_ departure (death's widest gaps are soon filled!), and,
as there were none to say her nay, Miss Parker tacitly adopted his
homeless child, and made ready for _her_ departure. Miss Paulina
(admirable as she was) had her limitations. The convict, viewed
through the disparaging lens of her own immaculate spectacles, was not
an eligible associate, and the tender, all-round leave-taking,
permitted between her innocent charge and her attainted friends, was
an heroic stretch of good-will on the part of this excellent lady.
At last, it was all well over. May-blossom had given her farewell hug
to Peter Floome and "Uncle Tim," and her sweet eyes yet wet with
tears, and hanging, as to a last plank, upon the cage of a fluttering
yellow canary (the parting souvenir of the inconsolable turnkey), was
safely bestowed in the two P. M. train on her way to Saganock,--now no
longer a "prison child."
The general depression incident to the withdrawal of this sweet
familiar presence from the gray old prison was slightly relieved by
speculative interest in the new warden. It might reasonably be hoped
that this bran-new broom would sweep away _some_ time-honoured
abuses--such as the iron crown, the ball and chain, the lash, and the
parti-coloured prison attire. It was also inferred that he would
reduce the number of consignments to the "Lower Arch," since a
recently dungeoned culprit had gone stark mad in that unsavoury place,
and refusing, on the expiration of his term of detention, to vacate in
favour of an incoming tenant, had been, like some elusive rat,
actually smoked out of his hole![2] As to that forceful incentive to
propriety, the penal shower-bath, it was whispered that even the
commissioners themselves had become shaky in regard to its usefulness,
since the sad taking off of a prison warden had been the latest
result of that mode of disciplinary torture, a description of which is
here subjoined for the curious.
[2] A fact furnished by an aged officer who witnessed this unique
eviction.
The refractory wretch, his arms, legs, and neck confined in wooden
stocks, is seated, nude, in a small, dark closet. From three to four
barrels of water are placed above his head, at an elevation of six to
eight feet. Unable to change in the slightest degree his position, he
receives upon the top of his head, drop by drop, in sudden shower or
heavy douche (as may best suit the fancy of his tormentor), this
terrible bath. As a devilish after-thought of the inventor, a
trench-like collar is made to encircle the victim's neck; as the water
descends, this collar fills, and it is so contrived that at the least
movement of the sufferer's head the water shall flow into his mouth
and nostrils, until he is upon the verge of strangulation. By order of
the Board, the shower bath was, in 18--, set up in the State Prison.
Could that criminal institution have furnished an unlimited supply of
waterproof brains, it might have flourished there indefinitely; but
mad convicts are troublesome, nay, _sometimes_ dangerous, and
insanity behind the bars is, therefore, not to be wantonly induced.
Hodges, a provokingly incorrigible sinner, had been, time out of mind,
"under treatment." At the command of Warden Flint, he had (putting it
in Peter Floome's own forcible English) "ben showered out of his wits,
and into his wits, an' then showered right _over_ agin." In the
abnormal mental state induced by this prolonged torture, the wretched
creature had finally turned upon his tormentor. Discouraged by this
unlooked-for practical result of the shower-bath, the Board
subsequently ordered the discontinuance of its use in the prison; and
Hodges was the last subject of that infernal contrivance.
He was brought to trial for the murder of his keeper, and acquitted on
the ground of insanity; and finally made good his escape from this
troublous life, by a leap from an upper window of the State Insane
Hospital.
Hodges was an accomplished rogue, and a second comer to the prison,
and it is to be inferred that by the door of death "he went to his
place," leaving the world none the poorer by his withdrawal from it;
all the same, he is to be congratulated on his ultimate escape from
the penal water cure.
* * * * *
It is May-day; and high tide with the Saganock. It is a brimful
hurrying river, and, at this moment, fully verifies that distracting
old saw, "Time and tide stay for no man." And here, amid budding
lilacs and singing robins, some half head taller, and two good years
older than on the day when she bade a final adieu to the prison, is
May-blossom. On this sunny slope of the Parker lawn she is prospecting
for early violets. Her sweet face has grown thinner. Violet circles
underline her soft gray eyes. Her lips are as threads of scarlet wool,
and, listening, you may hear her cough--deep and hollow. Alas! It is a
sound to make the heart ache.
Soon wearied by her futile search, the child returns to her cosy
corner on "the stoop," and there, curled up beneath the soft warm
folds of an afghan, watches the westering sun, the fleecy clouds, and
the familiar river speeding on to the sea.
Meantime, at the north door, Dr. Abel Foster, the family "medicine
man," briskly alights from his buggy. Before his hand can touch the
knocker it is opened by Miss Paulina herself. "Good afternoon, my dear
lady; and so pussy is still ailing, is she?" cries the good doctor
(this with assumed nonchalance, slightly overdone).
"Yes, Doctor Foster," replies Miss Parker; "and will you kindly sound
her lungs to-day, and let me know the worst? One flinches indeed, but,
if it _must_ come--why, then--" an ominous quaver in the gentle voice;
and the doctor shrewdly interrupts:
"Bless you, madam! I'm in a terrible hurry! Twenty patients waiting
for me this minute! Let me see the little girl at once."
May-blossom is called in, her blue-veined wrist consigned to the
doctor's big feelers; her tongue submitted to a critical inspection;
and, after undergoing a prolonged professional thumping and
hearkening, she is soundly hugged and kissed, and, with a nod and a
smile, dismissed. After this, Doctor Foster and the lady of the
mansion are closeted awhile together. The buggy then passes down the
drive, and disappears on the long dusty road. Soon after, the south
door opens, and a face, pale and sad, but very calm, bends over the
child, who has again returned to her out-door seat. Very tenderly is
the warm afghan folded about the small, fragile form. The robins no
longer sing. The sun, half-obscured, is going down. The burying-ground
stands drearily out against the murky sky. The pines wail mournfully,
and the river--at ebbing tide--murmurs in sad refrain. Old Harmy,
moulding tea-biscuits at her kitchen window, imparts to Mandy Ann--who
is shaving the dried beef for tea--her belief that Miss Paulina "hes
gone clean crazy, settin' out-doors with that child, an' the dew a
fallin' this very minnit, like sixty!" Miss Paulina--recovering her
wits--hurries her darling in. The tea-table is already laid in the
south keeping-room, beside the wide fireplace, with its ancient crane,
and its Scriptural border of watery blue Dutch tiles; and, in the
cheerful apple-wood blaze, the two partake together of that now almost
obsolete meal--a substantial six o'clock tea. May-blossom is then
snugly settled among the cushions of a wide chintz lounge, and the
elder lady, in a low seat beside her, and holding lovingly her small
wasted hand,--as is her wont,--chats pleasantly with her darling, in
the soft, quiet gloaming. At nine, they pass, hand in hand, to Miss
Paulina's own chamber, where the child's cot has long been
established. May-blossom undressed, kissed, and blessed, creeps
drowsily between its warm blankets, and is soon sound asleep. Miss
Paulina, in her dressing-gown, broods over the dying fire, far into
the night. Alas! have not all her best beloved gone from her? Why
might not Heaven have spared to her this last--the one ewe lamb, so
tenderly carried in her arms, and warmed in her lonely bosom? Why not;
ah, _why_? She recalls the blessed comfort of two love-lightened
years; the daily lessons, when to teach this bright little creature
had been a mere pastime; their woodland fern and flower-gatherings,
their winter fireside cosiness, all the nameless homely delights of
love's dear fellowship--wayside flowers, that, scarce perceived,
blossom along life's trodden ways. And now it is all coming to an end!
Nothing will be left her but one small, grass-grown grave! As if there
were not already graves enough in her world!
May-blossom, though not a sickly child, had never been robust; and
when, at midwinter, she had taken the measles, this epidemic of
childhood had gone hard with her. She had convalesced but slowly; an
ugly cough had set in, and could not be routed; and now there were
hectic afternoons, debilitating night-sweats, succeeded by mornings of
lassitude; and, to-day, Doctor Foster had summed up his diagnosis in
one dreadful word--_consumption_!
"The child," explained the good doctor--tears blinding his kind old
eyes--"has grown up (as it were) in the cellar; delicate nervous
organization; too much brain; too little out-door life; and the
outcome of it all is simply this--with that cough, and that
constitution (God help us!) an angel from heaven couldn't save her!"
* * * * *
Summer is coming. The buttercups are here. May-blossom is better. She
sleeps well, coughs less, and her appetite is mending. Buoyed by
deceitful hope, Miss Paulina takes heart, and the train for Boston,
from whence,--crowned with the spoil of a half day's shopping,--she
is, at this very moment, returning. The carryall fairly groans under
its accumulated bundles; and the steel-clasped bag upon her arm is
plethoric, to the last degree. Hours have passed since she parted
from her darling. Hastily alighting, she hurries in. There is an
under-quaver of anxiety in her voice as she calls, "May! May, May,
dear!" Where _can_ the child be, that she has not run to
meet her! "May!" again, and louder--still no reply. Yet now a
never-to-be-mistaken voice comes cooingly from the kitchen. "Who _can_
the darling be fondling? (Harmy Patterson, though staunch and loving,
is not one to unbend to endearments!) Her kitten, most likely."
She softly opens the kitchen door. Amazement stays her feet upon the
threshold! Harmy, mute with horror, indicates with stretched
forefinger her own clean patchwork-cushioned rocker, wherein, bolt
upright, sits an unknown man,--and _such_ a man! His coarse, dusty
garments (evidently fashioned without the slightest reference to their
present wearer) hang scarecrow-wise upon his graceless form. Under his
slouched hat (which he democratically retains) he seems to skulk
abjectly from the gazer's eye; as well he may, for, unshaven and
unshorn, his wide mouth stained with tobacco, his hands and face
begrimed with dust, he looks, every inch, the wretched outcast that he
_is_! And (no wonder that old Harmy gapes distraught), seated
lovingly upon this creature's knee, her dainty fingers clasping his
dirty hand, her golden curls brushing his grimy neck, is
May-blossom,--yes, May-blossom, her own sweet self, beaming, and fond,
and absolutely unconscious of the incongruity of the situation. And
this forlorn being, craving still of humanity but leave to carry on
its shoulders the shamed head of a man, is a convict,--our old prison
acquaintance, Peter Floome, May-blossom's sometime nurse, and always
friend!
Lightly springing from her unseemly perch, the child hastens to greet
Miss Paulina, and, hanging fondly upon her hand, cries eagerly, "Oh,
auntie, darling, I'm so glad you've come! Here's Peter, dear old
Peter! He's pardoned out, auntie, and, isn't it nice? He can come and
see me every day now if he likes.
"Why, auntie! (somewhat crestfallen) aren't you glad? and won't you
shake hands with him? Peter is nice, auntie, and he used to take
_such_ care of me when I was _ever_ so little. You'll like Peter when
he's washed up, and so will Harmy, though she _does_ mind him just a
little _now_, because she's not acquainted with him." (Harmy, _sotto
voce_, and emphatically, "Lord sakes, no; an' don't never want to
be!") Here, reminiscences of prison etiquette visiting Peter's dazed
mind, he shuffles bashfully to his feet, and, pulling distractedly at
his matted forelock, goes through a certain gymnic performance,
supposed, by himself, to constitute a bow. The ice thus broken, Peter
finds his tongue, and blurts out a "Good day, marm, hope I see yer
well, marm."
Miss Paulina bows, a pause, ensues. Peter looks admiringly at
May-blossom, and, thereby gaining inspiration, finds himself equal to
a second attempt at conversation.
"She's growed, marm, like the mischief!" he asserts; "but I knowed
her, I _did_, the minute I sot eyes on her out there in the mowin'
lot! an' she knowed _me_, she did! Yes, yes, she knowed Peter; she
knowed him. Poor old Peter! who don't hardly know himself nowerdays."
Here Peter's voice gets husky, and, brushing away a dirty tear, with
his greasy coat sleeve, he seems to await the issue. Peter Floome is
downrightly the social antipodes of the lady of the homestead.
Conventionally they do not stand side by side in the human group, but,
like Swedenborg's unfraternal angels, "feet to feet." Yet in the
artless harangue of this poor creature there is a touch of honest
nature that at once makes them kin.
"And I, too, must know you, Peter," she says, cordially advancing and
taking in her own clean palm his dirty hand.
Unable to express his appreciation of the honour thus conferred, Peter
twirls his thumbs, ventures a side glance at Harmy, and, again utterly
disparaged in his own eyes, looks uneasily at the floor.
Prompt to reconcile the cowed creature to himself, Miss Parker
courteously says: "And now, Peter, you would, I think, like to go up
to Reuben's bedroom and have a good wash. By and by Harmy shall give
you tea, and then we must hear all about the pardon, and how you
happened here, and what you mean to do with yourself, and what _we_
can do for you. Come, Mabel, dear; Peter, you know, is _your_ company.
Show him up-stairs, my darling."
Again the small, soft hand is laid in the rough, brown paw, and Peter
Floome,--in a state of absolute bewilderment as to his personal
identity,--shuffles awkwardly off with the delighted child. And what
says Harmy Patterson to all this? "Here's a convict, a horrid
convict," cries she, "and invited to tea, an' that child a huggin' an'
kissin' him, in cold blood! Lord! Lord! what _is_ the Parkers comin'
to?" Here, unable further to pursue the fallen social fortunes of the
house, Harmy covers her face with her checked apron and bursts into
tears. Grieved at the discomfiture of her old servant and friend, Miss
Parker essays a word of expostulation. She appeals to her hospitality,
her humanity, reminds her of her professed discipleship of Him who
"sat at meat" with the sinner. In vain! as well might she have
addressed herself to Harmy's stone molasses jug, which, dropped from
her grasp in the sudden shock of Peter's advent, now lies prone upon
the kitchen floor. Foiled in her kindly endeavour, the mistress
quietly withdraws. Harmy, left alone, sobs herself into a
comparatively tranquil frame of mind. Coming to the rescue of her
molasses jug, she carefully ascertains that no minute fracture is
consequent upon the fall, and that no wasteful drop has exuded from
the wooden stopper, and, forthwith, sets vigorously to, on a batch of
soft gingerbread, whose manufacture had been interrupted by the
entrance of Peter Floome. While she stirs her cake, Harmy sighs, and
profoundly resolves in her mind "the fitnesses." In her social lexicon
a convict is a vile wretch. In her catechism he is given over to
damnation from the foundation of the world--God-devoted to the very
devil himself!
Miss Paulina Parker, in her chamber, washes her hands, and also
ponders the "fitnesses." This starved outcast is her brother. She has
taken him by the hand. Christian ethics demonstrate the fitness of
this act. The hand was, no doubt, dirty. Yet, what matters it? Soap
and water set one right again. Soap and water tell, too, upon Peter
Floome, when, after a characteristically superficial ablution, he
emerges from Reuben's bedroom, a trifle improved in complexion, but
still a sorry specimen of humanity, and, escorted by May-blossom, is
whisked out-of-doors, on a hasty tour of inspection. Led by this happy
little creature (now holding his hand, now dropping it to run on and,
turning, take in his effect, and then skip gayly in advance), Peter
visits the chicken-coop, the beehive, the flower garden, the stables,
and the pig-pen, and, last of all, the apple orchard, now rosy-white
with bloom.
There, reclined upon the grass, beneath the flowering boughs of a
patriarch tree, Miss Paulina ere long comes upon the oddly matched
pair. Peter, wreathed with buttercups and dandelions, and wearing his
flowery honours like another "Bottom," sits beside his "Titania," who
in fond infatuation "His amiable cheek doth coy."
"Pity," thinks the intruder, "to spoil so quaint a picture." The sun
is, however, already low, and she calls her darling in from the
dewfall. In the kitchen, Harmy has made reluctant preparations for
Peter's inner man; grimly remarking to Mandy Ann (who has meantime
returned from an errand at the store) that "it does go agin' her, to
put on span clean table-cloths for sich creeturs, an' to waste good
vittels where they can't no how be sensed." A convict being, at Mandy
Ann's estimate, an ineligible, if not dangerous guest, as Peter and
May-blossom enter at one door, she vanishes by another. Harmy dons her
cape-bonnet, and marches stiffly into the kitchen garden, leaving the
disreputable visitor to his child hostess.
Peter Floome had not figured at a tea-drinking for many a long year,
and, naturally, his company manners are somewhat rusty. Possibly, his
table etiquette (or, rather, his entire lack of it) might have shocked
his too partial entertainer (who, with fine innate courtesy, has laid
herself a cup and plate, and is keeping her guest in countenance by
taking her own tea with him), had not his evident satisfaction in the
meal entirely engrossed her mind, for (Harmy to the contrary,
notwithstanding) Peter is inherently inclined to "sense good vittels."
It is quaintly picturesque, this tea-drinking of "Bottom" and
"Titania;" this odd contrast of loutishness and elegance, although (as
I grieve to record) "Bottom" does absolutely ignore the butter-knife;
does thrust his wet spoon into the sugar bowl; and, vigourously
blowing his hot tea, in scorn of popular prejudice, lap the same from
his slopping saucer, and shovel in the apple sauce with his
knife-blade. "Titania's" pretty efforts to put "Bottom" at his ease
are, indeed, a thing to behold; for, conscious of his own want of
keeping with the unwonted occasion, Peter is, to the very last degree,
awkward and abashed. Nevertheless, the encouraging smiles of his
small hostess carry him victoriously to the end of this harrowing
experience. Other social exigencies yet await this much-tried man.
Directly after tea, he is taken by May-blossom to that inner
sanctuary, Miss Parker's parlour, where, amid oppressively elegant
surroundings, he is further weighed to earth by the disparaging sense
of his own abjectness.
Prison life, on the solitary plan, is not conducive to colloquial
glibness, nor is Peter Floome habitually garrulous. Many cups of
Harmy's strong green tea have, however, limbered his tongue, and, once
he is well seated, and has made a final, though terribly
unsatisfactory, disposal of his long arms and obtrusive legs, he finds
himself sufficiently at ease for narrative effort, and, at the request
of his gracious hostess, wades desperately into his subject.