BENNIE THE CONSOLER
In a corner of Frau Nirlanger’s bedroom, sheltered from draughts and
glaring light, is a little wooden bed, painted blue and ornamented with
stout red roses that are faded by time and much abuse. Every evening at
eight o’clock three anxious-browed women hold low-spoken conclave about
the quaint old bed, while its occupant sleeps and smiles as he sleeps,
and clasps to his breast a chewed-looking woolly dog. For a new joy has
come to the sad little Frau Nirlanger, and I, quite by accident, was
the cause of bringing it to her. The queer little blue bed, with its
faded roses, was brought down from the attic by Frau Knapf, for she is
one of the three foster mothers of the small occupant of the bed. The
occupant of the bed is named Bennie, and a corporation formed for the
purpose of bringing him up in the way he should go is composed of: Dawn
O’Hara Orme, President and Distracted Guardian; Mrs. Konrad Nirlanger,
Cuddler-in-chief and Authority on the Subject of Bennie’s Bed-time; Mr.
Blackie Griffith, Good Angel, General Cut-up and Monitor off’n Bennie’s
Neckties and Toys; Dr. Ernst von Gerhard, Chief Medical Adviser, and
Sweller of the Exchequer, with the Privilege of Selecting All Candies.
Members of the corporation meet with great frequency evenings and
Sundays, much to the detriment of a certain Book-in-the-making with
which Dawn O’Hara Orme was wont to struggle o’ evenings.
Bennie had been one of those little tragedies that find their way into
juvenile court. Bennie’s story was common enough, but Bennie himself
had been different. Ten minutes after his first appearance in the court
room everyone, from the big, bald judge to the newest probation
officer, had fallen in love with him. Somehow, you wanted to smooth the
hair from his forehead, tip his pale little face upward, and very
gently kiss his smooth, white brow. Which alone was enough to
distinguish Bennie, for Juvenile court children, as a rule, are
distinctly not kissable.
Bennie’s mother was accused of being unfit to care for her boy, and
Bennie was temporarily installed in the Detention Home. There the
superintendent and his plump and kindly wife had fallen head over heels
in love with him, and had dressed him in a smart little Norfolk suit
and a frivolous plaid silk tie. There were delays in the case, and
postponement after postponement, so that Bennie appeared in the court
room every Tuesday for four weeks. The reporters, and the probation
officers and policemen became very chummy with Bennie, and showered him
with bright new pennies and certain wonderful candies. Superintendent
Arnett of the Detention Home was as proud of the boy as though he were
his own. And when Bennie would look shyly and questioningly into his
face for permission to accept the proffered offerings, the big
superintendent would chuckle delightedly. Bennie had a strangely mobile
face for such a baby, and the whitest, smoothest brow I have ever seen.
The comedy and tears and misery and laughter of the big, white-walled
court room were too much for Bennie. He would gaze about with puzzled
blue eyes; then, giving up the situation as something too vast for his
comprehension, he would fall to drawing curly-cues on a bit of paper
with a great yellow pencil presented him by one of the newspaper men.
Every Tuesday the rows of benches were packed with a motley crowd of
Poles, Russians, Slavs, Italians, Greeks, Lithuanians—a crowd made up
of fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, neighbors,
friends, and enemies of the boys and girls whose fate was in the hands
of the big man seated in the revolving chair up in front. But Bennie’s
mother was not of this crowd; this pitiful, ludicrous crowd filling the
great room with the stifling, rancid odor of the poor. Nor was Bennie.
He sat, clear-eyed and unsmiling, in the depths of a great chair on the
court side of the railing and gravely received the attentions of the
lawyers, and reporters and court room attaches who had grown fond of
the grave little figure.
Then, on the fifth Tuesday, Bennie’s mother appeared. How she had come
to be that child’s mother God only knows—or perhaps He had had nothing
to do with it. She was terribly sober and frightened. Her face was
swollen and bruised, and beneath one eye there was a puffy
green-and-blue swelling. Her sordid story was common enough as the
probation officer told it. The woman had been living in one wretched
room with the boy. Her husband had deserted her. There was no food, and
little furniture. The queer feature of it, said the probation officer,
was that the woman managed to keep the boy fairly neat and clean,
regardless of her own condition, and he generally had food of some
sort, although the mother sometimes went without food for days. Through
the squalor and misery and degradation of her own life Bennie had
somehow been kept unsullied, a thing apart.
“H’m!” said judge Wheeling, and looked at Bennie. Bennie was standing
beside his mother. He was very quiet, and his eyes were smiling up into
those of the battered creature who was fighting for him. “I guess we’ll
have to take you out of this,” the judge decided, abruptly. “That boy
is too good to go to waste.”
The sodden, dazed woman before him did not immediately get the full
meaning of his words. She still stood there, swaying a bit, and staring
unintelligently at the judge. Then, quite suddenly, she realized it.
She took a quick step forward. Her hand went up to her breast, to her
throat, to her lips, with an odd, stifled gesture.
“You ain’t going to take him away! From me! No, you wouldn’t do that,
would you? Not for—not for always! You wouldn’t do that—you wouldn’t—”
Judge Wheeling waved her away. But the woman dropped to her knees.
“Judge, give me a chance! I’ll stop drinking. Only don’t take him away
from me! Don’t, judge, don’t! He’s all I’ve got in the world. Give me a
chance. Three months! Six months! A year!”
“Get up!” ordered judge Wheeling, gruffly, “and stop that! It won’t do
you a bit of good.”
And then a wonderful thing happened. The woman rose to her feet. A new
and strange dignity had come into her battered face. The lines of
suffering and vice were erased as by magic, and she seemed to grow
taller, younger, almost beautiful. When she spoke again it was slowly
and distinctly, her words quite free from the blur of the barroom and
street vernacular.
“I tell you you must give me a chance. You cannot take a child from a
mother in this way. I tell you, if you will only help me I can crawl
back up the road that I’ve traveled. I was not always like this. There
was another life, before—before—Oh, since then there have been years of
blackness, and hunger, and cold and—worse! But I never dragged the boy
into it. Look at him!”
Our eyes traveled from the woman’s transfigured face to that of the
boy. We could trace a wonderful likeness where before we had seen none.
But the woman went on in her steady, even tone.
“I can’t talk as I should, because my brain isn’t clear. It’s the
drink. When you drink, you forget. But you must help me. I can’t do it
alone. I can remember how to live straight, just as I can remember how
to talk straight. Let me show you that I’m not all bad. Give me a
chance. Take the boy and then give him back to me when you are
satisfied. I’ll try—God only knows how I’ll try. Only don’t take him
away forever, Judge! Don’t do that!”
Judge Wheeling ran an uncomfortable finger around his collar’s edge.
“Any friends living here?”
“No! No!”
“Sure about that?”
“Quite sure.”
“Now see here; I’m going to give you your chance. I shall take this boy
away from you for a year. In that time you will stop drinking and
become a decent, self-supporting woman. You will be given in charge of
one of these probation officers. She will find work for you, and a good
home, and she’ll stand by you, and you must report to her. If she is
satisfied with you at the end of the year, the boy goes back to you.”
“She will be satisfied,” the woman said, simply. She stooped and taking
Bennie’s face between her hands kissed him once. Then she stepped aside
and stood quite still, looking after the little figure that passed out
of the court room with his hand in that of a big, kindly police
officer. She looked until the big door had opened and closed upon them.
Then—well, it was just another newspaper story. It made a good one.
That evening I told Frau Nirlanger about it, and she wept, softly, and
murmured: “Ach, das arme baby! Like my little Oscar he is, without a
mother.” I told Ernst about him too, and Blackie, because I could not
get his grave little face out of my mind. I wondered if those who had
charge of him now would take the time to bathe the little body, and
brush the soft hair until it shone, and tie the gay plaid silk tie as
lovingly as “Daddy” Arnett of the Detention Home had done.
Then it was that I, quite unwittingly, stepped into Bennie’s life.
There was an anniversary, or a change in the board of directors, or a
new coat of paint or something of the kind in one of the orphan homes,
and the story fell to me. I found the orphan home to be typical of its
kind—a big, dreary, prison-like structure. The woman at the door did
not in the least care to let me in. She was a fish-mouthed woman with a
hard eye, and as I told my errand her mouth grew fishier and the eye
harder. Finally she led me down a long, dark, airless stretch of
corridor and departed in search of the matron, leaving me seated in the
unfriendly reception room, with its straight-backed chairs placed
stonily against the walls, beneath rows of red and blue and yellow
religious pictures.
Just as I was wondering why it seemed impossible to be holy and
cheerful at the same time, there came a pad-padding down the corridor.
The next moment the matron stood in the doorway. She was a mountainous,
red-faced woman, with warts on her nose.
“Good-afternoon,” I said, sweetly. (“Ugh! What a brute!”) I thought.
Then I began to explain my errand once more. Criticism of the Home? No
indeed, I assured her. At last, convinced of my disinterestedness she
reluctantly guided me about the big, gloomy building. There were
endless flights of shiny stairs, and endless stuffy, airless rooms,
until we came to a door which she flung open, disclosing the nursery.
It seemed to me that there were a hundred babies—babies at every stage
of development, of all sizes, and ages and types. They glanced up at
the opening of the door, and then a dreadful thing happened.
Every child that was able to walk or creep scuttled into the farthest
corners and remained quite, quite still with a wide-eyed expression of
fear and apprehension on every face.
For a moment my heart stood still. I turned to look at the woman by my
side. Her thin lips were compressed into a straight, hard line. She
said a word to a nurse standing near, and began to walk about, eying
the children sharply. She put out a hand to pat the head of one
red-haired mite in a soiled pinafore; but before her hand could descend
I saw the child dodge and the tiny hand flew up to the head, as though
in defense.
“They are afraid of her!” my sick heart told me. “Those babies are
afraid of her! What does she do to them? I can’t stand this. I’m
going.”
I mumbled a hurried “Thank you,” to the fat matron as I turned to leave
the big, bare room. At the head of the stairs there was a great, black
door. I stopped before it—God knows why!—and pointed toward it.
“What is in that room?” I asked. Since then I have wondered many times
at the unseen power that prompted me to put the question.
The stout matron bustled on, rattling her keys as she walked.
“That—oh, that’s where we keep the incorrigibles.”
“May I see them?” I asked, again prompted by that inner voice.
“There is only one.” She grudgingly unlocked the door, using one of the
great keys that swung from her waist. The heavy, black door swung open.
I stepped into the bare room, lighted dimly by one small window. In the
farthest corner crouched something that stirred and glanced up at our
entrance. It peered at us with an ugly look of terror and defiance, and
I stared back at it, in the dim light. During one dreadful, breathless
second I remained staring, while my heart stood still. Then—“Bennie!” I
cried. And stumbled toward him. “Bennie—boy!”
The little unkempt figure, in its soiled knickerbocker suit, the sunny
hair all uncared for, the gay plaid tie draggled and limp, rushed into
my arms with a crazy, inarticulate cry.
Down on my knees on the bare floor I held him close—close! and his arms
were about my neck as though they never should unclasp.
“Take me away! Take me away!” His wet cheek was pressed against my own
streaming one. “I want my mother! I want Daddy Arnett! Take me away!”
I wiped his cheeks with my notebook or something, picked him up in my
arms, and started for the door. I had quite forgotten the fat matron.
“What are you doing?” she asked, blocking the doorway with her huge
bulk.
“I’m going to take him back with me. Please let me! I’ll take care of
him until the year is up. He shan’t bother you any more.”
“That is impossible,” she said, coldly. “He has been sent here by the
court, for a year, and he must stay here. Besides, he is a stubborn,
uncontrollable child.”
“Uncontrollable! He’s nothing of the kind! Why don’t you treat him as a
child should be treated, instead of like a little animal? You don’t
know him! Why, he’s the most lovable—! And he’s only a baby! Can’t you
see that? A baby!”
She only stared her dislike, her little pig eyes grown smaller and more
glittering.
“You great—big—thing!” I shrieked at her, like an infuriated child.
With the tears streaming down my cheeks I unclasped Bennie’s cold hands
from about my neck. He clung to me, frantically, until I had to push
him away and run.
The woman swung the door shut, and locked it. But for all its thickness
I could hear Bennie’s helpless fists pounding on its panels as I
stumbled down the stairs, and Bennie’s voice came faintly to my ears,
muffled by the heavy door, as he shrieked to me to take him away to his
mother, and to Daddy Arnett.
I blubbered all the way back in the car, until everyone stared, but I
didn’t care. When I reached the office I made straight for Blackie’s
smoke-filled sanctum. When my tale was ended he let me cry all over his
desk, with my head buried in a heap of galley-proofs and my tears
watering his paste-pot. He sat calmly by, smoking. Finally he began
gently to philosophize. “Now girl, he’s prob’ly better off there than
he ever was at home with his mother soused all the time. Maybe he give
that warty matron friend of yours all kinds of trouble, yellin’ for his
ma.”
I raised my head from the desk. “Oh, you can talk! You didn’t see him.
What do you care! But if you could have seen him, crouched
there—alone—like a little animal! He was so sweet—and
lovable—and—and—he hadn’t been decently washed for weeks—and his arms
clung to me—I can feel his hands about my neck!—”
I buried my head in the papers again. Blackie went on smoking. There
was no sound in the little room except the purr-purring of Blackie’s
pipe. Then:
“I done a favor for Wheeling once,” mused he.
I glanced up, quickly. “Oh, Blackie, do you think—”
“No, I don’t. But then again, you can’t never tell. That was four or
five years ago, and the mem’ry of past favors grows dim fast. Still, if
you’re through waterin’ the top of my desk, why I’d like t’ set down
and do a little real brisk talkin’ over the phone. You’re excused.”
Quite humbly I crept away, with hope in my heart.
To this day I do not know what secret string the resourceful Blackie
pulled. But the next afternoon I found a hastily scrawled note tucked
into the roll of my typewriter. It sent me scuttling across the hall to
the sporting editor’s smoke-filled room. And there on a chair beside
the desk, surrounded by scrap-books, lead pencils, paste-pot and odds
and ends of newspaper office paraphernalia, sat Bennie. His hair was
parted very smoothly on one side, and under his dimpled chin bristled a
very new and extremely lively green-and-red plaid silk tie.
The next instant I had swept aside papers, brushes, pencils, books, and
Bennie was gathered close in my arms. Blackie, with a strange glow in
his deep-set black eyes regarded us with an assumed disgust.
“Wimmin is all alike. Ain’t it th’ truth? I used t’ think you was
different. But shucks! It ain’t so. Got t’ turn on the weeps the minute
you’re tickled or mad. Why say, I ain’t goin’ t’ have you comin’ in
here an’ dampenin’ up the whole place every little while! It’s
unhealthy for me, sittin’ here in the wet.”
“Oh, shut up, Blackie,” I said, happily. “How in the world did you do
it?”
“Never you mind. The question is, what you goin’ t’ do with him, now
you’ve got him? Goin’ t’ have a French bunny for him, or fetch him up
by hand? Wheeling appointed a probation skirt to look after the crowd
of us, and we got t’ toe the mark.”
“Glory be!” I ejaculated. “I don’t know what I shall do with him. I
shall have to bring him down with me every morning, and perhaps you can
make a sporting editor out of him.”
“Nix. Not with that forehead. He’s a high-brow. We’ll make him dramatic
critic. In the meantime, I’ll be little fairy godmother, an’ if you’ll
get on your bonnet I’ll stake you and the young ’un to strawberry
shortcake an’ chocolate ice cream.”
So it happened that a wondering Frau Knapf and a sympathetic Frau
Nirlanger were called in for consultation an hour later. Bennie was
ensconced in my room, very wide-eyed and wondering, but quite content.
With the entrance of Frau Nirlanger the consultation was somewhat
disturbed. She made a quick rush at him and gathered him in her hungry
arms.
“Du baby du!” she cried. “Du Kleiner! And she was down on her knees,
and somehow her figure had melted into delicious mother-curves, with
Bennie’s head just fitting into that most gracious one between her
shoulder and breast. She cooed to him in a babble of French and German
and English, calling him her lee-tel Oscar. Bennie seemed miraculously
to understand. Perhaps he was becoming accustomed to having strange
ladies snatch him to their breasts.
“So,” said Frau Nirlanger, looking up at us. “Is he not sweet? He shall
be my lee-tel boy, nicht? For one small year he shall be my own boy.
Ach, I am but lonely all the long day here in this strange land. You
will let me care for him, nicht? And Konrad, he will be very angry, but
that shall make no bit of difference. Eh, Oscar?”
And so the thing was settled, and an hour later three anxious-browed
women were debating the weighty question of eggs or bread-and-milk for
Bennie’s supper. Frau Nirlanger was for soft-boiled eggs as being none
too heavy after orphan asylum fare; I was for bread-and-milk, that
being the prescribed supper dish for all the orphans and waifs that I
had ever read about, from “The Wide, Wide World” to “Helen’s Babies,”
and back again. Frau Knapf was for both eggs and bread-and-milk with a
dash of meat and potatoes thrown in for good measure, and a slice or so
of Kuchen on the side. We compromised on one egg, one glass of milk,
and a slice of lavishly buttered bread, and jelly. It was a clean,
sweet, sleepy-eyed Bennie that we tucked between the sheets. We three
women stood looking down at him as he lay there in the quaint old
blue-painted bed that had once held the plump little Knapfs.
“You think anyway he had enough supper? mused the anxious-browed Frau
Knapf.
“To school he will have to go, yes?” murmured Frau Nirlanger,
regretfully.
I tucked in the covers at one side of the bed, not that they needed
tucking, but because it was such a comfortable, satisfying thing to do.
“Just at this minute,” I said, as I tucked, “I’d rather be a newspaper
reporter than anything else in the world. As a profession ’tis so
broadenin’, an’ at the same time, so chancey.”