Part 6 (1/2)
He was a prison officer, to wit, that notable turnkey who keeps the guard-room doors. His not over-euphonious name was Timothy Tucker, and, though a bachelor of fifty, and a very dragon at holding a door, to little birds and little children the turnkey's heart was as wax.
Soon after his instalment in the guard-room he had, with Warden Flint's grudging permission, hung, high in its tall window, five small bird cages. In these, three yellow canaries, a Java sparrow, and a dainty pair of love-birds, all optimistic creatures that--
”Neither look before nor after, Nor pine for what is not”--
hopped as contentedly, or sang as rapturously, as if the prison were indeed (as fabled in convict slang) ”the palace.” As for the prison child, from the first hour of her appearance in the guard-room, she had commanded the turnkey's susceptible heart. His ”little Blossom,”
he had called her, and when, later, she imparted to him the pretty abbreviation of her name, it was he who wedded the two charming words, and so made the ”prison name” of the warden's daughter, May-blossom.
Seldom was the genial, child-loving turnkey too busy to pilot the small, tottering feet across the guard-room floor; to hold her high in his arms to ”'ook at tunnin' birdies,” or to lift her, in dizzy delight, to her favourite perch, his tall desk, by the rear window, commanding all the fascinating bustle of the prison yard. And when from prattling infancy she had advanced to garrulous, inquisitive childhood, it was he who lent an ever-ready ear to her thousand and one questions.
”Children, now, _is_ curus,” said Mr. Tucker to his landlady, over his evening pipe, ”they beat birds all holler! There's May-blossom, now, only six years old, an' she sticks _me_ sometimes, she _does_, an' no mistake!”
The train of thought, leading to these frank observations, had been started in the good turnkey's mind by the recollection of a recent theological skirmish with this astute little being, in which (to use his own forcible words) he ”had ben most gol darn'dly beat.” This embryo free-religionist having insisted upon being told ”Why, if G.o.d, _certain true_, loved everybody, an' was bigger an' stronger, an' ever so much gooder than _other_ folks, He didn't stop people's being bad, so's they had to be put in prison, without little children to kiss, an' kittens to play with, an' strawberries an' cake, an' things to eat?” Ah, little soul! too soon perplexed by the ancient riddle; why _doesn't_ He--why, indeed! Young and old, wise and simple, we are all guessing together; and no man solves the immemorial puzzle!
Peter Floome--when, upon a Sunday, the prison chaplain exhorted his not over-heedful flock to pious dependence upon the divine care--was wont to make his own disparaging comments upon the well-meant, but often inapplicable discourse. ”'Tain't a grain o' use” (said this volunteer critic, to his fellow-convicts) ”o' the chaplain braggin'
_in here_ 'bout Providence, an' sich. Most prob'ly th' Almighty _is_, more or less, round 'tendin' to things; but, nat'rally, the devil takes charge o' prisons, an' runs 'em putty much his own way.”
Peter, having had a good twenty years' stretch of prison life, his experience undoubtedly counted. His utterances were, however, to be taken with that corrective grain of salt with which one wisely qualifies the statement of the ”crank;” for though, in the main, mentally sound, through long confinement, and much hopeless pondering, Peter Floome's brain had taken a decidedly pessimistic twist, and, in prison circles, he was unanimously dubbed ”a crank.” It was after the death of Warden Flint's wife, that Peter's theology became a shade more optimistic, for then it was that the warden's year-old daughter, by the tacit consent of all whom it might concern, fell to his especial care.
In his capacity of runner, Peter had, comparatively, the freedom of the prison, and was particularly detailed for duty in the warden's household. The child--with that unaccountable choice of favourites inherent in her kind--had taken famously to her convict dry-nurse. It was the sudden rising of this new star on the runner's narrow horizon, that inspired the following harangue: ”Ef th' Almighty, as I say, don't jest _put up_ in prisons, Himself, leastways He _does_, now an'
agin, send little angels, an' _sich_, to keep up a feller's courage.”
Peter and his ”little angel” might now often be seen together; for the child, following hard upon his heels, had one day slipped furtively through the guard-room door, and had thus become a regular _habitue_ of that semi-public apartment.
Ten summers of this exceptional child-life had pa.s.sed over May-blossom's golden head, when Destiny (that other name for Providence) suddenly removed her to an environment far more kindly than that in which her sweet young eyes had opened upon this many-sided existence. But, to explain, we must escape at once from prison.
Here, in the soft September sky, not the faintest speck of a cloud may be seen. The river, broken into endless ripples by a crisp west wind, glances like molten suns.h.i.+ne; and not many rods from its pebbled sh.o.r.e, behold that goodly sight, an old colonial homestead!
Four generations of Parkers have lived their lives in this ancient dwelling beside the Saganock, which has all the well-to-doativeness (if one may coin a word) inherent in the ancestral homes of such favoured children of men as have much goods laid up for many years.
And here, upon ”the stoop,” in after-dinner ease, sits the mistress of the mansion--Miss Paulina Parker. Miss Paulina is the last of the Parkers. In her snowy gown and gauzy dress-cap, she is, to-day, dainty as a white b.u.t.terfly. Far and wide is she known as the Lady Bountiful of Saganock; and a dearer, lovelier old maid the sun never shone upon; and, though her sixtieth birthday falls on the twentieth of this very month, you would not take her to be a day over forty-five! The lean, gaunt old body, rocking beside yonder window, in the kitchen ell, is Harmy Patterson. For the last fifty years Harmy has cooked and saved for the Parker family, and still considers herself in the prime of her usefulness. She is reading the Boston _Recorder_, to her _confrere_--Mandy Ann, the second girl; who, all agape, swallows the delectable murders, marriages, and deaths that spice its columns.
Reuben, the hired man, leisurely running a lawn-mower past the open window, pauses beneath it, from time to time, to solace himself with some especial tidbit of horror. While Miss Paulina, in pensive reverie, looks out on river and sky, and marks how, in the Saganock burying-ground, a maple or two has prematurely reddened, she is suddenly confronted by Harmy Patterson, newspaper in hand, spectacles pushed over her brown foretop, and cap-strings flying in the wind.
Excitedly indicating, with her long forefinger, an especial column of her favourite journal, she pantingly exclaims: ”Fur pity sake, Miss Paulina, du jes' read _this_!”
Promptly acceding to the request of the old body, Miss Parker reads attentively the following:
FEARFUL TRAGEDY AT THE STATE PRISON!
As the warden of the Ma.s.sachusetts State Prison was this morning making his round of observation and inspection among the shops, being in the shoemaking department at about ten and a half o'clock, and pa.s.sing the bench where one Hodges (a disorderly convict, who, after repeated and severe punishment, had, that morning, been remanded to his shop) was at work, Hodges suddenly sprang upon him from behind, stabbing him with a shoe-knife, and killing him instantly. The a.s.sa.s.sin was immediately secured, heavily ironed, and committed, for safe-keeping, to the ”Lower Arch.” The body of the unfortunate warden was removed to the hospital, a coroner summoned, and the inspectors convened. By this sad occurrence a young family is bereaved of paternal support, and the prison of a long-tried and faithful officer.
”Dear me, Harmy, what a sad affair!” cries the compa.s.sionate reader; ”and Josiah Flint's moth--no; let me see! I have it now. Josiah Flint's _grandmother_ was a--was a Parker, Harmy.”
”Yes'm,” replies the woman, who has the Parker genealogy at her tongue's end; ”an' your pa's was _second_ cousins; an' the warden, ef he'd a lived, would be your _third_ cousin. Law sakes! I mind, as well as can be, young Josiah an' his pa comin' to Saganock. You was a girl then, an' old Josiah, he was minister in Salem, an' his father before him (an' hot and heavy _he_ made it for witches, folks say). Well, he come to Saganock to preach for our minister, an' brung his boy along; an' bein' connections, they was asked to put up with us. Sakes alive!
I remember it all well as ef it want but yisterday. That Sunday we had apple pie an' milk betwixt sermons, an' when afternoon meetin' was out, I gin 'em a pipin' hot supper. Well, the old man was a powerful preacher,” rambles on the old retainer, while Miss Paulina, heedless of her chatter, sits pondering the situation. ”An' I had remarkable exercises of mind that Sunday; but there! that boy, goodness gracious!
didn't he make way with my clam fritters an' gooseberry pie? Well, well, this is a dyin' world; an' now _his_ time's come; an' sich an awful providence, too!” And here, kindly oblivious of the ancient onslaught on her supper, old Harmy drops a pitying tear for the dead warden.
”Harmy,” says Miss Paulina, decisively, ”Josiah Flint's wife has been dead these nine years, and somebody must see to those poor orphan children. Tell Reuben to put Major into the carryall. I shall take the next train for Boston, and probably stay at the prison till the funeral is over.”
In accordance with this humane resolve, Miss Parker packs her travelling bag, and, in her second best black silk gown, sets out at four P. M. for the State Prison. Very cold and gray, in the early autumn twilight, is the residence of the late Josiah Flint, when Miss Paulina Parker alights from the depot carriage at its frowning entrance. A jaded housemaid answers the bell, and ushers her into a slipshod parlor, and thus meets her inquiries for ”the warden's family:”