Part 7 (1/2)
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 p.u.s.s.y is still ailing, is she?” cries the good doctor (this with a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.ses 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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 pa.s.s, 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 fellows.h.i.+p--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, gra.s.s-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 la.s.situde; 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 const.i.tution (G.o.d help us!) an angel from heaven couldn't save her!”
Summer is coming. The b.u.t.tercups are here. May-blossom is better. She sleeps well, coughs less, and her appet.i.te 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 acc.u.mulated bundles; and the steel-clasped bag upon her arm is plethoric, to the last degree. Hours have pa.s.sed 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-cus.h.i.+oned rocker, wherein, bolt upright, sits an unknown man,--and _such_ a man! His coa.r.s.e, dusty garments (evidently fas.h.i.+oned 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 brus.h.i.+ng 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 const.i.tute 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 a.s.serts; ”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, brus.h.i.+ng 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 ident.i.ty,--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 ap.r.o.n 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 disciples.h.i.+p of Him who ”sat at meat” with the sinner. In vain! as well might she have addressed herself to Harmy's stone mola.s.ses jug, which, dropped from her grasp in the sudden shock of Peter's advent, now lies p.r.o.ne 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 mola.s.ses 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 d.a.m.nation from the foundation of the world--G.o.d-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 gra.s.s, beneath the flowering boughs of a patriarch tree, Miss Paulina ere long comes upon the oddly matched pair. Peter, wreathed with b.u.t.tercups and dandelions, and wearing his flowery honours like another ”Bottom,” sits beside his ”t.i.tania,” 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.