Pippin; A Wandering Flame

CHAPTER XI

THE CHAPLAIN READS HIS MAIL

THE chaplain was sorting his morning mail. He did it deftly and quickly, opening (with a thin-bladed paper knife; no ripping or tearing with hasty fingers), glancing over, destroying, filing, or laying in the "Answer immediately" pile. All this with his swift, careful fingers and half of his careful mind; the other half was busy over problems. Problems of Tom, of Dick, of Harry; problems mental, moral, physical. If he could only keep them apart, how much simpler it would be! But the three would run together, act and react one upon the other. One of his trusties was "wobbling," the guard told him; growing surly, careless, shirking his work here and there, getting up steam, Wilson the guard opined; liable to turn ugly any minute. What had happened? Well, he thought his egg had been smaller than the rest, last egg day; he'd been chewing the rag ever since. The chaplain sighed. What children they were!

He ran his eyes over a letter. It was from a prisoner's wife, begging to know how Nate was. She had been sick; would chaplain please tell Nate that was why she couldn't come last Tuesday? (Tuesday was visitors' day.) The children was smart. Joe and Susy was at school, but Benny had no shoes till she got her pay from the factory; she was working extra time to try and have something left over from the rent. They would get along all right till he, Nate, was out, and he could get a place right off in the mill, she guessed.

The chaplain sighed again, and laid the note on the growing pile of "Answer immediately." Poor Susan! She worked so hard, and was so hopeful! She always thought the last spree would remain the last; better so! He shook his head, seeing Nate's weak, comely face, sodden with drink. Poor Susan! Poor women! God help them all!

He opened another letter, and learned that "yrs. respect'ly, Wm. Billiam," hadn't got no work yet; no wun appeared to want him though he show them the note, sir and sum sed when they was a plaice he shood have it and a Nother man sed there wos not work enuf for strate men and he gessed crooks wood haf to wate till the pigs begin to fly "but I ramember wot you sed chapple In and i will keep strate sir you betcher life excusin bad writin'." This letter, written all downhill with no sign of punctuation, smudged and smeared by a not too clean shirtsleeve, might have brought a smile to some faces, but the chaplain's face was grave enough. The endless problem, the riddle without an answer. Not work enough for the honest men; yet if the discharged criminal cannot get work, how to prevent him from relapsing into crime? Who can blame him? He goes out with his little newborn resolve, a feeble, tottering thing, and tries for honest work. He has learned a trade behind the bars, perhaps; he can make brooms and mats, weave rough baskets, cobble shoes. He finds a dozen applicants before him. Questions are asked: Where has he worked? What references can he give? If he tells the truth, seven employers out of ten shake their heads. If he lies, he is found out after a time and the result is the same; he is "bounced." Who can blame the boss? Who can blame the man if – Round and round, over and over! No royal road anywhere. Nothing to do but keep on trying.

The chaplain raised his head, and the fighting look came into his eyes. Keep on! Never say die! The scroll – his eyes fell on the letter with its forlorn smudges; that one looked as if a tear had fallen and been wiped off with a grimy hand – the scroll was growing clearer; slowly, yes, but steadily. You had only to look back twenty years, ten years, five! Line upon line, precept upon precept; here a little and there a little —

"Aha!" The word was spoken aloud, in a tone of pleased surprise. "Pippin, I verily believe!" said the chaplain. He studied the superscription a moment. How he had labored over those upstrokes! It was a good hand now, though the scamp would never be a professor of calligraphy. Then he opened the envelope and read as follows:

Dear Friend Elder Hadley Respected Sir,

This is to state that I am first rate and hoping the same in regard to yourself and all friends there. Well Elder I am having a bully time right straight along. I am still to Kingdom in the bakery and grindin same as I last wrote but dont think I shall stop much longer, though I like first-rate and if I felt the Lord intended bakin for mine there's no dandier place, no sir nor one where I'd feel more at home. If they was my own folks they couldn't be kinder to me than what Mr. and Mrs. Baxter is. But I have fixed them all right with a nice boy will step right along and make an A 1 baker if he has his health which appears rugged up to the present and he likes real well and so do they.

Well Elder you said to tell you when I found a Leadin; well sir I have, and it seems to squint like the Lord was showin me His hand. I found a dandy place sir, the dandyest you ever see and folks ekally so, and plenty of room; and savin this boy like, or the Lord savin him through me is what I would say, made me feel Elder I wanted to do sompin for the boys. Yes sir when I see that dandy place and only a few old folks that pooty soon their time would be up I thought fill that nice big house up with boys and learn em farmin and gardenin and like that, why twould be great elder. Take kids like I was with no folks of their own or bum ones which is worse; what I mean take em away from the city and give em hens to take care of and feed the pigs and learn ploughin and sowin and like that and live out doors with a good house to come in nights and good food and some person that knows boys and feels for em and knows what some of em has ben through, I think it would be great sir dont you. I tell you Elder there's guys in there, and lifers some of 'em, if they'd ben handled different when they was kids they'd stayed different yes sir they would and you said the same often. Now what I mean is when I've got this present job done and found that kid Im going to follow this lead, because I feel Elder the Lord is leadin me yes sir He sure is. I opened the lids of the Testament you give me and looked and first thing I see was "This should ye have done and not to leave the other undone." Now wouldn't that give you a pain and so it did me and I said lo here was I like Samuel and I am Elder so help me. Mr. Bailey would like it firstrate but he thinks twould take time I tell him I want to start right in soon as I have this job done. I am leavin tomorrow so no more from yours in the Lord and thanking you kindly Elder I am sure for all you done.

The chaplain read this effusion through twice, a thoughtful frown knitting his brow, a smile curling the corners of his mouth.

He tilted his chair back against the wall, and looked out of the window. Pippin had been much in his mind since their parting two months before. This was the second letter he had received from him. The first had been written within a week of Pippin's leaving Shoreham, and told of his finding Nipper Crewe dying by the roadside, and of the wheel that he considered rightly his. That was a singular meeting, the chaplain thought. The old sinner, full of evil deeds and memories, suspected of many crimes large and small, yet so crafty withal and so passionately bent on keeping out of prison that for the most part he had succeeded. The chaplain shook his head, recalling one inmate and another, who, shaking an impotent fist, choking with rage, had told how after the "deal" for which he was "pinched," Nipper, the instigator of it, had slipped quietly off under the very noses of the police. While his mate and dupe was there, raging and choking, Nipper would be roaming the country at large with his wheel, grinding more or less, observing a great deal, planning the next neat little job. Yes, Nipper was a bad one! And strange to think of Pippin's being chosen to comfort the old sinner in his last hour and inherit the wheel that had been an innocent particeps criminis in so many "deals"! Well, Pippin could comfort him if anyone could, thought the chaplain.

Still looking out of the window, he let his thoughts run back to the day – could it be two years ago? It seemed hardly more than as many months – when he first saw Pippin. His first Sunday as prison chaplain! He had accepted the call because it seemed right; a new hand seemed needed – his thoughts ran off the track, as other visions came crowding in; he brought them back with an effort.

He felt anew, with almost the same shock of strangeness, the first impression of seeing his new flock in chapel that day. The rows on rows of faces, sharp or lowering, weak or silly or vacant, degenerate or sodden, a few that were actually vicious – they were seldom really vicious, his poor boys. Suddenly a head lifted, and he saw the face as of a strayed seraph; then presently heard the voice, as of the same seraph at home, singing. The chaplain broke into a little laugh.

That line came insistently to his mind whenever he heard Pippin sing; yet he knew perfectly well that Milton's seraphim were not singing, but blowing their loud uplifted angel trumpets. Perhaps – perhaps voices and trumpets were more alike there? – Anyhow, Pippin's voice had a trumpet note in certain hymns that he specially loved.

The process of Pippin's conversion – to call it that; the chaplain sought for a better word, rejecting in turn a dozen or more – had been the happiest episode of the two years. Plenty of good and cheerful and hopeful things, but that – what had it been like? Chipping off the baked ashes – in Herculaneum, say – and coming upon the lucid marble of some perfect statue? No! A statue was after all a statue, and could give back no warmth. Mining, then, in dark and cold and foul air – poor boys! there was so much good in the worst of them, though! – and finding a vein of virgin gold – No! Gold was nothing but gold, after all. What – Ah! Here it was! Fumbling with the keys of an organ in the dark, feeling about, waking here a mutter, there a discord, there again a shriek – till suddenly one struck the true chord and the music broke out like sunlight – Or wasn't it after all just that, just sunlight, breaking from a cloud —

"Come in!" the chair was brought hastily to its normal position. A guard touched his cap in the doorway. "Beg pardon, sir, but French Bill has broke loose. Keeper said you was to be told – "

The chaplain was on his feet in an instant. "What has happened? Tell me as we go along!"

"Fell foul of Tom Packard with his bucket, and mauled him consid'able. I've been lookin' for it these two days. Tom was waitin' at his table, and Bill thought he give him a small egg o' purpose."

"Dear me, sirs! Who is with him now?"

The guard chuckled. "There's no one with him! Anybody wouldn't be very comf'table there just now. Jones is handy by, lookin' after him. You can hear him now!"

They could. A muffled roar, rising now and then into a bellow. As they drew nearer, the roar became articulate, and resolved itself into a sustained and passionate request for the blood, liver, and other vital adjuncts of Thomas Packard. "Lemmegetaholdofhim – lemmegetaholdofhim!" Coming down B corridor the clamor was deafening, echoed back from side to side of the narrow passage; accompanied moreover by banging of fists, kicking of feet against iron bars. The chaplain sighed and longed for Pippin. Nobody could manage Bill like Pippin. He usually knocked him down and sat on his chest singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers!" till the fit was over. There wasn't a mite of harm in Bill, Pippin always maintained, only he was nervous, and come to get worked up, he b'iled right over.

The other inmates of B corridor were listening to the uproar, some laughing, others sympathizing with Bill or Tom, as the case might be. Opposite the grated door of the cell a turnkey leaned against the wall, a stolid, unmoved figure. "Here comes chaplain!" the murmur ran from cell to cell; and every face was pressed eagerly against the grating. "Here's chaplain! Chaplain'll sort him!"

Bill himself seemed wholly unconscious of Mr. Hadley's approach. He was a French Canadian, a slender, active fellow. In repose, his face was gentle and rather pensive; now it was the face of a mad wildcat. Shaking the bars with all his strength, he continued to pour out in a monotonous roar his request for the vital organs, amply detailed and characterized, of "Tompackard!"

The chaplain surveyed him quietly for a few minutes in silence; then drew a small square phial from his pocket, and unscrewing the metal top, held it between the bars to the man's nose. With a howl of twenty-wildcat power the fellow let go the bars and staggered backward. Instantly Hadley unlocked the door and stepped inside, closing it quickly after him.

"Now then, Bill," he said quietly, "what's all this row?"

Shaking and glaring, the man cowered in the farthest corner, rubbing his nose, clutching his throat.

"W'at you kill me for?" he muttered hoarsely. "W'at you kill me for, mon père? I do you no harm!"

"I haven't killed you. Sit down, Bill. You've been making a horrid row, do you know it? And you've kicked the toe right out of your boot. Now look at that! Those boots were new last month. You'll have to put a new toe cap over that, or the Warden will have you up for untidiness." He bent to examine the toe. "That's too bad! those new boots!"

"I mend heem!" Bill bent eagerly beside him. "I mend heem good, mon père! Warden nevaire see; I mak heem better as new."

"Well, see you do! And while you're about it, I wish you would look over my shoes, the pair you resoled for me, and see if you can't take the squeak out of them. It doesn't do for the chaplain to go round with squeaking boots, you know; he might disturb quiet fellows like you. By the way, what was your row about, Bill? I heard you had been pitching into Tom Packard."

They had sat down on the bed, the better to examine the injured toe cap. Bill looked up with a shrug, half ashamed, half sulky, wholly Gallic. "He been treatin' me mean, long time, two t'ree days. He geeve me de smalles' egg he can find for my breakfast; leetle, leetle, like pigeon's egg."

"Well, I got a bad egg the other day; halfway to a chicken it was; but I didn't break the cook's head, as I understand you broke poor Tom's."

"Yes! yes! I break hees head; I kill heem if I could. Yes, sir!"

"And now you're ashamed, eh? You know you are, Bill, you may as well own up." After some argument, Bill owned that he was ashamed and promised amendment. "Then that's all right!" The chaplain rose with an air of relief. "I'll speak a word to Father O'Neill, and he'll give you a nice little penance, and you'll make it up with Tom. I'm going to see him now, and I shall tell him you are sorry – yes, I shall, because you are, you know, sorry and ashamed. But remember!" He drew out the square green phial and held it up. "The next time you'll get it stronger!"

The man recoiled in terror, clasping his hands over his nose. "Non! non, mon père! Not kill me again! W'at ees eet? W'at you call eet?"

"Aromatic spirits of ammonia." The chaplain eyed the bottle gravely, shook his head, and put it back into his pocket. "No joke, is it, Bill! Well, good-by, old sport. Remember!"

CHAPTER XII

NIPPER

SO sang Pippin, on a July morning when all the world was singing too. Bobolinks hovering, trilling, lighting, half mad with glee; catbirds giving grand opera in the willows; thrushes quiring psalms in the birches. Pippin stopped short as a dignified robin with the waistcoat of an alderman perched on a blackberry vine at his elbow and poured out a flood of liquid melody. "Like out of a jug!" said Pippin. "How d'you s'pose he does it? Gorry to 'Liza, how do you s'pose he does it!

"Rest easy a spell, Nipper, and I'll rest too, and listen how he does that."

Nipper was the wheel. Setting it on the ground, Pippin sat down under a wide-branching oak and listened while the robin, like a certain wise thrush we know of, sang his song twice over, carefully and thoroughly. Pippin, his head cocked much as the singer's was, noted each cadence, and when the music ceased, repeated it in a clear, mellow whistle. Robin, much intrigued, sang a third time, and a fourth, cocked his head still further and listened critically. Pippin replied more correctly than before; so it might have gone on indefinitely, but for an inquisitive crow who came bustling down to see what it was all about. Robin flew away scornfully, repudiating intercourse with crows; Pippin flirted his handkerchief and told the intruder to be off with himself for an old black juggins.

Leaning against the oak bole, at peace with all mankind, Pippin listened and looked, looked and listened. Presently he became aware of an undertone of sound which made so perfect an accompaniment to the bird concert that he had not at first distinguished it. In the fringe of weeds beside the road a brook was murmuring over pebbles, gently, persistently, wooingly. The July sun was hot; he had been walking since sunrise.

"I'll have me a wash!" quoth Pippin.

He stopped abruptly: he had promised Mrs. Baxter not to say "gosh"; it wasn't an expression she cared to hear him use, not real nice someways.

"And Nipper shall have a bath too!" he said gleefully. "Nip, all the bath you've had these two days is squatterin' in the dust like a hen. I'll show you; just you wait!" Carrying the wheel, he plunged into the green covert; the trees closed behind him. "Green grass!" said Pippin.

There was grass, certainly, long rank grass, such as leans over in graceful curves and dips into brooks. There were sweet rushes too, and jewel weed, and cardinal flowers, which Pippin viewed with respectful admiration, asking, now honestly did you ever? Flowing between these lovely things, taking them quite as a matter of course, was the brook, clear and brown – something like Pippin's eyes, I declare! – babbling over mossy stones, with here a fairy cataract all cream and silver, there a round pool where Pippin might have found a trout, if he had known enough. But he did not know enough, knew in fact nothing whatever about trout; they are not found in cellars, nor in any part of a slum. Kneeling on a flat stone, he drank long draughts of delight, now from his cupped palms, now in sheer boyish glee, putting his mouth to the bubbling silver, letting it splash and tinkle over his face. No thought of germs disturbed his joy; he knew no more of germs than of trout.

Next he pulled off his shirt, pulled out his file and bestowed it safely in a pocket, and producing a bit of soap, fell to splashing about at a tremendous rate, sending trout, lucky bugs, germs and all helter-skelter off in a fright.

A sculptor, watching Pippin at his ablutions, would have wondered how the child of the slums should have developed such muscles as rippled under his brown satin skin. Pippin could have told him. Dod Bashford kept his boys lithe and active as young eels; if they didn't move quick, the rawhide curled about their backs and legs in good shape, Pippin could tell the sculptor. Sometimes the vision would come back even now: boys fighting in a cellar or in the reeking court outside, rolling over and over on the ground, pommelling, kicking, scratching, biting – there were no sporting rules in Bashford's gang. The big brute would stand watching the little ones with an occasional "Go it, pup!" till he was tired or bored, when "Hook it!" followed by the hiss and sting of the rawhide, sent them apart, bleeding, cursing, often weeping with sheer rage and unsated lust of battle. Gee! Remember that fight he had with Nosey, last winter he was with Bashford? Slim, long-legged, snaky kind of guy, Nosey was. Some like a fox; some like a rat, too, a sandy rat: sharp p'inted nose on him. Gee! Pippin gave him a good one on that p'inted nose. Gee! He didn't guess it had p'inted so straight since!

Far enough from Bashford's, here in the green thicket, Pippin splashed to his heart's content: at last, dripping and joyous, he rose and shook himself like a water-dog, spattering the leaves and rushes with crystal drops. "Green grass!" he sighed, "that was great!" Next he washed his red handkerchief and his "other" pair of socks, and hung them on a bush to dry; filed a callous on the sole of his foot that had made him walk "pumple-footed" the last day or two; ran his fingers through and through his hair till it curled like that of the Borghese Hermes.

"Now it's Nipper's turn; come on, Nip!"

He had grown fond of the wheel. It was a faithful creature, following obediently whither he would, whizzing cheerfully, singing, Pippin made no doubt, the only song was give it to sing. This last day or two, though, it had developed a squeak and rattle that was new to him; behooved him look her over and see what was loose.

Having wiped the dust off and oiled the whole apparatus, he proceeded to examine it carefully, inch by inch. He had done this many times before; had in fact kept the little machine in apple-pie order, partly for its own sake and his, partly as in duty bound to the departed Nipper. Old Nipper! He had been a rip, Pippin reflected, same as Old Man Blossom; but yet he sure had done him a good turn leaving him the wheel. Now – here was a thing had oftentimes puzzled him of late – what did Old Man Blossom know about Nipper? They might have been pals, he presumed likely; birds of a feather, you know! Well, yes, that; but Old Man seemed to have some hunch about the wheel; laffed fitterbust, and said them things, you rec'lect. Pippin had studied 'em over and studied 'em over, but he didn't get no —