Scamp and I: A Story of City By-Ways

She had met with sorrow – who hasn’t? But she had conquered and risen above sorrow, as her pale, calm, unwrinkled face testified. She was a brave woman, a succourer of the oppressed, a friend in the house of trouble, or mourning, as the pathetic, dark grey eyes, which looked out at you from under their straight black brows, declared. Long afterwards she told Flo in half-a-dozen simple words her history.

“God took away from me all, child – father – mother – lover – home. He made me quite empty, and then left me so for a little time, to let me feel what it was like: but when I had tasted the full bitterness, He came and filled me with Himself – brim full of Himself. Then I had my mission from Him. Go feed my sheep – go feed my lambs. Is it not enough?”

“You like my picture, Mrs Jenks,” she said now, “and so does the child,” touching Flo as she spoke with the tips of her white fingers. “Come into this room and I will show you another – there.”

She led the way into a little room rendered dark, not by the great tree, but by Venetian blinds. Over the mantel-piece was another solitary picture – again a water-colour.

Some cows, four beautifully sketched, ease-loving creatures, standing with their feet in a pool of clear water: sedgy, marshy ground behind them, a few broken trees, and a ridge of low hills in the background – over all the evening sky.

“That picture,” said the lady, “is called ‘Repose,’ – to me it is repose with stagnation; I like my waves better.”

“And yet, Miss Mary,” replied the widow, “how restful and trustful the dumb creatures look! I think they read us a lesson.”

“So they do, Mrs Jenks; all His works read us a lesson – but come back to my waves, I want their breezes on my face, the day is stifling.”

She led the way back into the first room, and seated herself on a low chair.

“This is your little girl, and this the dog – Scamp, you call him. Why did you give him so outlandish a name? he does not deserve it, he is a good faithful dog, there is nothing scampish about him, I see that in his face.”

“Yes, ma’am, he’s as decent conducted and faithful a cretur as ever walked. Wot scamp he is, is only name deep, not natur deep.”

“Well, that is right – What’s in a name? Come here, Scamp, poor fellow, and you, little Flo, you come also; I have a great deal to say to you and your dog.” The child and the dog went up and stood close to the kind face. Miss Mary put her arm round Flo, and laid one shapely white hand on Scamp’s forehead.

“So God has taken away your little bed,” she said to the child, “and you don’t know where to sleep to-night.”

“Oh! yes, mum, I does,” said Flo in a cheerful voice, for she did not wish Mrs Jenks to think she missed her bed very much. “Scamp and me, we ’as a mattress in hour cellar.”

Miss Mary smiled.

“Now, Flo,” she said, “I really don’t wish to disappoint you, but I greatly fear you are mistaken. You may have a mattress, but you have no mattress in number 7, Duncan Street, for that cellar, as well as every other cellar in the street, has been shut up by the police three weeks ago. They are none of them fit places for human beings to live in.”

If Miss Mary, sitting there in her summer muslin, surrounded by every comfort, thought that Flo would rejoice in the fact that these places, unfit for any of God’s creatures, were shut up, she was vastly mistaken. Dark and wretched hole of a place as number 7, Duncan Street, was, it was there her mother had died, it was there she and Dick had played, and struggled, and been honest, and happy. Poor miserable shred of a home, it was the only home she had ever possessed the only place she had a right to call her own.

Now that it was gone, the streets or the Adelphi arches stared her in the face. Veritable tears came to her eyes, and in her excitement and distress, she forgot her awe of the first lady who had ever spoken to her.

“Please, mum, ef the cellar is shut up, wot ’ave come of my little bits o’ duds, my mattress, and table, and little cobbler’s stool? – that little stool wor worth sixpence any day, it stood so steady on its legs. Wot ’ave come o’ them, mum, and wot’s to come o’ Scamp and me, mum?”

“Ah!” said the lady more kindly than ever, “that is the important question, what is to become of you and Scamp? Well, my dear, God has a nice little plan all ready for you both, and what you have to do is to say yes to it.”

“And I ’ave brought you here to learn all about it, Flo,” said Mrs Jenks, nodding and smiling at her.

Then Miss Mary made the child seat herself on a low stool by her side, and unfolded to her a wonderful revelation. She, Flo, was no stranger to this lady. Mrs Jenks once a week worked as char-woman in this house, and had long ago told its mistress of her little charge; and Miss Mary was charmed and interested, and wanted to buy Scamp, only Mrs Jenks declared that that would break Flo’s heart. So instead she had contributed something every week to the keep of the two.

Now she wished to do something more. Miss Mary Graham was not rich, and long ago every penny of her spare money had been appropriated in various charitable ways, but about a fortnight ago a singular thing had happened to her. She received through the post a cheque for a small sum with these words inside the envelope —

“To be spent on the first little homeless London child you care to devote it to.”

The gift, sent anonymously, seemed to point directly to Flo, and Miss Graham resolved that she should reap the benefit.

Her plan for her was this, – she and Scamp were to live with Mrs Jenks for at least a year, and during that time Mrs Jenks was to instruct Flo in reading and writing, in fine sewing, and in all the mysteries of household work and cooking, and when Flo was old enough and strong enough, and if she turned out what they earnestly trusted she would turn out, she was to come to Miss Mary as her little servant, for Miss Mary expected that in a year or two Annie would be married and have a home of her own.

“Does this plan suit you, Flo? Are you willing when the time comes to try to be a faithful little servant to any master or mistress you may be with?” Whatever Flo’s feelings may have been, her answer was a softly, a very softly spoken —

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you know how you are to learn?”

“No, ma’am; but Mrs Jenks, she knows.”

“Mrs Jenks knows certainly, and so may you. You must be God’s little servant first – you must begin by being God’s little servant to-day, and then when the time comes you will be a good and faithful servant to whoever you are with.”

“Yes, ma’am,” answered Flo, a look of reverence, of love, of wonder at the care God was taking of her, stealing over her downcast face. Miss Mary saw the look, and rose from her seat well satisfied, she had found the child her Heavenly Father meant her to serve.

“But please, mum,” said Flo, “does yer know about Dick?”

“Yes, my dear, I know all about your little brother. Mrs Jenks has told me Dick’s story as well as yours. And I know this much, which perhaps you may not know; his stealing was a bad thing, but his being taken up and sent, not to prison, but to the good reformatory school where he now is, was the best thing that could happen to him. I have been over that school, Flo, and I know that the boys in it are treated well, and are happy. They are taught a trade, and are given a fair start in life.

“Many a boy such as Dick owes his salvation to the school he now is in.

“By the way, did you notice Annie, my little servant?”

“Yes, ma’am,” and a smile came to Flo’s face at the remembrance of the bright, pleasant-looking handmaiden.

“She has given me leave to tell you something, Flo; something of her own history.

“Once my dear, faithful Annie was a little London thief – a notorious little London thief. She knew of no God, she knew of nothing good – she was not even as fortunate as you and Dick were, for she had no mother to keep her right. When not quite ten years old she was concerned in a daring city robbery – she was taken up – convicted – and at last sentenced, first for a month to Wandsworth House of Correction, afterwards for four years to the girls’ reformatory school at that place.

“She has often told me what happened to her on the day she arrived at this school. She went there hating every one, determined never to change her ways, to remain for ever hardened and wicked.

“The matron called her aside and spoke to her thus:

”‘I know what is said of you, but I do not believe half of it —I am going to trust you.

”‘Here is a five-pound note; take this note to such a shop, and bring me back four sovereigns in gold, and one in silver.’

“That noble trust saved the girl. At that moment, as she herself said, all inclination for thieving utterly left her. (A fact.) From that day to this she has never touched a farthing that is not strictly her own. You see what she is now in appearance; when you know her better, you will see what she is in character – a true Christian – a noble woman. All the nobler for having met and conquered temptation.”

Miss Mary paused, then added softly, “What she has become, Dick may become.”

When Mrs Jenks, and Flo, and Scamp came home that morning, Flo, who after all that had happened felt sure that nothing ever could surprise her again, still could not help, when she entered the neat little room – her real home now – starting back and folding her hands in mute astonishment. The rough-looking, untidy mattress was gone, and in its place stood a tiny, bright-looking iron bedstead, on which the smallest of snowy beds was made up.

Over the bedstead, pinned against the wall, was a card with these words printed on it —

“GOD’S GIFT TO FLO.”

Chapter Sixteen

Bright Days

And now began a happy time in a hitherto very dark little life.

All her cares, her anxieties for Dick even, swept away, Flo had stept into a state of existence that to her was one of luxury.

The effect on many a nature, after the first burst of thankfulness was over, would have been a hardening one. The bright sunshine of prosperity, without any of the rain of affliction, would have dried up the fair soil, withered, and caused to die, the good seed.

But on Flo the effect was different; she never forgot one thing, and this memory kept all else straight within her. In counting up her mercies, she never forgot that it was God who gave them to her; and in return she gave Him, not love as a duty, but love rising free and spontaneous out of a warm, strong heart.

And He whom she loved she longed to hear more of, and Mrs Jenks, whose love for God and faith in God was as great as her own, loved to tell her of Him.

So these two, in their simple, unlearned way, held converse often together on things that the men of this world so seldom allude to, and doubtless they learned more about God than the men of this world, with all their talents and cultivated tastes, ever attain to.

It was Mrs Jenks’ simple plan to take all that the Bible said in its literal and exact meaning, and Flo and she particularly delighted in its descriptions (not imagery to them) of Heaven.

And when Mrs Jenks read to Flo out of the 21st and 22nd chapters of the Revelation, the child would raise her clear brown eyes to the autumn sky, and see with that inner sense, so strong in natures like hers, the gates of pearl and golden streets. God lived there – and many people who once were sad and sorrowful in this world, lived there – and it was the lovely happy home where she hoped she and Dick should also live some day.

“And you too, Mrs Jenks, and that poor lad of yours,” she would say, laying her head caressingly on the little woman’s knee.

But Mrs Jenks rather wondered why Flo never mentioned now that other Jenks, her namesake, who was wearing out his slow nine months’ imprisonment in the Wandsworth House of Correction.

Once Flo had been very fond of him, and his name was on her lips twenty times a day, now she never spoke of him.

Why was this? Had she forgotten Jenks? Hardly likely.

She was such a tender, affectionate little thing, interested even in that poor prodigal lad, whose best robe would soon be as ready, and as bright, and fresh, and new, as Mrs Jenks’ fingers could make it.

No, Flo had not forgotten Jenks, but she had found out a secret. Without any one telling her, she had guessed who the lad was who was expected back in the spring; who that jacket, and trousers, and vest were getting ready for. A certain likeness in the eyes, a certain play of the lips, had connected poor Jenks in prison with Mrs Jenks in this bright, home-like, little room. She knew they were mother and son, but as Mrs Jenks had not mentioned it herself, she would never pretend that she had discovered her secret. But Flo had one little fear – she was not quite sure that Jenks would come home. She knew nothing of his previous history, but in her own intercourse with him she had learned enough of his character to feel sure that the love for thieving was far more deeply engrafted into his heart than his gentle, trusting little mother had any idea of. When he was released from prison, bad companions would get round him, and he would join again in their evil ways.

He could not now harm Dick, who was safe at that good school for two or three years, but in their turn others might harm him, and the jacket and trousers might lie by unused, and the crocuses and snowdrops wither, and still Jenks might not come. He might only join in more crime, and go back again to prison, and in the end break his mother’s gentle, trusting heart.

Now Flo wondered could she do anything to bring the prodigal home. She thought of this a great deal; she lay in her little white bed, the bed God had given her, and told God about it, and after a time a plan came into her head.

Three times a week she went to Miss Mary’s pleasant house to be taught knitting by Annie, and reading and writing by that lady herself, and on one of these occasions she unfolded her idea to this kind listener, and between them they agreed that it should be carried out.

Chapter Seventeen

Two Locks of Hair

It was Sunday morning at Wandsworth House of Correction – a fair, late autumnal morning. The trees had on their bright, many-coloured tints, the sky above was flecked with soft, greyish-white clouds, and tender with the loveliest blue. The summer heat was over, but the summer fragrance still dwelt in the air; the summer beauty, subdued, but perhaps more lovely than when in its prime, still lingered on the fair landscape of Wandsworth common.

In the prison the walls were gleaming snowy white, but so they gleamed when the frost and snow sparkled a little whiter outside, when the hot breath of fiercest summer seemed to weigh down the air.

The symbols of the four seasons – the leafless trees, the tender, pale green trees, the drooping, heavily-laden, sheltering trees, the trees clothed in purple and gold – were unknown to those within the House of Correction.

The prisoners saw no trees from the high windows of their cells. When they walked out in that walled-in enclosure, each prisoner treading in those dreary circles five feet apart from his fellow, they saw a little withered grass, and a little sky, blue, grey, or cloudy, but no trees.

The trees are only for the free, not for men and women shut in for the punishment of their crimes.

So the seasons are felt in the temperature, but unknown to the sense of sight.

On this particular Sunday morning a warder might have been seen pacing slowly down the dismal corridor which divides the dark and light punishment cells.

He was whistling a low tune under his breath, and thinking how by and by he should be off duty, and could enjoy his Sunday dinner and go for a walk across the common with his wife and the child. He thought of his Sunday treat a great deal, as was but natural, and just a little of the prisoners, whom he apostrophised as “Poor Brutes.” Not that he felt unkindly towards them – very far from that; he was, as the world goes, a humane man, but it was incomprehensible to him how men and boys, when they were confined in Wandsworth, did not submit to the rules of the place, and make themselves as comfortable as circumstances would permit, instead of defying everything, and getting themselves shut up in those dreary dark cells.

“And this willan ’ave been in fur four days and nights now,” he soliloquised, as he stopped at the door of one. “Well, I’m real glad ’is punishment is hover, though ’ee’s as ’ardened a young chap as hever see daylight.”

He unlocked the double doors, which, when shut, not only excluded all sound, but every ray of light, and went in.

A lad was cowering up in one corner of the wooden bedstead – a lad with a blanched face, and eyes glowing like two coals. The warder went over and laid his hand on his shoulder – he started at the touch, and shivered from head to foot with either rage or fear.

“Now then, G.2.14,” in a kindly voice, “your punishment’s hover for this time, and I ’opes you’ll hact more sensible in future – you may get back to your cell.”

The lad staggered blindly to his feet, and the warder, catching hold of him, arranged his mask – a piece of dark grey cloth, having eyelet holes, and a tiny bit of alpaca inserted for the mouth – over his face.

On the back of his jacket were painted in white letters two inches long, H.C.W.S., which initials stood for House of Correction, Wandsworth, Surrey.

Staying his staggering steps with his strong arm, the warder conducted him back to his cell, into which he locked him.

Then the boy, with a great groan, or sigh of relief, threw up his mask, and looked about the little room. He had tasted nothing but bread and water for the last four days, and his Sunday breakfast, consisting of a pint of oatmeal gruel and six ounces of bread, stood ready for his acceptance, and by the side of the bread was – what?

Something that made him forget his great bodily hunger, and start forward with a ray of joy breaking all over his sullen face. This was what he saw.

A letter was here – a letter ready for him to open.

He had heard that once in three months the Wandsworth prisoners were allowed to write and receive letters. This rule he had heard with indifference – in all his life he had never had a letter – what matter was it to him whoever else got them.

He knew how to read and write. Long ago, when a little lad, he had learned these accomplishments – he could also decipher the writing of other people, and spelt his own name now on the little oblong packet which had found its way into his cell.

Yes, it was a bonâ fide letter, it had a stamp on it, and the London post-mark. It was a bonâ fide letter, and his letter also – a letter directed to him. He gazed at it for a moment or two, then took it up and handled it carefully, and turned it round, and examined the back of it, and held it up to the light – then he put it down, and took a turn the length of his cell.

Unless we are quite dunned by creditors, and mean never to open anything that is sent to us by the post, we have a kind of interest in that sharp double knock, and a kind of pleasure in opening our various epistles.

However many we get, our pulses do beat just a quarter of a shade quicker as we unfasten the envelope. There is never any saying what news the contents may announce to us; perhaps a fortune, an advantageous proposal, the birth of a new relation, the death of an old friend, that appointment we never thought to have obtained, that prize we never hoped to have won: or perhaps, the loss of that prize, the filling up by another man of that appointment. A letter may bring us any possible or impossible news, therefore at all times these little missives, with the Queen’s head on them, are interesting.

But what if we are in prison, if we have just been confined for days and nights in the dark cell, fed on bread and water, sentenced to the horrors and silence of the tomb; if bad thoughts, and hardening thoughts, and maddening thoughts, if Satan and his evil spirits, have been bearing us company? What, if we are only addressed when spoken to at all as a number, and our human name, our Christian name, is never pronounced to us; and what if we have been going through this silent punishment, this unendurable confinement, for months, and we feel that it is right and just we should be so punished, right and just that all men should forsake us, and pass us by, and forget us – and all the time, though we know that justice is dealing with us, and we ought neither to cry out nor to complain, we know and feel also, that seven devils are entering into us, and our last state will be worse, far worse than our first?

And then, when we come back from the darkness, and feel again the blessed light of day, and the pure breeze of nature – coming in through the open window of our cell – is fanning our face, and though our spirit is still burning with mad and rebellious passions, our body is grateful for the relief of God’s own gifts of light and air, then we, who never before, never in our happiest days, received even a halfpenny wrapper’s worth through the post, see a letter – our first letter – pure, and thick, and white, awaiting us – a little dainty parcel bearing our baptismal name, and the name, unspotted by any crime, which our father bequeathed to us, lying ready for our acceptance?

Jenks had returned to his cell after all this severe punishment as hardened and bad a lad as ever walked – sullen, disobedient, defiant. The kind of boy whom chaplains, however tender-hearted, and however skilful in their modes of dealing with other men and boys, would regard as hopeless, as past any chance of reform.

He gazed at the letter, so unexpected, so welcome. At first he was excited, agitated, then he grew calm, a look of satisfaction changed utterly the whole expression of his face.

Somebody in that great, wide, outer world had not forgotten him. He sat down and ate his breakfast with appetite and relish; he could enjoy things again; he was still William Jenks to somebody – the boy felt human once more.

But he would not open his letter at once – not he. No irreverent fingers, no hasty fingers, should tear that precious envelope asunder.

When a man only gets a letter after three months of absolute silence he is never over-hasty in perusing its contents. The sweets of anticipation are very good, and must not be too quickly got over, and when a letter is once opened its great charm is more or less gone.

But the first letter of all, the first letter received in one’s entire life, and received in prison, must be made a very long pleasure indeed.

Jenks had hitherto found Sunday at Wandsworth the most unendurable day of the seven: the slow hours seemed really leaden-weighted.

On other days he had his oakum to pick, his routine of labour to get through – on this day, with the exception of chapel and meals, he had nothing whatever wherewith to wile away the long hours. True, the chaplain supplied him with books, but Jenks could not read well enough to take pleasure in reading for its own sake, and never was there a nature less studiously inclined than his.

So on Sunday he thought his darkest thoughts, and hatched his worst plots for the future, and prepared himself for the week of rebellion and punishment which invariably ensued.

But, on this Sunday all would be different, his letter would give him employment and satisfaction for many hours. He grudged the time he must spend in chapel, he wanted the whole day to hold his little missive, to gaze at the cover, to put it up to the light, to spell out the beloved direction, after a time to spell out the contents. First of all he must guess who sent it.

If it took him two hours, three hours, he must guess from whom it came.

Who could have written to him? He was popular in his way – he had too bright a manner, too merry a face, not to be that. He had a good many acquaintances, and friends and chums, lads who, with all their thieving propensities and ruffianly ways, would have shared their last crust with him, and one and all voted him a jolly good fellow.

But not one of these would write to him; he passed them over in silent contempt, at the bare possibility of their being either able or willing to write to him.

Jim Stokes, or Bob Allen, or any of those other fine daring young fellows, send him a letter! Send him too a letter looking like this, or directed like this! Why, this letter had a more genteel appearance than long ago the letters his sailor father had sent to his mother had worn. Was it likely that either Jim or Bob, or any of the companions of Jim or Bob, those ignorant lads who could hardly sign their names, would send him a letter like this? Had they wished it ever so much, the thing was impossible.