Scamp and I: A Story of City By-Ways

by L. T. Meade

The chapel-bell rang; he started up, thrust his precious unopened letter into his pocket, adjusted his, mask, and walked with his fellow-prisoners in silent, grim, unbroken order into chapel.

Had any one looked beneath the mask, they would have seen, for the first time since perhaps his entrance into that prison, that the old sullen expression had left his face, that it wore a look of interest and satisfaction. He hugged his letter very close to his breast, and edged himself into the queer little nook allotted to him, from which he could just see the chaplain, and no one else. As a rule he either went to sleep in chapel, or made faces at the chaplain, or fired pellets of bread, which he kept concealed about him, at the other prisoners. On one occasion the spirit of all evil so far possessed him, that one of these, as hard as any shot, came with a resounding report on the mild nose of the then officiating chaplain, as he was fumbling for a loose sheet of his sermon, and nobody discovered that he was the offender. How often he had chuckled over this trick, over the discomfiture of the Rev. Gentleman, and the red bump which immediately arose on his most prominent feature; how often, how very often, he had longed to do it again. But to-day he had none of this feeling: if he had a thousand bread pellets ready, they might have lain quite harmless in his pocket. He was restless, however, and longed to get back to his cell, not to open his letter, he did not mean to do that until quite the evening, but to hold it in his hand, and turn it round and gaze at it; he was restless, and wished the hour and a quarter usually spent in chapel was over, and he looked around him and longed much to find somebody or something to occupy his attention, for Jenks never dreamed of joining in the prayers, or listening to the lessons.

The prison chapel is not constructed to enable the prisoners to gaze about them, and as the only individual Jenks could see was the chaplain, he fixed his eyes on him.

He did this with a little return of his old sullenness, for though he was a good man, and even Jenks admitted this, he was so tired of him. He had seen him so very, very often, in his cell and at chapel. After spending his life amid the myriad faces of London, Jenks had found the months, during which he had never gazed on any human countenance but that of his warder, the governor, chaplain, and doctor, interminably long.

He was sick of those four faces, sick of studying them so attentively, he knew every trick of feature they all possessed, and he was weary of watching them. But of all the four the face of the chaplain annoyed him most, perhaps because he had watched him so often in chapel. But to-day it might be a shade better to look at him than to gaze at the hard dead wood in front of his cell-like pew—so sullenly he raised his eyes to the spot where he expected to find him. He did so, then gave a start, and the sullenness passed away like a cloud; his lucky star was in the ascendant to-day—a stranger was in the chaplain’s place, he had a fresh face to study. He had a fresh face to study, and one that even in a London crowd must have occupied his attention. A man bordering on fifty, with grey hair, a massive chin, very dark, very deeply-set eyes, and an iron frame, stood before him.

Jenks hated effeminate men, so he looked with admiration at this one, and presently, the instincts of his trade being ever uppermost, began to calculate how best he could pick his pockets, and what a dreadful grip the stranger could give his—Jenks’—throat with those great muscular hands.

Suddenly he felt a grip somewhere else, a pang of remorse going right through his hardened heart. The strange chaplain, for half an instant, had fixed his deep-set eyes on him, and immediately it began to occur to Jenks what a shameful fellow he must be to allow such a man as that to speak without listening to him.

The new face was so pleasing, that for a moment or two he made an effort to rouse himself, and even repeated “Our Father” beneath his breath, just to feel what the sensation was like. Then old habits overcame him—he fell asleep.

He was in a sound, sweet sleep, undetected by the warder, when suddenly a movement, a breath of wind, or perhaps the profound silence which reigned for a moment through the little chapel, awoke him—awoke him thoroughly. He started upright, to find that the stranger was about to deliver his text.

This was the text: