He was awed by the thought of what had become of it—how Cowperwood managed to do all the things the papers had said he had done.
He had a little formula of questions which he usually went through with each new prisoner—asking him if he was sorry now for the crime he had committed, if he meant to do better with a new chance, if his father and mother were alive, etc.; and by the manner in which they answered these questions—simply, regretfully, defiantly, or otherwise—he judged whether they were being adequately punished or not.
Yet he could not talk to Cowperwood as he now saw or as he would to the average second-story burglar, store-looter, pickpocket, and plain cheap thief and swindler.
And yet he scarcely knew how else to talk.
"Well, now," he went on,
"I don't suppose you ever thought you'd get to a place like this, did you, Mr. Cowperwood?"
"I never did," replied Frank, simply.
"I wouldn't have believed it a few months ago, Mr. Chapin.
I don't think I deserve to be here now, though of course there is no use of my telling you that."
He saw that old Chapin wanted to moralize a little, and he was only too glad to fall in with his mood.
He would soon be alone with no one to talk to perhaps, and if a sympathetic understanding could be reached with this man now, so much the better.
Any port in a storm; any straw to a drowning man.
"Well, no doubt all of us makes mistakes," continued Mr. Chapin, superiorly, with an amusing faith in his own value as a moral guide and reformer.
"We can't just always tell how the plans we think so fine are coming out, can we?
You're here now, an' I suppose you're sorry certain things didn't come out just as you thought; but if you had a chance I don't suppose you'd try to do just as you did before, now would yuh?"
"No, Mr. Chapin, I wouldn't, exactly," said Cowperwood, truly enough, "though I believed I was right in everything I did.
I don't think legal justice has really been done me."
"Well, that's the way," continued Chapin, meditatively, scratching his grizzled head and looking genially about.
"Sometimes, as I allers says to some of these here young fellers that comes in here, we don't know as much as we thinks we does.
We forget that others are just as smart as we are, and that there are allers people that are watchin' us all the time.
These here courts and jails and detectives—they're here all the time, and they get us.
I gad"—Chapin's moral version of "by God"—"they do, if we don't behave."
"Yes," Cowperwood replied, "that's true enough, Mr. Chapin."
"Well," continued the old man after a time, after he had made a few more solemn, owl-like, and yet well-intentioned remarks, "now here's your bed, and there's your chair, and there's your wash-stand, and there's your water-closet.
Now keep 'em all clean and use 'em right." (You would have thought he was making Cowperwood a present of a fortune.) "You're the one's got to make up your bed every mornin' and keep your floor swept and your toilet flushed and your cell clean.
There hain't anybody here'll do that for yuh.
You want to do all them things the first thing in the mornin' when you get up, and afterward you'll get sumpin' to eat, about six-thirty.
You're supposed to get up at five-thirty."
"Yes, Mr. Chapin," Cowperwood said, politely.
"You can depend on me to do all those things promptly."
"There hain't so much more," added Chapin.
"You're supposed to wash yourself all over once a week an' I'll give you a clean towel for that.
Next you gotta wash this floor up every Friday mornin'."
Cowperwood winced at that.
"You kin have hot water for that if you want it.
I'll have one of the runners bring it to you.
An' as for your friends and relations"—he got up and shook himself like a big Newfoundland dog.
"You gotta wife, hain't you?"
"Yes," replied Cowperwood.
"Well, the rules here are that your wife or your friends kin come to see you once in three months, and your lawyer—you gotta lawyer hain't yuh?"
"Yes, sir," replied Cowperwood, amused.
"Well, he kin come every week or so if he likes—every day, I guess—there hain't no rules about lawyers.
But you kin only write one letter once in three months yourself, an' if you want anything like tobaccer or the like o' that, from the store-room, you gotta sign an order for it, if you got any money with the warden, an' then I can git it for you."
The old man was really above taking small tips in the shape of money.
He was a hold-over from a much more severe and honest regime, but subsequent presents or constant flattery were not amiss in making him kindly and generous.
Cowperwood read him accurately.
"Very well, Mr. Chapin; I understand," he said, getting up as the old man did.
"Then when you have been here two weeks," added Chapin, rather ruminatively (he had forgot to state this to Cowperwood before), "the warden 'll come and git yuh and give yuh yer regular cell summers down-stairs.
Yuh kin make up yer mind by that time what y'u'd like tuh do, what y'u'd like to work at.
If you behave yourself proper, more'n like they'll give yuh a cell with a yard. Yuh never can tell."