MR. HARDIE found his daughter lying ashy pale on a little bed in the drawing-room of Albion Villa. She was now scarce conscious. The old doctor sat at her head looking very grave; and Julia kneeled over her beloved friend, pale as herself; with hands clasped convulsively, and great eyes of terror and grief.
That vivid young face, full of foreboding and woe, struck Mr. Hardie the moment he entered, and froze his very heart. The strong man quivered and sank slowly like a felled tree by the bedside; and his face and the poor girl’s, whose earthly happiness he had coldly destroyed, nearly met over his crushed daughter.
“Jane, my child,” he gasped; “my poor little Jane!”
“Oh let me sleep,” she moaned feebly.
“Darling, it’s your own papa,” said Julia softly.
“Poor papa!” said she, turning rather to Julia than to him. “Let me sleep.”
She was in a half lethargic state.
Mr. Hardie asked the doctor in an agitated whisper if he might move her home. The doctor shook his head: “Not by my advice; her pulse is scarce perceptible. We must not move her nor excite her, nor yet let her sink into lethargy. She is in great danger, very great.”
At these terrible words Mr. Hardie groaned: and they all began to speak below the breath.
“Edward,” murmured Mrs. Dodd hurriedly, “run and put off the auction: put it off altogether; then go to the railway; nothing must come here to make a noise, and get straw put down directly. Do that first, dear.”
“You are kinder to me than I deserve,” muttered Mr. Hardie humbly, quite cowed by the blow that had fallen on him. The words agitated Mrs. Dodd with many thoughts, but she whispered as calmly as she could, “Let us think of nothing now but this precious life.”
Mr. Hardie begged to see the extent of the injury.
Mrs. Dodd dissuaded him, but he persisted. Then the doctor showed her poor head.
At that the father uttered a scream and sat quivering. Julia buried her face in the bed-clothes directly, and sobbed vehemently. It passed faintly across the benumbed and shuddering father, “How she loves my child; they all love her,” but the thought made little impression at the time; the mind was too full of terror and woe. The doctor now asked for brandy in a whisper. Mrs. Dodd left the room with stealthy foot, and brought it. He asked for a quill. Julia went with swift, stealthy foot, and brought it. With adroit and tender hands they aided the doctor, and trickled stimulants down her throat. Then sat like statues of grief about the bed; only every now and then eye sought eye, and endeavoured to read what the other thought. Was there hope? Was there none? And by-and-bye, so roving is the mind, especially when the body is still, these statues began to thrill with thoughts of the past as well as the absorbing present.
Ay, here were met a strange party; a stranger, for its size, methinks, never yet met on earth, to mingle their hearts together in one grief.
Just think! Of him who sat there with his face hidden in his hands, and his frame shuddering, all the others were the victims.
Yet the lady, whose husband he had robbed and driven mad, pitied and sympathised with him, and he saw it; the lady, whom he had insulted at the altar and blighted her young heart and life, pitied and sympathised with him; the poor old doctor pitied and sympathised, and was more like an anxious father than a physician.
Even Jane was one of his victims; for she fell by the hand of a man he had dishonestly ruined and driven out of his senses.
Thinking of all he had done, and this the end of it, he was at once crushed and melted.
He saw with awe that a mightier hand than man’s was upon him; it had tossed him and his daughter into the house and the arms of the injured Dodds, in defiance of all human calculation; and he felt himself a straw in that hand: so he was, and the great globe itself. Oh, if Jane should die! the one creature he loved, the one creature, bereaved of whom he could get no joy even from riches.
What would he not give to recall the past, since all his schemes had but ended in this. Thus stricken by terror of the divine wrath, and touched by the goodness and kindness of those he had cruelly wronged, all the man was broken with remorse. Then he vowed to undo his own work as far as possible: he would do anything, everything, if Heaven would spare him his child.
Now it did so happen that these resolves, earnest and sincere but somewhat vague, were soon put to the test; and, as often occurs, what he was called on to do first was that which he would rather have done last. Thus it was: about five o’clock in the afternoon Jane Hardie opened her eyes and looked about her.
It was a moment of intense anxiety. They all made signals, but held their breath. She smiled at sight of Mr. Hardie, and said, “Papa! dear papa!”
There was great joy: silent on the part of Mrs. Dodd and Julia; but Mr. Hardie, who saw in this a good omen, Heaven recognising his penitence, burst out: “She knows me; she speaks; she will live. How good God is! Yes, my darling child, it is your own father. You will be brave and get well, for my sake.”
Jane did not seem to pay much heed to these words: she looked straight before her like one occupied with her own thought, and said distinctly and solemnly, “Papa — send for Alfred.”
It fell on all three like a clap of thunder, those gentle but decided tones, those simple natural words.
Julia’s eyes flashed into her mother’s, and then sought the ground directly.
There was a dead silence.
Mr. Hardie was the one to speak “Why for him, dear? Those who love you best are all here.”
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t thwart her, sir,” said the doctor, in alarm. “This is no time to refuse her anything in your power. Sometimes the very expectation of a beloved person coming keeps them alive; stimulates the powers.”
Mr. Hardie was sore perplexed. He recoiled from the sudden exposure that might take place, if Alfred without any preparation or previous conciliatory measures were allowed to burst in upon them. And while his mind was whirling within him in doubt and perplexity, Jane spoke again; but no longer calmly and connectedly; she was beginning to wander. Presently in her wandering she spoke of Edward; called him dear Edward. Mrs. Dodd rose hastily, and her first impulse was to ask both gentlemen to retire: so instinctively does a good woman protect her own sex against the other. But, reflecting that this was the father, she made an excuse and retired herself instead, followed by Julia. The doctor divined, and went to the window. The father sat by the bed, and soon gathered his daughter loved Edward Dodd.
The time was gone by when this would have greatly pained him.
He sighed like one overmatched by fate; but said, “You shall have him, my darling; he is a good young man, he shall be your husband, you shall be happy. Only live for my sake, for all our sakes.” She paid no attention and wandered on a little; but her mind gradually cleared, and by-and-bye she asked quietly for a glass of water. Mr. Hardie gave it her. She sipped, and he took it from her. She looked at him close, and said distinctly, “Have you sent for Alfred?”
“No, love, not yet.”
“Not yet? There is no time to lose,” she said gravely.
Mr. Hardie trembled. Then, being alone with her, the miserable man unable to say no, unwilling to say yes, tried to persuade her not to ask for Alfred. “My dear,” he whispered, “I will not refuse you: but I have a secret to confide to you. Will you keep it?”
“Yes, papa, faithfully.”
“Poor Alfred is not himself. He has delusions: he is partly insane. My brother Thomas has thought it best for us all to put him under gentle restraint for a time. It would retard his cure to have him down here and subject him to excitement.”
“Papa,” said Jane, “are you deceiving me, or are you imposed upon? Alfred insane! It is a falsehood. He came to me the night before the wedding that was to be. Oh, my brother, my darling brother, how dare they say you are insane! That letter you showed me then was a falsehood? Oh, papa!”
“I feared to frighten you,” said Mr. Hardie, and hung his head.
“I see it all,” she cried “those wicked men with their dark words have imposed on you. Bring him to me that I may reconcile you all, and end all this misery ere I go hence and be no more seen.”
“Oh, my child, don’t talk so,” cried Mr. Hardie, trembling. “Think of your poor father.”
“I do,” she cried, “I do. Oh, papa, I lie here between two worlds, and see them both so clear. Trust to me: and, if you love me ——”
“If I love you, Jane? Better than all the world twice told.”
“Then don’t refuse me this one favour: the last, perhaps, I shall ever ask you. I want my brother here before it is too late. Tell him he must come to his little sister, who loves him dearly, and — is dying.
“Oh no! no! no!” cried the agonised father, casting everything to the winds. “I will. He shall be here in twelve hours. Only promise me to bear up. Have a strong will; have courage. You shall have Alfred, you shall have anything you like on earth, anything that money can get you. What am I saying? I have no money; it is all gone. But I have a father’s heart. Madam, Mrs. Dodd!” She came directly.
“Can you give me paper? No, I won’t trust to a letter. I’ll send off a special messenger this moment. It is for my son, madam. He will be here tomorrow morning. God knows how it will all end. But how can I refuse my dying child? Oh, madam, you are good, kind, forgiving; keep my poor girl alive for me: keep telling her Alfred is coming; she cares more for him than for her poor heart-broken father.”
And the miserable man rushed out, leaving Mrs. Dodd in tears for him.
He was no sooner gone than Julia came in; and clasped her mother, and trembled on her bosom. Then Mrs. Dodd knew she had overheard Mr. Hardie’s last words.
Jane Hardie, too, though much exhausted by the scene with her father, put out her hand to Julia, and took hers, and said feebly, but with a sweet smile, “He is coming, love; all shall be well.” Then to herself as it were, and looking up with a gentle rapture in her pale face —
“Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God.”
On this thought she seemed to feed with innocent joy; but for a long time was too weak to speak again.
Mr. Hardie, rushing from the house, found Edward at work outside; he was crying undisguisedly, and with his coat off, working harder at spreading the straw than both the two men together he had got to help him. Mr. Hardie took his hand and wrung it, but could not speak.
In half an hour a trusty agent he had often employed was at the station waiting for the up train, nearly due.
He came back to Albion Villa. Julia met him on the stairs with her fingers to her lips. “She is sleeping; the doctor has hopes. Oh, sir, let us all pray for her day and night.”
Mr. Hardie blessed her; it seemed the face of an angel, so earnest, so lovely, so pious. He went home: and at the door of his own house Peggy met him with anxious looks. He told her what he had done.
“Good Heavens!” said she; “have you forgotten? He says he will kill you the first day he gets out. You told me so yourself.”
“Yes, Baker said so. I can’t help it. I don’t care what becomes of me; I care only for my child. Leave me, Peggy; there, go, go.”
He was no sooner alone than he fell upon his knees, and offered the Great Author of life and death — a bargain. “O God,” he cried, “I own my sins, and I repent them. Spare but my child, who never sinned against Thee, and I will undo all I have done amiss in Thy sight. I will refund that money on which Thy curse lies. I will throw myself on their mercy. I will set my son free. I will live on a pittance. I will part with Peggy. I will serve Mammon no more. I will attend Thine ordinances. I will live soberly, honestly, and godly all the remainder of my days; only do Thou spare my child. She is Thy servant, and does Thy work on earth, and there is nothing on earth I love but her.”
And now the whistle sounded, the train moved, and his messenger was flying fast to London, with a note to Dr. Wycherley:
“DEAR SIR — My poor daughter lies dangerously wounded, and perhaps at the point of death. She cries for her brother. He must come down to us instantly with the bearer of this. Send one of your people with him if you like. But it is not necessary. I enclose a blank cheque, signed, which please fill at your discretion. — I am, with thanks, yours in deep distress,
“RICHARD HARDIE”
DR. SHORT arrived, approved Dr. Phillips’s treatment, and said the case was severe but not hopeless, and he would call again. A bed was prepared in the house for Mr. Hardie: but neither he nor any of the Dodds closed an eye that sorrowful night.
About midnight, after a short slumber, the sufferer became uneasy, and begged to be left with Julia. Julia was sent for, and found her a good deal excited. She inquired more than once if they were quite alone, and then asked for paper and a pencil. She wrote a few lines, and made Julia put them in a cover and seal them. “Now. dear friend,” she said, “promise me not to open this, nor even to let your mother; it is not for your happiness that what I have written should be seen by her or you; no, no, much better not. Come; dear friend, pledge me your honour.” Julia pledged her honour.
Then Jane wrote on the cover, “From a dying sister.” Julia saw that; and wept sore.
Jane comforted her. “Do not weep for me, love: I am content to go, or stay. This is not my doing; so I know it must be for the best. He is leading me by a way that I know not. Oh, my beloved friend, how sweet it is to lie in His hands, and know no will but His. Ay, I thank Him for crossing my will, and leading me to Himself by His own good way, and not by poor blind, foolish mine.”
In this spirit of full resignation she abode constant, and consoled her weeping friends from time to time, whenever she was quite herself.
About daybreak, being alone with her father, she shed a few tears at his lonely condition. “I fear you will miss me,” said she. “Take my advice, dear; be reconciled with Alfred at once, and let Julia be your daughter, since I am leaving you. She is all humility and heart. Dying, I prize her and her affection more highly; I seem to see characters clearer, all things clearer, than I did before my summons came.”
The miserable father tried to be playful and scold her: “You must not talk nor think of death,” he said. “Your bridal-day is to come first; I know all; Edward Dodd has told me he loves you. He is a fine noble fellow; you shall marry him: I wish it. Now, for his sake, summon all your resolution, and make up your mind to live. Why, at your age, it needs but to say, ‘I will live, I will, I will;’ and when all the prospect is so smiling, when love awaits you at the altar, and on every side! If you could leave your poor doting father, do not leave your lover: and here he is with his mother crying for you. Let me comfort him; let me tell him you will live for his sake and mine.”
Even this could not disturb the dying Christian. “Dear Edward,” she said; “it is sweet to know he loves me. Ah, well, he is young; he must live without me till I become but a tender memory of his youth. And oh, I pray for him that he may cherish the words I have spoken to him for his soul’s good far longer than he can remember these features that are hastening to decay.”
At ten in the morning Mr. Hardie’s messenger returned without Alfred, and with a note from Dr. Wycherley to this effect, that, the order for Alfred’s admission into his asylum being signed by Mr. Thomas Hardie, he could not send him out even for a day except on Thomas Hardie’s authority; it would be a violation of the law. Under the circumstances, however, he thought he might venture to receive that order by telegraph. If, then, Mr. Hardie would telegraph Thomas Hardie in Yorkshire to telegraph him (Wycherley), Alfred should be sent with two keepers wherever Mr. T. Hardie should so direct,
Now Mr. Hardie had already repented of sending for Alfred at all. So, instead of telegraphing Yorkshire, he remained passive, and said sullenly to Mrs. Dodd, “Alfred can’t come, it seems.”
Thus Routine kept the brother from his dying sister.
They told Jane, with aching hearts, there was reason to fear Alfred could not arrive that day.
She only gave a meaning look at Julia, about the paper; and then she said with a little sigh, “God’s will be done.”
This was the last disappointment Heaven allowed Earth to inflict on her; and the shield of Faith turned its edge.
One hour of pain, another of delirium, and now the clouds that darken this mortal life seemed to part and pass, and Heaven to open full upon her. She spoke of her coming change no longer with resignation; it was with rapture. “Oh!” she cried, “to think that from this very day I shall never sin again, shall never again offend Him by unholy temper, by unChrist-like behaviour!”
The strong and healthy wept and groaned aloud; but she they sorrowed for was all celestial bliss. In her lifetime she had her ups and downs of religious fervour; was not without feverish heats, and cold misgivings and depression; but all these fled at that dread hour when the wicked are a prey to dark misgivings, or escape into apathy. This timid girl that would have screamed at a scratch, met the King of Terrors with smiles and triumph. For her the grave was Jordan, and death was but the iron gate of life everlasting. Mors janua vitae. Yet once or twice she took herself to task: but only to show she knew what the All-Pure had forgiven her. “I often was wanting in humility,” she said; “I almost think that if I were to be sent back again into this world of sin and sorrow I am leaving behind, I should grow a little in humility; for I know the ripe Christian is like the ripe corn, holds his head lower than when he was green; and the grave it seems to be ripening me. But what does it matter? since He who died for me is content to take me as I am. Come quickly, Lord Jesus, oh, come quickly! Relieve Thy servant from the burden of the flesh, and of the sins and foibles that cling to it and keep her these many years from Thee.”
This prayer was granted; the body failed more and more; she could not swallow even a drop of wine; she could not even praise her Redeemer; that is to say, she could not speak. Yet she lay and triumphed. With hands put together in prayer, and eyes full of praise and joy unspeakable, she climbed fast to God. While she so mounted in the spirit, her breath came at intervals unusually long, and all were sent for to see Death conquer the body and be conquered by the soul.
At last, after an unnaturally long interval, she drew a breath like a sigh. They waited for another; waited, waited in vain.
She had calmly ceased to live.
The old doctor laid down her hand reverently, and said “She is with us no more.” Then with many tears, “Oh, may we all meet where she is now, and may I go to her the first.”
Richard Hardie was led from the room in a stupor.
Immediately after death all the disfiguring effect of pain retired, and the happy soul seemed to have stamped its own celestial rapture on the countenance at the moment of leaving it; a rapture so wonderful, so divine, so more than mortal calm, irradiated the dead face. The good Christians she left behind her looked on and feared to weep, lest they should offend Him, who had taken her to Himself, and set a visible seal upon the house of clay that had held her. “Oh, mamma,” cried Julia with fervour, “look! look! Can we, dare we, wish that angel back to this world of misery and sin?” And it was some hours before she cooled, and began to hang on Edward’s neck and weep his loss and hers, as weep we mortals must, though the angels of Heaven are rejoicing.
Thus died in the flower of her youth, and by what we call a violent death, the one child Richard Hardie loved; member of a religious party whose diction now and then offends one to the soul: but the root of the matter is in them; allowance made for those passions, foibles, and infirmities of the flesh, even you and I are not entirely free from, they live fearing God, and die loving Him.
There was an inquest next day, followed in due course by a public trial of James Maxley. But these are matters which, though rather curious and interesting, must be omitted, or touched hereafter and briefly.
The effect of Jane’s death on Richard Hardie was deplorable. He saw the hand of Heaven; but did not bow to it: so it filled him with rage, rebellion, and despair. He got his daughter away and hid himself in the room with her; scarce stirring out by night or day. He spoke to no one; he shunned the Dodds: he hated them. He said it was through visiting their house she had met her death, and at their door. He would not let himself see it was he who had sent her there with his lie. He loathed Alfred, calling him the cause of all.
He asked nobody to the funeral: and, when Edward begged permission to come, he gave a snarl like a wild beast and went raging from him. But Edward would go: and at the graveside pitying Heaven relieved the young fellow’s choking heart with tears. But no such dew came to that parched old man, who stood on its other side like the withered Archangel, his eyes gloomy and wild, his white cheek ploughed deep with care and crime and anguish, his lofty figure bowed by his long warfare, his soul burning and sickening by turns, with hatred and rebellion, with desolation and despair.
He went home and made his will; for he felt life hang on him like lead, and that any moment he might kill himself to be rid of it. Strange to say, he left a sum of money to Edward Dodd. A moment before, he didn’t know he was going to do it: a moment after, he was half surprised he had done it, and minded to undo it; but would not take the trouble. He went up to London, and dashed into speculation as some in their despair take to drink. For this man had but two passions; avarice, and his love for his daughter. Bereaved of her, he must either die, or live for gain. He sought the very cave of Mammon; he plunged into the Stock Exchange.
When Mr. Hardie said, “Alfred can’t come, it seems,” Mrs. Dodd misunderstood him, naturally enough. She thought the heartless young man had sent some excuse: had chosen to let his sister die neglected rather than face Julia: “As if she would leave her own room while he was in my house,” said Mrs. Dodd, with sovereign contempt. From this moment she conceived a horror of the young man. Edward shared it fully, and the pair always spoke of him under the title of “the Wretch:” this was when Julia was not by. In her presence he was never mentioned. By this means she would in time forget him, or else see him as they saw him.
And as, after all, they knew little to Mr. Hardie’s disadvantage, except what had come out of “the Wretch’s” mouth, and as moreover their hearts were softened towards the father by his bereavement, and their sight of his misery, and also by his grateful words, they quite acquitted him of having robbed them, and felt sure the fourteen thousand pounds was at the bottom of the sea.
They were a little surprised that Mr. Hardie never spoke nor wrote to them again; but being high-minded and sweet tempered, they set it down to all-absorbing grief, and would not feel sore about it.
And now they must leave the little villa where they had been so happy and so unhappy.
The scanty furniture went first; Mrs. Dodd followed, and arranged it in their apartments. Julia would stay behind to comfort Edward, inconsolable herself. The auction came off. Most of the things went for cruelly little money compared to their value: and with the balance the sad young pair came up to London, and were clasped in their mother’s arms. The tears were in her tender eyes. “It is a poor place to receive my treasures,” she said: Edward looked round astonished: “It was a poor place,” said he, “but you have made a little palace of it, somehow or another.”
“My children’s love can alone do that,” replied Mrs. Dodd, kissing them both again.
Next day they consulted together how they were to live. Edward wished to try and get his father into a public asylum; then his mother would have a balance to live upon out of her income. But Mrs. Dodd rejected this proposal with astonishment. In vain Edward cited the ’Tiser that public asylums are patterns of comfort, and cure twice as many patients as the private ones do. She was deaf alike to the ’Tiser and to statistics. “Do not argue me out of my common sense,” said she. “My husband, your father, in a public asylum, where anybody can go and stare at my darling!”
She then informed them she had written to her Aunt Bazalgette and her Uncle Fountain, and invited them to contribute something towards David’s maintenance.
Edward was almost angry at this. “Fancy asking favours of them,” said he.
“Oh, I must not sacrifice my family to false pride,” said Mrs. Dodd; “besides they are entitled to know.”
While waiting for their answers, a word about the parties and their niece.
Our Mrs. Dodd, born Lucy Fountain, was left at nineteen to the care of two guardians: 1, her Uncle Fountain, an old bachelor, who loved comfort, pedigree, and his own way; 2, her Aunt Bazalgette, who loved flirting, dressing, and her own way; both charming people, when they got their own way; verjuice, when they didn’t: and, to conclude, egotists deep as ocean. From guardians they grew match-makers and rivals by proxy: uncle schemed to graft Lucy on to a stick called Talboys, that came in with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, known in pedigrees as “the Norman Conquest.” Aunt, wife of a merchant of no Descent, except from a high stool, devoted her to Richard Hardie. An unlooked-for obstacle encountered both: Lucy was not amorous. She loved these two egotists and their quadrupeds; but there she stopped dead short. They persisted; and, while they pulled her to and fro and ruffled her native calm, David Dodd, first mate of the Something or other East Indiaman — brown cheek, honest speech, heart of gold — fell deep in love and worshipped her at a distance. His timidity and social insignificance made him harmless; so egotist Fountain had him in to dessert to spin yarns; egotist Bazalgette invited him to her house to flirt with. At this latter place he found Hardie and Talboys both courting Lucy; this drove him mad, and in his fury he popped. Lucy declined him secundum artem: he went away blessing her, with a manly sob or two. Lucy cried a little and took a feminine spite against his rivals, who remained to pester her. Now Talboys, spurred by uncle, had often all but popped; only some let, hindrance, or just impediment had still interposed: once her pony kept prancing at each effort he made towards Hymen; they do say the subtle virgin kept probing the brute with a hair pin, and made him caracole and spill the treacle as fast as it came her way. However, now Talboys elected to pop by sea. It was the element his ancestors had invaded fair England by; and on its tranquil bosom a lover is safe from prancing steeds, and the myriad anti-pops of terra firma. Miss Lucy consented to the water excursion demurely, designing to bring her sickly wooer to the point and so get rid of him for ever and ever. Plot and counter-plot were baffled by the elements: there came an anti-pop out of the south-west called a gale. Talboys boated so skilfully that he and his intended would have been united without ceremony by Father Nep, at the bottom of the British Channel, but for David Dodd, who was hovering near in jealous anguish and a cutter. He saved them both, but in the doing of it missed his ship, and professional ruin faced him. Then good-hearted Lucy was miserable, and appealed to Mr. Bazalgette, and he managed somehow to get David made captain of the Rajah. The poor girl thought she had squared the account with David; but he refused the ship unless she would go halves, and while her egotists bullied and vexed her, he wrought so upon her pity, and teased her so, that to get rid of his importunity she married him. In time she learned to love him ten times better than if she had begun all flames. Uncle and aunt cut her tolerably dead for some years. Uncle came round the first; some antiquarian showed him that Dodd was a much more ancient family than Talboys. “Why, sir, they were lords of sixteen manors under the Heptarchy, and hold some of them to this day.” Mrs. Bazalgette, too, had long corresponded with her periodically, and on friendly terms.
The answers came on the same day, curiously enough. Uncle Fountain, ruined by railway speculation, was living on an allowance from creditors; but his house was at their service, if they liked to live with him — and board themselves.
Mrs. Bazalgette’s was the letter of a smooth woman, who has hoarded imperishable spite. She reminded her niece after all these years, that her marriage with David was an act of disobedience and ingratitude. She then enumerated her own heavy expenses, all but the L. 400 a year she spent in bedizening her carcass, and finally, amidst a multitude of petty insults, she offered to relieve Mrs. Dodd of — Julia. Now Poetry has reconciled us to an asp in a basket of figs; but here was a scorpion in a bundle of nettles. Poor Mrs. Dodd could not speak after reading it. She handed it to Edward, and laid her white forehead wearily in her hand. Edward put the letter in an envelope and sent it back with a line in his own hand declining all further correspondence with the writer.
“Now then, ladies,” said he, “don’t you be cast down. Let this be a warning to us, never to ask favours of anybody. Let us look the thing in the face; we must work or starve: and all the better for us. Hard work suits heavy hearts. Come, have you any plan?”
“To be sure we have,” said Julia eagerly. “I mean to go for a governess, and then I shall cost mamma nothing, and besides I can send her the money the people give me.”
“A pretty plan!” said Edward sadly; “what! we three part company? Don’t you feel lonely enough without that? I do then. How can we bear our burdens at all, if we are not to be all together to cheer one another along the weary road? What! are we to break up? Is it not enough to be bereaved?”
He could say no more for the emotion his own words caused him; thinking of Jane, he broke down altogether, and ran out of the room.
However, he came back in an hour with his eyes red, but his heart indomitable; determined to play a man’s part for all their sakes. “You ladies,” said he, with something of his old genial way, that sounded so strange to one looking at his red eyes, and inspired a desire to hug him, “are full of talent, but empty of invention. The moment you are ruined or that sort of thing, it is, go for a governess, go for a companion, go here, go there, in search of what? Independence? No; dependence. Besides all this going is bosh. Families are strong if they stick together, and if they go to pieces they are weak. I learned one bit of sense out of that mass of folly they call antiquity; and that was the story of the old bloke with his twelve sons, and fagot to match. ‘Break ’em apart,’ he said, and each son broke his stick as easy as shelling peas. ‘Now break the twelve all tied together:’ devil a bit could the duffers break it then. Now we are not twelve, we are but three: easy to break one or two of us apart, but not the lot together. No; nothing but death shall break this fagot, for nothing less shall part us three.”
He stood like a colossus, and held out his hand to them; they clung round his neck in a moment, as if to illustrate his words; clung tight, and blessed him for standing so firm and forbidding them to part.
Mrs. Dodd sighed, after the first burst of enthusiastic affection, and said: “If he would only go a step further and tell us what to do in company.”
“Ay, there it is,” said Julia. “Begin with me. What can I do?”
“Why, paint.”
“What, to sell? Oh dear, my daubs are not good enough for that.”
“Stuff! Nothing is too bad to sell.”
“I really think you might,” said Mrs. Dodd, “and I will help you.”
“No, no, mamma, I want you for something better than the fine arts. You must go in one of the great grooves: Female vanity: you must be a dressmaker; you are a genius at it.”
“My mamma a dressmaker,” cried Julia; “oh Edward, how can you. How dare you. Poor, poor mamma!”
“Do not be so impetuous, dear. I think he is right: yes, it is all I am fit for. If ever there was a Heaven-born dressmaker, it’s me.”
“As for myself,” said Edward, “I shall look out for some business in which physical strength goes further than intellectual attainments. Luckily there are plenty such. Breaking stones is one. But I shall try a few others first.”
It is easy to settle on a business, hard to get a footing in one. Edward convinced that the dressmaking was their best card, searched that mine of various knowledge, the ’Tiser, for an opening: but none came. At last one of those great miscellaneous houses in the City advertised for a lady to cut cloaks. He proposed to his mother to go with him. She shrank from encountering strangers. No, she would go to a fashionable dressmaker she had employed some years, and ask her advice. Perhaps Madame Blanch would find her something to do. “I have more faith in the ’Tiser,” said Edward, clinging to his idol.
Mrs. Dodd found Madame Blanch occupied in trying to suit one of those heart-breaking idiots, to whom dress is the one great thing, and all things else, sin included, the little ones. She had tried on a scarf three times; and it discontented her when on, and spoilt all else when off. Mrs. Dodd saw, and said obligingly, “Perhaps were I to put it on, you could better judge.” Mrs. Dodd, you must know, had an admirable art of putting on a shawl or scarf. With apparent nonchalance she settled the scarf on her shapely shoulders so happily that the fish bit, and the scarf went into its carriage; forty guineas, or so. Madame cast a rapid but ardent glance of gratitude Dodd-wards. The customer began to go, and after fidgeting to the door and back for twenty minutes actually went somehow. Then madame turned round, and said, “I’m sure, ma’am, I am much obliged to you; you sold me the scarf: and it is a pity we couldn’t put her on your bust and shoulders, ma’am, then perhaps a scarf might please her. What can I do for you, ma’am?”
Mrs. Dodd blushed, and with subdued agitation told Madame Blanch that this time she was come not to purchase but to ask a favour. Misfortune was heavy on her; and, though not penniless, she was so reduced by her husband’s illness and the loss of L. 14,000 by shipwreck, that she must employ what little talents she had to support her family.
The woman explored her from head to foot to find the change of fortune in some corner of her raiment: but her customer was as well, though plainly dressed as ever, and still looked an easy-going duchess.
“Could Madame Blanch find her employment in her own line? What talent I have,” said Mrs. Dodd humbly, “lies in that way. I could not cut as well as yourself, of course; but I think I can as well as some of your people.”
“That I’ll be bound you can,” said Madame Blanch drily. “But dear, dear, to think of your having come down so. Have a glass of wine to cheer you a bit; do now, that is a good soul.”
“Oh no, madam. I thank you; but wine cannot cheer me: a little bit of good news to take back to my anxious children, that would cheer me, madam. Will you be so good?”
The dressmaker coloured and hesitated; she felt the fascination of Dignity donning Humility, and speaking Music: but she resisted. “It won’t do, at least here. I shouldn’t be mistress in my own place. I couldn’t drive you like I am forced to do the rest; and, then, I should be sure to favour you, being a real lady, which is my taste, and you always will be, rich or poor; and then all my ladies would be on the bile with jealousy.”
“Ah, madam,” sighed Mrs. Dodd, “you treat me like a child; you give me sweetmeats, and refuse me food for my family.”
“No, no,” said the woman hastily, “I don’t say I mightn’t send you out some work to do at home.”
“Oh, thank you, madam.” N.B. The dressmaker had dropped the Madam, so the lady used it now at every word.
“Now stop a bit,” said Madame Blanch. “I know a firm that’s in want. Theirs is easy work by mine, and they cut up a piece of stuff every two or three days.” She then wrote on one of her own cards, Messrs. Cross, Fitchett, Copland, and Tylee, 11, 12, 13, and 14, Primrose Lane, City. “Say, I recommend you. To tell the truth, an old hand of my own was to come here this very morning about it, but she hasn’t kept her time; so this will learn her business doesn’t stand still for lie-a-beds to catch it.”
Mrs. Dodd put the card in her bosom and pressed the hand extended to her by Madame Zaire Blanch; whose name was Sally White, spinster. She went back to her children and showed them the card, and sank gracefully into a chair, exhausted as much by the agitation of asking favours as by the walk. “Cross, Fitchett, Copland? Why they were in the ’Tiser yesterday,” said Edward: “look at this; a day lost by being wiser than the ’Tiser.”
“I’ll waste no more then,” said Mrs. Dodd, rising quietly from the chair. They begged her to rest herself first. No, she would not. “I saw this lost by half an hour,” said she. “Succeed or fail, I will have no remissness to reproach myself with.” And she glided off in her quiet way, to encounter Cross, Fitchett, Copland and Tylee, in the lane where a primrose was caught growing — six hundred years ago. She declined Edward’s company rather peremptorily. “Stay and comfort your sister,” said she. But that was a blind; the truth was, she could not bear her children to mingle in what she was doing. No, her ambition was to ply the scissors and thimble vigorously, and so enable them to be ladies and gentlemen at large. She being gone, Julia made a parcel of water-colour drawings, and sallied forth all on fire to sell them. But, while she was dressing, Edward started on a cruise in search of employment. He failed entirely. They met in the evening, Mrs. Dodd resigned, Edward dogged, Julia rather excited. “Now, let us tell our adventures, she said. “As for me, shop after shop declined my poor sketches. They all wanted something about as good, only a little different: nobody complained of the grand fault, and that is, their utter badness. At last, one old gentleman examined them, and oh! he was so fat; there, round. And he twisted his mouth so” (imitating him) “and squinted into them so. Then I was full of hope; and said to myself; ‘Dear mamma and Edward!’ And so, when he ended by saying, ‘No,’ like all the rest, I burst out crying like a goose.
“My poor girl,” cried Mrs. Dodd, with tears in her own eyes, “why expose yourself to these cruel rebuffs?”
“Oh, don’t waste your pity, mamma; those great babyish tears were a happy thought of mine. He bought two directly to pacify me; and there’s the money. Thirty shillings!” And she laid it proudly on the table.
“The old cheat,” said Edward; “they were worth two guineas apiece, I know.”
“Not they; or why would not anybody else give twopence for them?”
“Because pictures are a drug.”
He added that even talent was not saleable unless it got into the Great Grooves; and then looked at Mrs. Dodd, she replied that unfortunately those Grooves were not always accessible. The City firm had received her stiffly, and inquired for whom she had worked. “Children, my heart fell at that question. I was obliged to own myself an amateur and beg a trial. However, I gave Madame Blanch’s card: but Mr. — I don’t know which partner it was — said he was not acquainted with her: then he looked a little embarrassed, I thought, and said the Firm did not care to send its stuff to ladies not in the business. I might cut it to waste, or — he said no more; but I do really think he meant I might purloin it.”
“Why wasn’t I there to look him into the earth? Oh, mamma, that you should be subjected to all this!”
“Be quiet, child; I had only to put on my armour; and do you know what my armour is? Thinking of my children. So I put on my armour, and said quietly, we were not so poor but we could pay for a piece of cloth should I be so unfortunate as to spoil it; and I offered in plain terms to deposit the price as security. But he turned as stiff at that as his yard measure; ‘that was not Cross and Co.‘s way of doing business,’ he said. But it is unreasonable to be dejected at a repulse or two; and I am not out of spirits; not much:” with this her gentle mouth smiled; and her patient eyes were moist.
The next day, just after breakfast, was announced a gentleman from the City. He made his bow and produced a parcel, which proved to be a pattern cloak. “Order, ladies,” said he briskly, “from Cross, Fitchett, and Co., Primrose Lane. Porter outside with the piece. You can come in, sir.” Porter entered with a bale. “Please sign this, ma’am.” Mrs. Dodd signed a receipt for the stuff, with an undertaking to deliver it in cloaks, at 11 Primrose Lane, in such a time. Porter retreated. The other said, “Our Mr. Fitchett wishes you to observe this fall in the pattern. It is new.”
“I will, sir. Am I to trouble you with any money — by way of deposit, sir?”
“No orders about it, ma’am. Ladies, your most obedient. Good morning, sir.”
And he was away.
All this seemed like a click or two of City clock-work: followed by rural silence. Yet in that minute Commerce had walked in upon genteel poverty, and left honest labour and modest income behind her.
Great was the thankfulness, strange and new the excitement. Edward was employed to set up a very long deal table for his mother to work on, Julia to go and buy tailors’ scissors. Calculations were made how to cut the stuff to advantage, and in due course the heavy scissors were heard snick, snick, snicking all day long.
Julia painted zealously, and Edward, without saying a word to them, walked twenty miles a day hunting for a guinea a week; and finding it not. Not but what employment was often bobbed before his eyes: but there was no grasping it. At last he heard of a place peculiarly suited to him; a packing foreman’s in a warehouse at Southwark; he went there, and was referred to Mr. A.‘s private house. Mr. A. was in the country for a day. Try Mr. B. Mr. B. was dining with the Lord Mayor. Returning belated, he fell in with a fire; and, sad to say, life was in jeopardy: a little old man had run out at the first alarm, when there was no danger, and, as soon as the fire was hot, had run in again for his stockings, or some such treasure. Fire does put out some people’s reason; clean. While he was rummaging madly, the staircase caught, and the smoke cut off his second exit, and drove him up to a little staircase window at the side of the house. Here he stood, hose in hand, scorching behind and screeching in front. A ladder had been brought: but it was a yard short: and the poor old man danced on the window-ledge and dare not come down to a gallant fireman who stood ready to receive him at great personal peril. In the midst of shrieks and cries and shouts of encouragement, Edward, a practised gymnast, saw a chance. He ran up the ladder like a cat, begged the fireman to clasp it tight; then got on his shoulders and managed to grasp the window-sill. He could always draw his own weight up by his hands: so he soon had his knee on the sill, and presently stood erect. He then put his left arm inside the window, collared the old fellow with his right, and, half persuasion, half force, actually lowered him to the ladder with one Herculean arm amidst a roar that made the Borough ring. Such a strain could not long be endured; but the fireman speedily relieved him by seizing the old fellow’s feet and directing them on to the ladder, and so, propping him by the waist, went down before him, and landed him safe. Edward waited till they were down: then begged them to hold the ladder tight below; he hung from the ledge, got his eye well on the ladder below him, let himself quietly drop, and caught hold of it with hands of iron, and twisting round, came down the ladder on the inside hand over head without using his feet, a favourite gymnastic exercise of his learnt at the Modern Athens. He was warmly received by the crowd and by the firemen. “You should be one of us, sir,” said a fine young fellow who had cheered him and advised him all through. “I wish to Heaven I was,” said Edward. The other thought he was joking, but laughed and said, “Then you should talk to our head man after the business; there is a vacancy, you know.”
Edward saw the fire out, and rode home on the engine. There he applied to the head man for the vacancy.
“You are a stranger to me, sir,” said the head man. “And I am sure it is no place for you; you are a gentleman.”
“Well; is there anything ungentlemanly in saving people’s lives and property?”
“Hear! hear!” said a comic fireman.
The compliment began to tell, though. Others put in their word. “Why, Mr. Baldwin, if a gentleman ain’t ashamed of us, why should we be ashamed of him?”
“Where will ye get a better?” asked another; and added, “He is no stranger; we’ve seen him work.”
“Stop a bit,” said the comic fireman: “what does the dog say? Just call him, sir, if you please; his name is Charlie.”
Edward called the fire-dog kindly; he came and fawned on him; then gravely snuffed him all round, and retired wagging his tail gently, as much as to say, “I was rather taken by surprise at first, but, on the whole, I see no reason to recall my judgment.”
“It is all right,” said the firemen in chorus; and one that had not yet spoken to Edward now whispered him mysteriously, “Ye see that there dog — he knows more than we do.”
After the dog, a biped oracle at head-quarters was communicated with, and late that very night Edward was actually enrolled a fireman; and went home warmer at heart than he had been for some time. They were all in bed; and when he came down in the morning, Julia was reading out of the ’Tiser a spirited and magniloquent description of a fire in Southwark, and of the heroism displayed by a young gentleman unknown, but whose name the writer hoped at so much the line would never be allowed to pass into oblivion, and be forgotten. In short, the ’Tiser paid him in one column, for years of devotion. Now Edward, of course, was going to relate his adventure; but the journal told it so gloriously, he hesitated to say, “I did all that.” He just sat and stared, and wondered, and blushed, and grinned like an imbecile.
Unfortunately looks seldom escaped the Doddesses. “What is that for?” inquired Julia reproachfully. “Is that sheepish face the thing to wear when a sister is reading out an heroic action? Ah, these are the things that make one long to be a man, to do them. What are you thinking about, dear?”
“Well, I am thinking the ’Tiser is pitching it rather strong.”
“My love, what an expression!”
“Well, then, to be honest, I agree with you that it is a jolly thing to fight with fire and save men’s lives; and I am glad you see it in that light; for now you will approve the step I have taken. Ladies, I have put myself in the way of doing this sort of thing every week of my life. I’m a fireman.”
“You are jesting, I trust?” said Mrs. Dodd anxiously.
“No, mamma. I got the place late last night, and I’m to enter on my duties and put on the livery next Monday. Hurrah!”
Instantly the admirers of fiery heroes at a distance overflowed with grief and mortification at the prospect of one in their own family. They could not speak at all at first: and, when they did, it was only “Cruel! cruel!” from Julia; and “Our humiliation is now complete,” from Mrs. Dodd.
They soon dashed Edward’s spirits, and made him unhappy; but they could not convince him he had done wrong. However, in the heat of remonstrance, they let out at last that they had just begun to hope by dint of scissors and paint-brush to send him back to Oxford. He also detected, under a cloud of tender, loving, soothing, coaxing and equivocating expressions, their idea of a Man: to wit, a tall, strong, ornamental creature, whom the women were to cocker up, and pet, and slave for; and be rewarded by basking, dead tired, in an imperial smile or two let fall by their sovereign protege from his arm-chair. And, in fact, good women have often demoralised their idols down to the dirt by this process; to be sure their idols were sorryish clay, to begin.
Edward was anything but flowery, so he paraded no manly sentiments in reply; he just bluntly ridiculed the idea of his consenting to prey on them; and he said humbly, “I know I can’t contribute as much to our living as you two can — the petticoats carry the brains in our family — but, be a burden to you? Not if I know it.”
“Pride! pride! pride!” objected Julia, lifting her grand violet orbs like a pensive Madonna.
“And such pride! The pride that falls into a fire-bucket,” suggested prosaic mamma.
“That is cutting,” said Edward: “but, soyons de notre siecle; flunkeyism is on the decline. I’ll give you something to put in both your pipes:
‘Honour and rank from no condition rise.
Act well thy part; in that the honour lies.’”
“Yes, yes,” said Mrs. Dodd, “only first choose your part; and let your choice be reasonable.”
“Mine was Hobson’s, and he never chooses wrong. Come, come,” said he, and appealed calmly to their reason, by which means he made no impression at all. Then he happened to say, “Besides, I must do something. I own to you I am more cast down than I choose to show. Mother, I feel like lead ever since she died.” Now on this, their faces filled with sympathy directly. So encouraged he went on to say: “But when I got my hand on that old duffer’s collar, and lowered him to the ladder, and the fire shot roaring out of the window after him, too late to eat him, and the crowd cheered the fireman and me, I did feel warm about the waistcoat, and, for the first time this ever so long, life seemed not quite ended. I felt there was a little bit of good left, that even a poor dunce like me could do, and she could approve — if she can look down and see me, as I hope she can.”
“There, there,” said Mrs. Dodd tearfully, “I am disarmed, But, my darling, I do not know what you are talking about: Stay; why, Edward, surely — I hope — you were not the young gentleman in the paper, the one that risked his life so nobly, so foolishly — if it was you.
“Why, mother, didn’t I tell you it was me?” said Edward, colouring.
“No, that you did not,” said Julia. “Was it? was it? oh do be quick and tell one. There, it was.”
“Well, it was: ah, I remember now; that splendiferous account shut me up. Oh, I say, didn’t the ’Tiser pitch it strong?”
“Not at all,” cried Julia; “I believe every word, and ever so much more. Mamma, we have got a hero, and here he is at breakfast with us, like an ordinary mortal.” She rose suddenly with a burst of her old fire and fell upon him and kissed him, and said earnestly how proud she was of him; “And so is mamma. She may say what she likes.”
“Proud of him! ah, that I am; very proud, and very unhappy. Heroes are my horror. How often, and how earnestly have I prayed that my son might not be brave like his father, but stay quietly at home out of harm’s way.”
Here remonstrance ended; the members of this family, happy by nature, though unhappy by accident, all knew when to yield to each other.
Unfortunately, in proportion as all these excitements great and small died, and her life became quiet and uniform, the depth of Julia’s wound showed itself more and more. She never sang nor hummed, as she used to do, going about the house. She never laughed. She did burst out with fervid sentiments now and then, but very rarely; on the whole, a pensive languor took the place of her lovely impetuosity. Tears rushed in a moment to her eyes with no visible cause. She often stole to the window, and looked all up and down the street; and when she was out of doors, she looked down every side street she passed; and sometimes, when a quick light step came behind them, or she saw a tall young gentleman at a great distance, her hand twitched her mother’s arm or trembled on it. And, always, when they came home, she lingered a moment at the door-step and looked all round before she went in.
At all these signs one half of Mrs. Dodd’s heart used to boil with indignation, and the other half melt with pity. For she saw her daughter was looking for “the Wretch.” Indeed Mrs. Dodd began to fear she had done unwisely in ignoring “the Wretch.” Julia’s thoughts dwelt on him none the less; indeed all the more as it seemed; so the topic interdicted by tacit consent bade fair to become a barrier between her and Mrs. Dodd, hitherto her bosom friend as well as her mother. This was intolerable to poor Mrs. Dodd: and at last she said one day, “My darling, do not be afraid of me; rob me of your happy thoughts if you will, but oh, not of your sad ones.”
Julia began to cry directly. “Oh no, mamma,” she sobbed, “do not you encourage me in my folly. I know I have thrown away my affections on one who —— I shall never see him again: shall I, mamma? Oh, to think I can say those words, and yet go living on.”
Mrs. Dodd sighed. “And if you saw him, would that mend the chain he has chosen to break?”
“I don’t know; but if I could only see him to part friends! It is cruel to hate him now he has lost his sister; and then I have got her message to give him. And I want to ask him why he was afraid of me: why he could not tell me he had altered his mind: did he think I wanted to have him against his will? Oh, mamma,” said she imploringly, “he seemed to love me; he seemed all truth. I am a poor unfortunate girl.”
Mrs. Dodd had only caresses to soothe her with. She could not hold out any hopes.
One day Julia asked her timidly if she might be a district visitor: “My dear friend was, and advised me to be one too; but I was wilful in those days and chose to visit by fits and starts, and be independent. I am humbled now a little: may I, mamma? Since she died every word of hers seems a law to me.”
Mrs. Dodd assented cordially; as she would to anything else her wounded one had proposed.
This project brought Julia into communication with the new curate; and who should it prove to be but Mr. Hurd? At sight of him she turned white and red, and the whole scene in the church came back to her. But Mr. Hurd showed considerable tact for so young a man; he spoke to her in accents of deep respect, but confined his remarks strictly to the matter in hand. She told her mother when she got home; and expressed her gratitude to Mr. Hurd, but said she wished they did not live in the same parish with him. This feeling, however, wore off by degrees, as her self-imposed duties brought her more and more into contact with him, and showed her his good qualities.
As for Mr. Hurd, he saw and understood her vivid emotion at sight of him; saw and pitied; not without wonder that so beautiful a creature should have been jilted. And from the first he marked his sense of Alfred’s conduct by showing her a profound and chivalrous respect which he did not bestow on other young ladies in his parish; on the contrary, he rather received homage from them than bestowed it. By-and-bye he saw Julia suppress if not hide her own sorrow, and go sore-hearted day by day to comfort the poor and afflicted: he admired and almost venerated her for this. He called often on Mrs. Dodd, and was welcome. She concealed her address for the present from all her friends except Dr. Sampson; but Mr. Hurd had discovered her, and ladies do not snub the clergy. Moreover, Mr. Hurd was a gentleman, and inclined to High Church. This she liked. He was very good-looking too, and quiet in his manners. Above all, he seemed to be doing her daughter good; for Julia and Mr. Hurd had one great sentiment in common. When the intimacy had continued some time on these easy terms, Mrs. Dodd saw that Mr. Hurd was falling in love with Julia; and that sort of love warm, but respectful, which soon leads to marriage, especially when the lover is a clergyman. This was more than Mrs. Dodd bargained for; she did not want to part with her daughter, and under other circumstances would have drawn in her horns. But Mr. Hurd’s undisguised homage gratified her maternal heart, coming so soon after that great insult to her daughter; and then she said to herself: “At any rate, he will help me cure her of ‘the Wretch.’” She was not easy in her mind, though; could not tell what would come of it all. So she watched her daughter’s pensive face as only mothers watch; and saw a little of the old peach bloom creeping back.
That was irresistible: she let things go their own way, and hoped for the best.
THE tenacity of a private lunatic asylum is unique. A little push behind your back and you slide into one; but to get out again is to scale a precipice with crumbling sides. Alfred, luckier than many, had twice nearly escaped; yet now he was tighter in than ever. His father at first meant to give him but a year or two of it, and let him out on terms, his spirit broken and Julia married. But his sister’s death was fatal to him. By Mrs. Hardie’s settlement the portion of any child of hers dying a minor, or intestate and childless, was to go to the other children; so now the prisoner had inherited his sister’s ten thousand pounds, and a good slice of his bereaved enemy’s and father’s income. But this doubled his father’s bitterness — that he, the unloved one, should be enriched by the death of the adored one! — and also tempted his cupidity: and unfortunately shallow legislation conspired with that temptation. For when an Englishman, sane or insane, is once pushed behind his back into a madhouse, those relatives who have hidden him from the public eye, i.e., from the eye of justice, can grab hold of his money behind his back, as they certified away his wits behind his back, and can administer it in the dark, and embezzle it, chanting “But for us the ‘dear deranged’ would waste it.” Nor do the monstrous enactments which confer this unconstitutional power on subjects, and shield its exercise from the light and safeguard of Publicity, affix any penalty to the abuse of that power, if by one chance in a thousand detected. In Lunacy Law extremes of intellect meet; the British senator plays at Satan; and tempts human frailty and cupidity beyond what they are able to bear.
So behold a son at twenty-one years of age devoted by a father to imprisonment for life. But stop a minute; the mad statutes, which by the threefold temptation of Facility, Obscurity, and Impurity, insure the occasional incarceration and frequent detention of sane but moneyed men, do provide, though feebly, for their bare liberation, if perchance they should not yield to the genius loci, and the natural effect of confinement plus anguish, by going mad or dying. The Commissioners of Lunacy had power to liberate Alfred in spite of his relations. And that power, you know, he had soberly but earnestly implored them to exercise.
After a delay that seemed as strange to him as postponing a hand to a drowning man, he received an official letter from Whitehall. With bounding heart he broke the seal, and devoured the contents. They ran thus —
“Sir — By order of the Commissioners of Lunacy, I am directed to inform you that they are in the receipt of your letter of the 29th ultimo, which will be laid before the Board at their next meeting. — I am, &c.”
Alfred was bitterly disappointed at the small advance he had made. However, it was a great point to learn that his letters were allowed to go to the Commissioners at all, and would be attended to by degrees.
He waited and waited, and struggled hard to possess his soul in patience. At times his brain throbbed and his blood boiled, and he longed to kill the remorseless, kinless monsters who robbed him of his liberty, his rights as a man, and his Julia. But he knew this would not do; that what they wanted was to gnaw his reason away, and then who could disprove that he had always been mad? Now he felt that brooding on his wrong would infuriate him; so he clenched his teeth, and vowed a solemn vow that nothing should drive him mad. By advice of a patient he wrote again to the Commissioners begging for a special Commission to inquire into his case; and, this done, with rare stoicism, self-defence, and wisdom in one so young, he actually sat down to read hard for his first class. Now, to do this, he wanted the Ethics, Politics, and Rhetoric of Aristotle, certain dialogues of Plato, the Comedies of Aristophanes, the first-class Historians, Demosthenes, Lucretius, a Greek Testament, Wheeler’s Analysis, Prideaux, Horne, and several books of reference sacred and profane. But he could not get these books without Dr. Wycherley, and unfortunately he had cut that worthy dead in his own asylum.
“The Scornful Dog” had to eat wormwood pudding and humble pie. He gulped these delicacies as he might; and Dr. Wycherley showed excellent qualities; he entered into his maniac’s studies with singular alacrity, supplied him with several classics from his own shelves, and borrowed the rest at the London Library. Nor did his zeal stop there; he offered to read an hour a day with him; and owned it would afford him the keenest gratification to turn out an Oxford first classman from his asylum. This remark puzzled Alfred and set him thinking; it bore a subtle family resemblance to the observations he heard every day from the patients; it was so one-eyed.
Soon Alfred became the doctor’s pet maniac. They were often closeted together in high discourse, and indeed discussed Psychology, Metaphysics, and Moral Philosophy with indefatigable zest, long after common sense would have packed them both off to bed, the donkeys. In fact, they got so thick that Alfred thought it only fair to say one day, “Mind, doctor, all these pleasant fruitful hours we spend together so sweetly will not prevent my indicting you for a conspiracy as soon as I get out: it will rob the retribution of half its relish, though.”
“Ah, my dear young friend and fellow-student,” said the doctor blandly, “let us not sacrifice the delights of our profitable occupation of imbibing the sweets of intellectual intercourse to vague speculations as to our future destiny. During the course of a long and not, I trust, altogether unprofitable career, it has not unfrequently been my lot to find myself on the verge of being indicted, sued, assassinated, hung. Yet here I sit, as yet unimmolated on the altar of phrenetic vengeance. This is ascribable to the fact that my friends and pupils always adopt a more favourable opinion of me long before I part with them; and ere many days (and this I divine by infallible indicia), your cure will commence in earnest; and in proportion as you progress to perfect restoration of the powers of judgment, you will grow in suspicion of the fact of being under a delusion; or rather I should say a very slight perversion and perturbation of the forces of your admirable intellect, and a proper subject for temporary seclusion. Indeed this consciousness of insanity is the one diagnostic of sanity that never deceives me and, on the other hand, an obstinate persistence in the hypothesis of perfect rationality demonstrates the fact that insanity yet lingers in the convolutions and recesses of the brain, and that it would not be humane as yet to cast the patient on a world in which he would inevitably be taken some ungenerous advantage of.”
Alfred ventured to inquire whether this was not rather paradoxical.
“Certainly,” said the ready doctor; “and paradoxicality is an indicial characteristic of truth in all matters beyond the comprehension of the vulgar.”
“That sounds rational,” said the maniac very drily.
One afternoon, grinding hard for his degree, he was invited downstairs to see two visitors.
At that word he found out how prison tries the nerves. He trembled with hope and fear. It was but for a moment: he bathed his face and hands to compose himself; made his toilet carefully, and went into the drawing-room, all on his guard. There he found Dr. Wycherley and two gentlemen; one was an exphysician, the other an exbarrister, who had consented to resign feelessness and brieflessness for a snug L. 1500 a year at Whitehall. After a momentary greeting they continued the conversation with Dr. Wycherley, and scarcely noticed Alfred. They were there pro forma; a plausible lunatic had pestered the Board, and extorted a visit of ceremony. Alfred’s blood boiled, but he knew it must not boil over. He contrived to throw a short, pertinent remark in every now and then. This, being done politely, told; and at last Dr. Eskell, Commissioner of Lunacy, smiled and turned to him: “Allow me to put a few questions to you.”
“The more the better, sir,” said Alfred.
Dr. Eskell then asked him to describe minutely, and in order, all he had done since seven o’clock that day. And he did it. Examined him in the multiplication table. And he did it. And, while he was applying these old-fashioned tests, Wycherley’s face wore an expression of pity that was truly comical. Now this Dr. Eskell had an itch for the classics: so he went on to say, “You have been a scholar, I hear.”
“I am not old enough to be a scholar, sir,” said Alfred; “but I am a student.”
“Well, well; now can you tell me what follows this line —
“Jusque datum sceleri canimus populuinque potentem’?”
“Why, not at the moment.”
“Oh, surely you can,” said Dr. Eskell ironically. “It is in a tolerably well-known passage. Come, try.”
“Well, I’ll try,” said Alfred, sneering secretly. “Let me see —
‘Mum — mum — mum — populumque potentem,
In sua victrici conversum viscera dextra.’”
“Quite right; now go on, if you can.”
Alfred, who was playing with his examiner all this time, pretended to cudgel his brains, then went on, and warmed involuntarily with the lines —
“Cognatasque acies et rupto foedere regni
Certatum totis concussi viribus orbis
In commune nefas; infestis que obvia signis
Signa, pares aquilas, et pila minantia pilis.”
“He seems to have a good memory,” said the examiner, rather taken aback.
“Oh, that is nothing for him,” observed Wycherley;
“He has Horace all by heart; you’d wonder:
And mouths out Homer’s Greek like thunder.”
The great faculty of Memory thus tested, Dr. Eskell proceeded to a greater: Judgment. “Spirited lines those, sir.”
“Yes, sir; but surely rather tumid. ‘The whole forces of the shaken globe?’ But little poets love big words.”
“I see; you agree with Horace, that so great a work as an epic poem should open modestly with an invocation.”
“No, sir,” said Alfred. “I think that rather an arbitrary and peevish canon of friend Horace. The AEneid, you know, begins just as he says an epic ought not to begin; and the AEneid is the greatest Latin Epic. In the next place the use of Modesty is to keep a man from writing an epic poem at all but, if he will have that impudence, why then he had better have the courage to plunge into the Castalian stream, like Virgil and Lucan, not crawl in funking and holding on by the Muse’s apron-string. But — excuse me — quorsum haec tam putida tendunt? What have the Latin poets to do with this modern’s sanity or insanity?”
Mr. Abbott snorted contemptuously in support of the query. But Dr. Eskell smiled, and said: “Continue to answer me as intelligently, and you may find it has a great deal to do with it.”
Alfred took this hint, and said artfully, “Mine was a thoughtless remark: of course a gentleman of your experience can test the mind on any subject, however trivial.” He added piteously, “Still, if you would but leave the poets, who are all half crazy themselves, and examine me in the philosophers of Antiquity. Surely it would be a higher criterion.”
Dr. Wycherley explained in a patronising whisper, “He labours under an abnormal contempt for poetry, dating from his attack. Previously to that he actually obtained a prize poem himself.”
“Well, doctor, and after that am I wrong to despise poetry?”
They might have comprehended this on paper, but spoken it was too keen for them all three. The visitors stared. Dr. Wycherley came to their aid “You might examine my young friend for hours and not detect the one crevice in the brilliancy of his intellectual armour.”
The maniac made a face as one that drinketh verjuice suddenly. “For pity’s sake, doctor, don’t be so inaccurate. Say a spot on the brilliancy, or a crevice in the armour; but not a crevice in the brilliancy. My good friend here, gentlemen, deals in conjectural certificates and broken metaphors. He dislocates more tropes, to my sorrow, than even his friend Shakespeare, whom he thinks a greater philosopher than Aristotle, and who calls the murder of an individual sleeper the murder of sleep, confounding the concrete with the abstract, and then talks of taking arms against a sea of troubles; query, a cork jacket and a flask of brandy?”
“Well, Mr. Hardie,” said Dr. Eskell, rather feebly, “let me tell you those passages, which so shock your peculiar notions, are among the most applauded.”
“Very likely, sir,” retorted the maniac, whose logic was up; “but applauded only in a nation where the floods clap their hands every Sunday morning, and we all pray for peace, giving as our exquisite reason that we have got the God of hosts on our side in war.”
Mr. Abbott, the other commissioner, had endured all this chat with an air of weary indifference. He now said to Dr. Wycherley, “I wish to put to you a question or two in private.”
Alfred was horribly frightened: this was the very dodge that had ruined him at Silverton House. “Oh no, gentlemen,” he cried imploringly. “Let me have fair play. You have given me no secret audience; then why give my accuser one? I am charged with a single delusion; for mercy’s sake, go to the point at once, and examine me on that head.”
“Now you talk sense,” said Mr. Abbott; as if the previous topics had been chosen by Alfred.
“But that will excite him,” objected Dr. Eskell? “it always does excite them.”
“It excites the insane, but not the sane,” said Alfred. “So there is another test; you will observe whether it excites me.” Then, before they could interrupt him, he glided on. “The supposed hallucination is this: I strongly suspect my father, a bankrupt — and therefore dishonest — banker, of having somehow misappropriated a sum of fourteen thousand pounds, which sum is known to have been brought from India by one Captain Dodd, and has disappeared.”
“Stop a minute,” said Mr. Abbott. “Who knows it besides you?”
“The whole family of the Dodds. They will show you his letter from India, announcing his return with the money.”
“Where do they live?”
“Albion Villa, Barkington.”
Mr. Abbott noted the address in his book, and Alfred, mightily cheered and encouraged by this sensible act, went on to describe the various indications, which, insufficient singly, had by their united force driven him to his conclusion. When he described David’s appearance and words on his father’s lawn at night, Wycherley interrupted him quietly: “Are you quite sure this was not a vision, a phantom of the mind heated by your agitation, and your suspicions?”
Dr. Eskell nodded assent, knowing nothing about the matter.
“Pray, doctor, was I the only person who saw this vision?” inquired Alfred slily.
“I conclude so,” said Wycherley, with an admirable smile.
“But why do you conclude so? Because you are one of those who reason in a circle of assumptions. Now it happens that Captain Dodd was seen and felt on that occasion by three persons besides myself.”
“Name them,” said Mr. Abbott sharply.
“A policeman called Reynolds, another policeman, whose name I don’t know, and Miss Julia Dodd. The policemen helped me lift Captain Dodd off the grass, sir; Julia met us chose by, and we four carried Dr. Wycherhey’s phantom home together to Albion Villa.”
Mr. Abbott noted down all the names, and then turned to Dr. Wycherley. “What do you say to that?”
“I say it is a very important statement,” said the doctor blandly; “and that I am sure my young friend would not advance it unless he was firmly persuaded of its reality.”
“Much obliged, doctor; and you would not contradict me so rashly in a matter I know all about and you know nothing about, if it was not your fixed habit to found facts on theories instead of theories on facts.”
“There, that is enough,” said Mr. Abbott. “I have brought you both to an issue at last. I shall send to Barkington, and examine the policemen and the Dodds.”
“Oh, thank you, sir,” cried Alfred with emotion. “If you once apply genuine tests like that to my case, I shall not be long in prison.”
“Prison?” said Wycherley reproachfully.
“Have you any complaint, then, to make of your treatment here?” inquired Dr. Eskell.
“No, no, sir,” said Alfred warmly. “Dr. Wycherley is the very soul of humanity. Here are no tortures, no handcuffs nor leg-locks, no brutality, no insects that murder Sleep — without offence to Logic. In my last asylum the attendants inflicted violence, here they are only allowed to endure it. And, gentlemen, I must tell you a noble trait in my enemy there: nothing can make him angry with madmen; their lies, their groundless and narrow suspicions of him, their deplorable ingratitude to him, of which I see examples every day that rile me on his account; all these things seem to glide off him, baffled by the infinite kindness of his heart and the incomparable sweetness of his temper; and he returns the duffers good for evil with scarcely an effort.”
At this unexpected tribute the water stood in the doctor’s eyes. It was no more than the truth; but this was the first maniac he had met intelligent enough to see his good qualities clearly and express them eloquently.
“In short,” continued Alfred, “to be happy in his house all a man wants is to be insane. But, as I am not insane, I am miserable; no convict, no galley slave is so wretched as I am, gentlemen. And what is my crime?”
“Well, well,” said Dr. Eskell kindly, “I think it likely you will not be very long in confinement.” They then civilly dismissed him; and on his departure asked Dr. Wycherley his candid opinion. Dr. Wycherley said he was now nearly cured; his ability to discuss his delusion without excitement was of itself a proof of that. But in another month he would be better still. The doctor concluded his remarks thus —
“However, gentlemen, you have heard him: now judge for yourselves whether anybody can be as clever as he is, without the presence of more or less abnormal excitement of the organs of intelligence.”
It was a bright day for Alfred; he saw he had made an excellent impression on the Commissioners, and, as luck does not always come single, after many vain attempts to get a letter posted to Julia, he found this very afternoon a nurse was going away next day. He offered her a guinea, and she agreed to post a letter. Oh the hapiness it was to the poor prisoner to write it, and unburden his heart and tell his wrongs. He kept his manhood for his enemies; his tears fell on the paper he sent to his forlorn bride. He had no misgivings of her truth; he judged her by himself: gave her credit for anxiety, but not for doubt. He concluded a long, ardent, tender letter by begging her to come and see him, and, if refused admission, to publish his case in the newspapers, and employ a lawyer to proceed against all the parties concerned in his detention. Day after day he waited for an answer to his letter; none came. Then he began to be sore perplexed, and torn with agonising doubts. What if her mind was poisoned too! What if she thought him mad! What if some misfortune had befallen her! What if she had believed him dead, and her heart had broken! Hitherto he had seen his own trouble chiefly; but now he began to think day and night on hers; and though he ground on for his degree not to waste time, and not to be driven mad, yet it was almost superhuman labour; sighs issued from his labouring breast while his hard, indomitable brain laboured away, all uphill, at Aristotle’s Divisions and Definitions.
On the seventh day, the earliest the mad statute allowed, the two Commissioners returned, and this time Mr. Abbott took the lead, and told him that the policeman Reynolds had left the force, and the Dodds had left the town, and were in London, but their address not known.
At this Alfred was much agitated. She was alive, and perhaps near him.
“I have heard a good deal of your story,” said Mr. Abbott, “and coupling it with what we have seen of you, we think your relatives have treated you, and a young lady of whom everybody speaks with respect —”
“God bless you for saying that! God bless you!”
“— treated you both, I say, with needless severity.”
Dr. Eskell then told him the result of the Special Commission, now closed. “I believe you to be cured,” said he; “and Mr. Abbott has some doubts whether you were ever positively insane. We shall lay your case before the Board at once, and the Board will write to the party who signed the order, and propose to him to discharge you at once.”
At this magnificent project Alfred’s countenance fell, and he stared with astonishment. “What! have you not the power to do me justice without soliciting Injustice to help you?”
“The Board has the power,” said Dr. Eskell; “but for many reasons they exercise it with prudence and reserve. Besides, it is only fair to those who have signed the order, to give them the graceful office of liberating the patient; it paves the way to reconciliation.”
Alfred sighed. The Commissioners, to keep up his heart, promised to send him copies of their correspondence with the person who had signed the order. “Then,” said Mr. Abbott kindly, “you will see your case is not being neglected.”
The following precis, though imperfect, will give some idea of the correspondence:
1. The Board wrote to Thomas Hardie, letting him know the result of the Special Commission, and requesting him to discharge his nephew.
Thomas quaked. Richard smiled, and advised Thomas to take no notice. By this a week was gained to Injustice, and lost to Justice.
2. The Board pointed out Thomas Hardie’s inadvertence in not answering No. 1; enclosed copy of it, and pressed for a reply.
Thomas quaked, Richard smiled.
3. Thomas Hardie to the Board. From what he had heard, it would be premature to discharge Alfred. Should prefer to wait a month or two.
4. Board to Alfred, conveying this in other terms.
5. Alfred to Board, warning them against this proposal. To postpone justice was to refuse justice, certainly for a time, probably for ever.
6. The Board to Thomas Hardie, suggesting that if not released immediately Alfred ought to have a trial —i.e., be allowed to go into the world with a keeper.
7. Alfred to the Board, begging that Dr. Sampson, an honest independent physician, might be allowed to visit him and report to them.
8. The Board to Alfred, declining this, for the present as unadvisable, they being in correspondence with the person who had signed the order — with a view to his liberation.
9. T. Hardie to the Board, shuffling, and requesting time to make further inquiries.
10. The Board, suggesting there should be some reasonable limit to delay.
11. T. Hardie, asking for a month to see about it.
12. The Board, suggesting a week.
13. Alfred Hardie, asking permission to be visited by a solicitor with a view to protection of his liberty and property.
14. The Board, declining this, pending their correspondence with other parties; but asking him for the names and addresses of all his trustees.
15. Thomas Hardie, informing the Board he had now learned Alfred had threatened to kill his father as soon as ever he should get out, and leaving the Board to discharge him on their own responsibility if they chose after this warning: but declining peremptorily to do so himself.
16, 17, 18. The Board, by advice of Mr. Abbott, to Alfred’s trustees, warning them against any alienation of Alfred’s money under the notion that he was legally a lunatic; and saying that a public inquiry appeared inevitable, owing to Mr. T. Hardie’s unwillingness to enter into their views.
19. To Alfred, inquiring whether he wished to encounter the expense of Chancery proceedings to establish his sanity.
20. Alfred to the Board, imploring them to use their powers and discharge him without further delay, and assuring them he meditated no violence on his liberation, but should proceed against all parties under legal advice.
21. The Board to T. Hardie, warning him that he must in future pay Alfred’s maintenance in Asylum out of his own pocket, and pressing him either to discharge the young man, or else to apply to the Lord Chancellor for a Commission de Lunatico Inquirendo, and enclosing copy of a letter from Wycherley saying the patient was harmless.
22. T. Hardie respectfully declining to do either, but reminding the Commissioners that the matter could be thrown into Chancery without his consent; only the expense, which would be tremendous, would fall on the lunatic’s estate, which might hereafter be regretted by the party himself. He concluded by promising to come to town and visit Alfred with his family physician, and write further in a week.
Having thus thrown dust in the eyes of the Board, Thomas Hardie and Richard consulted with a notoriously unscrupulous madhouse keeper in the suburbs of London, and effected a masterstroke; whereof anon.
The correspondence had already occupied three months, and kept Alfred in a fever of the mind; of all the maddening things with which he had been harassed by the pretended curers of insanity, this tried him hardest. To see a dozen honest gentlemen wishing to do justice, able to do justice by one manly stroke of the pen, yet forego their vantage-ground, and descend to coax an able rogue to do their duty and undo his own interest and rascality! To see a strong cause turned into a weak one by the timidity of champions clad by law in complete steel; and a rotten cause, against which Law and Power, as well as Truth, Justice, and Common Sense, had now declared, turned into a strong one by the pluck and cunning of his one unarmed enemy! The ancients feigned that the ingenious gods tortured Tantalus in hell by ever-present thirst, and water flowing to just the outside of his lips. A Briton can thirst for liberty as hard as Tantalus or hunted deer can thirst for cooling springs and this soul-gnawing correspondence brought liberty, and citizenhood, and love, and happiness, to the lips of Alfred’s burning, pining, aching heart, again, and again, and again; then carried them away from him in mockery. Oh, the sickening anguish of Hope deferred, and deferred:
“The Hell it is in suing long to bide.”
But indeed his hopes began to sicken for good when he found that the Board would not allow any honest independent physician to visit him, or any solicitor to see him. At first, indeed, they refused it because Mr. Thomas Hardie was going to let him out: but when T. Hardie would not move at their request, then on a fresh application they refused it, giving as their reason that they had already refused it. Yet in so keen a battle he would not throw away a chance: so he determined to win Dr. Wycherley altogether by hook or by crook, and get a certificate of sanity from him. Now a single white lie, he knew would do the trick. He had only to say that Hamlet was mad. And “Hamlet was mad” is easily said.
Dr. Wycherley was a collector of mad people, and collectors are always amateurs, and very seldom connoisseurs. His turn of mind cooperating with his interests, led him to put down any man a lunatic, whose intellect was manifestly superior to his own. Alfred Hardie, and one or two more contemporaries, had suffered by this humour of the good doctor’s. Nor did the dead escape him entirely. Pascal, according to Wycherley, was a madman with an illusion about a precipice; John Howard a moral lunatic in whom the affections were reversed; Saul a moping maniac with homicidal paroxysms and nocturnal visions; Paul an incoherent lunatic, who in his writings flies off at a tangent, and who admits having once been the victim of a photopsic illusion in broad daylight; Nebuchadnezzar a lycanthropical lunatic; Joan of Arc a theomaniac; Bobby Burton and Oliver Cromwell melancholy maniacs; Napoleon an ambitious maniac, in whom the sense of impossibility became gradually extinguished by visceral and cerebral derangement; Porson an oinomaniac; Luther a phrenetic patient of the old demoniac breed, alluded to by Shakespeare:
“One sees more devils than vast Hell can hold.
That is the madman.”
But without intending any disrespect to any of these gentlemen, he assigned the golden crown of Insanity to Hamlet. To be sure, this character tells his friends in the play he shall feign insanity, and swears them not to reveal the reason; and after this hint to his friends and the pit (it is notorious he was not written for readers) he keeps his word, and does it as cleverly as if his name was David or Brutus instead of Hamlet; indeed, like Edgar, he rather overdoes it, and so puzzles his enemies in the play, and certain German criticasters and English mad doctors in the closet, and does not puzzle his bosom friend in the play one bit, nor the pit for whom he was created. Add to this his sensibility, and his kindness to others, and his eloquent grief at the heart-rending situation which his father’s and mother’s son was placed in and had brains to realise, though his psychological critics, it seems, have not; and add to all that the prodigious extent of his mind, his keen observation, his deep reflection; his brilliant fancy, united for once in a way with the great Academic, or judicial, intellect, that looks down and sees all the sides of everything — and what can this rare intellectual compound be? Wycherley decided the question. Hamlet was too much greater in the world of mind than S. T. Coleridge and his German criticasters; too much higher, deeper, and broader than Esquirol, Pinel, Sauze, Haslam, Munro, Pagan, Wigan, Prichard, Romberg, Wycherley, and such small deer, to be anything less than a madman.
Now, in their midnight discussions, Dr. Wycherley more than once alluded to the insanity of Hamlet; and offered proofs. But Alfred declined the subject as too puerile. “A man must exist before he can be insane,” said the Oxonian philosopher, severe in youthful gravity. But when he found that Dr. Wycherley, had he lived in Denmark at the time, would have conferred cannily with Hamlet’s uncle, removed that worthy relative’s disbelief in Hamlet’s insanity, and signed the young gentleman away behind his back into a lunatic asylum, Alfred began to sympathise with this posthumous victim of Psychological Science. “I believe the bloke was no madder than I am,” said he. He got the play, studied it afresh, compared the fiction with the legend, compared Hamlet humbugging his enemies and their tool, Ophelia, with Hamlet opening his real mind to himself or his Horatio the very next moment; contrasted the real madness the author has portrayed in the plays of Hamlet and Lear by the side of these extravagant imitations, to save, if possible, even dunces, and dreamers, and criticasters from being taken in by the latter; and at their next seance pitched into the doctor’s pet chimera, and what with logic, fact, ridicule, and the author’s lines, knocked it to atoms.
Now, in their midnight discussions, Dr. Wycherley had always handled the question of Alfred Hardie’s Sanity or Insanity with a philosophical coolness the young man admired, and found it hard to emulate; but this philosophic calmness deserted him the moment Hamlet’s insanity was disputed, and the harder he was pressed the angrier, the louder, the more confused the Psychological physician became; and presently he got furious, burst out of the anti-spasmodic or round-about style and called Alfred a d — d ungrateful, insolent puppy, and went stamping about the room; and, finally, to the young man’s horror, fell down in a fit of an epileptic character, grinding his teeth and foaming at the mouth.
Alfred was filled with regret, and, though alarmed, had the presence of mind not to call for assistance. The fit was a very mild one in reality, though horrible to look at. The doctor came to, and asked feebly for wine. Alfred got it him, and the doctor, with a mixture of cunning and alarm in his eye, said he had fainted away, or nearly. Alfred assented coaxingly, and looked sheepish. After this he took care never to libel Hamlet’s intellect again by denying his insanity; for he was now convinced of what he had long half suspected, that the doctor had a bee in his own bonnet; and Alfred had studied true insanity all this time, and knew how inhumane it is to oppose a monomaniac’s foible; it only infuriates and worries him. No power can convince him.
But now he resolved to play on the doctor’s foible. It went against his conscience; but the temptation was so strong. He came to him with a hang-dog air.
“Doctor,” said he, “I have been thinking over your arguments, and I capitulate. If Hamlet ever existed, he was as mad as a March hare.” And he blushed at this his first quibble.
Dr. Wycherley beamed with satisfaction.
“My young friend, this gives me sincere pleasure; not on my account, but on your own. There goes one of your illusions then. Now tell me — the L. 4,000! Have you calmly reconsidered that too?”
Alfred hung his head, and looked guiltier and guiltier.
“Why,” said he, “that never amounted to anything more than a strong suspicion. It has long ceased to occupy my mind in excess. However, should I ever be so fortunate as to recover my liberty, I have no objection to collect the evidence about it pro and con., and then make you the judge instead of myself.” This he delivered with an admirable appearance of indifference.
“Very well, sir,” said the doctor drily. “Then, now I have a piece of good news for you.
“Oh, doctor, what is that?”
“Your cure is complete; that is all! You are now a sane man, as sane as I am.”
Alfred was a little disappointed at this piece of news; but recovering himself, asked him to certify that and let him send the certificate to the Board. Dr. Wycherley said he would with pleasure.
“I’ll bring it to you when I make my round,” said he.
Alfred retired triumphant, and went in at Plato with a good heart.
In about an hour Dr. Wycherley paid him the promised visit. But what may not an hour bring forth? He came with mortification and regret in his face to tell Alfred that an order of transfer had been signed by the proper parties, and counter-signed by two Commissioners, and he was to go to Dr. Wolf’s asylum that day.
Alfred groaned. “I knew my father would out-wit my feeble friends somehow or other,” said he. “What is his game! do you know?”
“I suppose to obtain a delay; and meantime get you into an asylum, where they will tell the Commissioners you are worse again, and perhaps do something to make their words good. Dr. Wolf, between ourselves, will say or do almost anything for money. And his asylum is conducted on the old system; though he pretends not.”
“My dear friend,” said Alfred, “will you do me a favour?”
“How could I deny you anything at this sorrowful moment?”
“Here is an advertisement I want inserted in the Morning Advertiser.”
“Oh, I can’t do that, I fear.”
“Look at it before you break my heart by refusing me.”
Dr. Wycherley looked at it, and said it was innocent, being unintelligible: and he would insert it himself.
“Three insertions, dear doctor, said Alfred. “Here is the money.
The doctor then told him sorrowfully he must pack up his things — Dr. Wolf’s keepers were waiting for him.
The moment of parting came. Then Alfred solemnly forgave Dr. Wycherley for signing away his wits, and thanked him for all his kindness and humanity. “We shall never meet again, I fear,” said he; “I feel a weight of foreboding here about my heart I never felt before; yet my trials have been many and great. I think the end is at hand.” Dr. Wolf’s keepers received him, and their first act was to handcuff him. The cold steel struck into him deeper than his wrist, and reminded him of Silverton Grove; he could not suppress a shudder. The carriage rolled all through London with him. He saw the Parks with autumn’s brown and golden tints: he saw the people, some rich, some poor, but none of them prisoners. He saw a little girl all rags. “Oh if I could be as ragged as you are,” he said, “and free.”
At last they reached Drayton House — a huge old mansion, fortified into a jail. His handcuffs were whipped off in the yard. He was ushered into a large gloomy drawing-room. Dr. Wolf soon came to him, and they measured each other by the eye like two prize-fighters. Dr. Wolf’s eye fell under Alfred’s, and the latter felt he was capable of much foul play. He was one of the old bull-necked breed: and contained the bull-dog and the spaniel in his single nature. “I hope you will be comfortable here, sir,” said he doggedly.
“I will try, sir.”
“The first-class patients dine in half an hour.”
“I will be ready, sir.”
“Full dress in the evening; there are several ladies.” Alfred assented by a bow. Dr. Wolf rang a bell, and told a servant to show Mr. Hardie his room.
He had just time to make his toilet when the bell rang for dinner.
As he went down a nurse met him, held up something white to him as she came, lowered it quickly, and dropped it at his feet in passing.
It was a billet-doux.
It was twisted into a pretty shape, scented and addressed to Mr. Hardie, in a delicate Italian hand, and in that pale ink which seems to reflect the charming timidity of the fair who use it.
He wondered; carried it into a recess; then opened it and read it. It contained but this one line —
“Drink nothing but water at dinner.”
These words in that delicate Italian hand sent a chill through Alfred. What on earth was all this? Was he to be poisoned? Was his life aimed at now instead of his reason? What was this mysterious drama prepared for him the very moment he set his foot in the place, perhaps before? A poisoner, and a friend! Both strangers. He went down to dinner: and contrived to examine every lady and gentleman at the table. But they were all strangers. Presently a servant filled his glass with beer; he looked and saw it was poured from a small jug holding only his portion. Alfred took his ring off his finger, and holding the glass up dropped his ring in.
“What is that for?” inquired one or two.
“Oh, my ring has a peculiar virtue, it tells me what is good for me. Ah! what do I see? My ruby changes colour. Fetch me a clean glass.” And he filled it with water from a caraffe. “No, sir, leave the beer. I’ll analyse it in my room after dinner. I’m a chemist.”
Dr. Wolf changed colour, and was ill at ease. Here was a bold and ugly customer. However, he said nothing, and felt sure his morphia could not be detected in beer by any decomposer but the stomach. Still he was rather mystified.
In the evening Alfred came dressed into the drawing-room, and found several gentlemen and ladies there. One of the ladies seemed to attract the lion’s share of male homage. Her back was turned to Alfred: but it was a beautiful back, with great magnificent neck and shoulders, and a skin like satin; she was tall but rounded and symmetrical, had a massive but long and shapely white arm, and perfect hand: and masses of thick black hair sat on her grand white poll like a raven on a marble pillar.
It was not easy to get near her; for the mad gentlemen were fawning on her all round; like Queen Elizabeth’s courtiers.
However, Dr. Wolf, seeing Alfred standing alone, said, “Let me introduce you,” and took him round to her. The courtiers fell back a little. The lady turned her stately head, and her dark eyes ran lightly all over Alfred in a moment.
He bowed, and blushed like a girl. She curtseyed composedly and without a symptom of recognition — deep water runs still — and Dr. Wolf introduced them ceremoniously.
“Mr. Hardie — Mrs. Archbold.”
ON Alfred’s leaving Silverton, Mrs. Archbold was prostrated. It was a stunning blow to her young passion, and left her weary, desolate.
But she was too strong to lie helpless under disappointed longings. Two days she sat stupefied with the heartache; after that she bustled about her work in a fervour of half-crazy restlessness, and ungovernable irritability, quenched at times by fits of weeping. As she wept apart, but raged and tyrannised in public, she soon made Silverton House Silverton Oven, especially to those who had the luck to be of her sex. Then Baker timidly remonstrated; at the first word she snapped him up and said a change would be good for both of them. He apologised; in vain: that very day she closed by letter with Dr. Wolf, who had often invited her to be his “Matron.” Her motive, half hidden from herself, was to be anywhere near her favourite.
Installed at Drayton House, she waited some days, and coquetted woman-like with her own desires, then dressed neatly but soberly, and called at Dr. Wycherley’s; sent in a note explaining who she was with a bit of soft sawder, and asked to see Alfred.
She was politely but peremptorily refused. She felt this rebuff bitterly. She went home stung and tingling to the core. But Bitters wholesome be: offended pride now allied with strong good sense to wither a wild affection; and, as it was no longer fed by the presence of its object, her wound healed, all but the occasional dull throbbing that precedes a perfect cure.
At this stage of her convalescence Dr. Wolf told her in an off-hand way that Mr. Hardie, a patient of doubtful insanity, was coming to his asylum, to be kept there by hook or by crook. (She was entirely in Wolf’s confidence, and he talked of these things to her in English.) The impenetrable creature assented outwardly, with no sign of emotion whatever, but one flash of the eye, and one heave of the bosom swiftly suppressed. She waited calmly and patiently till she was alone; then yielded to joy and triumph; they seemed to leap inside her. But this very thing alarmed her. “Better for me never to see him again,” she thought. “His power over me is too terrible. Ah, good-bye to the peace and comfort I have been building up! He will scatter them to the winds. He has.”
She tried not to think of him too much. And, while she was so struggling, Wolf let out that Alfred was to have morphia at dinner the first day — morphia, the accursed drug with which these dark men in these dark places coax the reason away out of the head by degrees, or with a potent dose stupefy the victim, then act surprise, alarm; and make his stupor the ground for applying medical treatment to the doomed wretch. Edith Archbold knew the game, and at the word morphia, Pity and Passion rose in her bosom irresistible. She smiled in Dr. Wolf’s face, and hated him; and secretly girt herself up to baffle him, and protect Alfred’s reason, and win his heart through his gratitude.
She received him as I have related, to throw dust in Dr. Wolf’s eyes: but she acted so admirably that some went into Alfred’s. “Ah,” thought he, “she is angry with herself for her amorous folly; and, with the justice of her sex, she means to spite poor me for it.” He sighed; for he felt her hostility would be fatal to him. To give her no fresh offence, he fell into her manner, and treated her with a world of distant respect. Then again, who else but she could have warned him against poison? Then again, if so, why look so cold and stern at him? He cast one or two wistful glances at her; but the artful woman of thirty was impenetrable in public to the candid man of twenty-one. Even her passion could not put them on an equality.
That night he could not sleep. He lay wondering what would be the next foul practice, and how he should parry it.
He wrote next morning to the Commissioners that two of their number, unacquainted with the previous proceedings of the Board, had been surprised into endorsing an order of transfer to an asylum bearing a very inferior character to Dr. Wycherley’s; the object of this was clearly foul play. Accordingly, Dr. Wolf had already tried to poison his reason, by drugging his beer at dinner. He added that Dr. Wycherley had now signed a certificate of his sanity, and implored the Board to inspect it, and discharge him at once, or else let a solicitor visit him at once, and take the requisite steps towards a public inquiry.
While waiting anxiously for the answer, it cost him all his philosophy to keep his heart from eating itself. But he fought the good fight of Reason; he invited the confidences of the quieter mad people, and established a little court, and heard their grievances, and by impartial decisions and good humour won the regard of the moderate patients and of the attendants, all but three; Rooke, the head keeper, a morose burly ruffian; Hayes, a bilious subordinate, Rooke’s shadow; and Vulcan, a huge mastiff that would let nobody but Rooke touch him; he was as big as a large calf, and formidable as a small lion, though nearly toothless with age. He was let loose in the yard at night, and was an element in the Restraint system; many a patient would have tried to escape but for Vulcan. He was also an invaluable howler at night, and so cooperated with Dr. Wolf’s bugs and fleas to avert sleep, that vile foe to insanity and all our diseases, private asylums included.
Alfred treated Mrs. Archbold with a distant respect that tried her hard. But that able woman wore sweetness and unobtrusive kindness, and bided her time.
In Drayton House the keeperesses eclipsed the keepers in cruelty to the poorer patients. No men except Dr. Wolf and his assistant had a pass-key into their department, so there was nobody they could deceive, nobody they held worth the trouble. In the absence of male critics they showed their real selves, and how wise it is to trust that gentle sex in the dark with irresponsible power over females. With unflagging patience they applied the hourly torture of petty insolence, needless humiliation, unreasonable refusals to the poor madwomen; bored them with the poisoned gimlet, and made their hearts bleeding pin-cushions. But minute cruelty and wild caprice were not enough for them, though these never tired nor rested; they must vilify them too with degrading and savage names. Billingsgate might have gone to school to Drayton House. Inter alia, they seemed in love with a term that Othello hit upon; only they used it not once, but fifty times a day, and struck decent women with it on the face, like a scorpion whip; and then the scalding tears were sure to run in torrents down their silly, honest, burning cheeks. But this was not all; they had got a large tank in a flagged room, nominally for cleanliness and cure, but really for bane and torture. For the least offence, or out of mere wantonness, they would drag a patient stark naked across the yard, and thrust her bodily under water again and again, keeping her down till almost gone with suffocation, and dismissing her more dead than alive with obscene and insulting comments ringing in her ears, to get warm again in the cold. This my ladies called “tanking.”
In the ordinary morning ablutions they tanked without suffocating. But the immersion of the whole body in cold water was of itself a severe trial to those numerous patients in whom the circulation was weak; and as medical treatment, hurtful and even dangerous. Finally, these keeperesses, with diabolical insolence and cruelty, would bathe twenty patients in this tank, and then make them drink that foul water for their meals.
“The dark places of the land are full of horrible cruelty.”
One day they tanked so savagely that Nurse Eliza, after months of sickly disapproval, came to the new redresser of grievances, and told.
What was he to do? He seized the only chance of redress; he ran panting with indignation to Mrs. Archbold, and blushing high, said imploringly, “Mrs. Archbold, you used to be kindhearted ——” and could say no more for something rising in his throat.
Mrs. Archbold smiled encouragingly on him, and said softly, “I am the same I always was — to you Alfred.”
“Oh, thank you; then pray send for Nurse Eliza, and hear the cruelties that are being done to the patients within a yard of us.”
“You had better tell me yourself, if you want me to pay any attention.”
“I can’t. I don’t know how to speak to a lady of such things as are done here. The brutes! the cowardly she-devils! Oh, how I should like to kill them.”
Mrs. Archbold laughed a little at his enthusiasm (fancy caring so what was done to a pack of women), and sent for Nurse Eliza. She came and being questioned told Mrs. Archbold more than she had Alfred. “And, ma’am,” said she, whimpering, “they have just been tanking one they had no business to touch; it is Mrs. Dale, her that is so close on her confinement. They tanked her cruel they did, and kept her under water till she was nigh gone. I came away; I couldn’t stand it.”
Alfred was walking about in a fury, and Nurse Eliza, in making this last revolting communication, lowered her voice for him not to hear, but his senses were quick. I think he heard, for he turned and came quickly to them.
“Mrs. Archbold, you are strong and brave — for a woman; oh, do go in to them and take them by the throat and shake the life out of them, the merciless, cowardly beasts! Oh that I could be a woman for an hour, or they could be men, I’d soon have my foot on some of the wretches.”
Mrs. Archbold acted Ignition. “Come with me both of you,” she said, and they were soon in the female department. Up came keeperesses directly, smirking and curtseying to her, and pretending not to look at Adonis. “Which of you nurses tanked Mrs. Dale?” said she sternly.
“‘Twasn’t I, ma’am, ‘twasn’t I.”
“Oh, fie!” said Eliza to one, “you know you were at the head of it.”
She pointed out two as the leaders. The Archbold instantly had them seized by the others — who, with treachery equal to their cowardice, turned eagerly against their fellow-culprits, to make friends with Power — and, inviting all the sensible maniacs who had been tanked, to assist or inspect, she bared her own statuesque arms, and, ably aided, soon plunged the offenders, screaming, crying, and whining, like spaniel bitches whipped, under the dirty water. They swallowed some, and appreciated their own acts. Then she forced them to walk twice round the yard with their wet clothes clinging to them, hooted by the late victims.
“There,” said Alfred, “let that teach you men will not own hyaenas in petticoats for women.”
Poor Alfred took all the credit of this performance; but in fact, when the Archbold invited him to bear a hand, he showed the white feather.
“I won’t touch the blackguardesses,” said he, haughtily turning it off on the score of contempt. “You give it them! Again, again! Brava!”
Mosaic retribution completed, Mrs. Archbold told the nurses if ever “tanking recurred she would bundle the whole female staff into the street, and then have them indicted by the Commissioners.”
These virtuous acts did Edith Archbold for love for a young man. Whether mad women or sane, women pregnant, or the reverse, were tanked or not, she cared at heart no more than whether sheep were washed or no in Ettrick’s distant dale. She was retiring with a tender look at Alfred, and her pulse secretly unaccelerated by sheep-washing of she-wolves, when her grateful favourite appealed to her again:
“Dear Mrs. Archbold, shall we punish and not comfort? This poor Mrs. Dale!”
The Archbold could have boxed his ears. “Dear boy,” she murmured tenderly, “you teach us all our duty.” She visited the tanked one, found her in a cold room after it, shivering like ague, and her teeth chattering. Mrs. Archbold had her to the fire, and got her warm clothes and a pint of wine, and probably saved her life and her child’s — for love of a young man.
Why I think Mrs. Dale would otherwise have left this shifting scene, Mrs. Carey, the last woman in her condition they tanked and then turned into a flagged cell that only wanted one frog of a grotto, was found soon after moribund; on which they bundled her out of the asylum to die. She did die next day, at home, but murdered by the asylum; and they told the Commissioners she died through her friends taking her away from the asylum too soon. The Commissioners had nothing to do but believe this, and did believe it. Inspectors who visit a temple of darkness, lies, cunning, and hypocrisy, four times a year, know mighty little of what goes on there the odd three hundred and sixty-one days, five hours, forty-eight minutes, and fifty-seven seconds.23
23 Arithmetic of my boyhood. I hear the world revolves some minutes quicker now.
“Now, Alfred,” said Mrs. Archbold, “I can’t be everywhere, or know everything; so you come to me when anything grieves you, and let me be the agent of your humanity.”
She said this so charmingly he was surprised into kissing her fair hand; then blushed, and thanked her warmly. Thus she established a chain between them. When he let too long elapse without appealing to her, she would ask his advice about the welfare of this or that patient; and so she cajoled him by the two foibles she had discerned in him — his vanity and his humanity.
Besides Alfred, there were two patients in Drayton House who had never been insane; a young man, and an old woman; of whom anon. There were also three ladies and one gentleman, who had been deranged, but had recovered years ago. This little incident, Recovery, is followed in a public asylum by instant discharge; but, in a private one, Money, not Sanity, is apt to settle the question of egress. The gentleman’s case was scarce credible in the nineteenth century: years ago, being undeniably cracked, he had done what Dr. Wycherley told Alfred was a sure sign of sanity: i.e., he had declared himself insane; and had even been so reasonable as to sign his own order and certificates, and so imprison himself illegally, but with perfect ease; no remonstrance against that illegality from the guardians of the law! When he got what plain men call sane, he naturally wanted to be free, and happening to remember he alone had signed the order of imprisonment, and the imaginary doctor’s certificates, he claimed his discharge from illegal confinement. Answer: “First obtain a legal order for your discharge.” On this he signed an order for his discharge. “That is not a legal order.”—“It is as legal as the order on which I am here.” “Granted; but, legally or not, the asylum has got you; the open air has not got you. Possession is ninety-nine points of Lunacy law. Die your own illegal prisoner, and let your kinsfolk eat your land, and drink your consols, and bury you in a pauper’s shroud” All that Alfred could do for these victims was to promise to try and get them out some day, D.V. But there was a weak-minded youth, Francis Beverley, who had the honour to be under the protection of the Lord Chancellor. Now a lunatic or a Softy, protected by that functionary, is literally a lamb protected by a wolf, and that wolf ex officio the cruellest, cunningest old mangler and fleecer of innocents in Christendom. Chancery lunatics are the richest class, yet numbers of them are flung among pauper and even criminal lunatics, at a few pounds a year, while their committees bag four-fifths of the money that has been assigned to keep the patient in comfort.
Unfortunately the protection of the Chancellor extends to Life and Reason, as well as Fleece; with the following result:
In public asylums about forty per cent. are said to be cured.
In private ones twenty-five per cent, at least; most of them poorish.
Of Chancery Lunatics not five per cent.
Finally, one-third of all the Chancery Lunatics do every six years exchange the living tombs they are fleeced and bullied in for dead tombs where they rest; and go from the sham protection of the Lord Chancellor of England to the real protection of their Creator and their Judge.
These statistics have been long before the world, and are dead figures to the Skimmer of things, but tell a dark tale to the Reader of things, so dark, that I pray Heaven to protect me, and all other weak inoffensive persons, from the protection of my Lord Chancellor in this kind.
Beverley was so unfortunate as to exist before the date of the above petition: and suffered the consequences.
He was an aristocrat by birth, noble on both sides of his house, and unluckily had money. But for that he would have been a labouring man, and free. My Lord Protector committed him with six hundred pounds a year maintenance money to the care of his committee, the Honourable Fynes Beverley.
Now this corporate, yet honourable individual, to whom something was committed, and so Chancery Lane called him in its own sweet French the thing committed, was a gentleman of birth, breeding, and intelligence. He undertook to take care of his simple cousin; and what he did take care of was himself.
THE SUB-LETTING SWINDLE.
I. The Honourable Fynes Beverley, Anglo-French committee, or crown tenant, sub-let soft Francis for L. 300 a year, pocketed L. 300, and washed his hands of Frank.
2. Mr. Heselden, the sub-tenant, sub-let the Softy of high degree for L. 150, pocketed the surplus, and washed his hands of him.
3. The L. 150 man sub-let him to Dr. Wolf at L. 60 a year, pouched the surplus, and washed his hands of him.
And now what on earth was left for poor Dr. Wolf to do? Could he sub-embezzle a Highlander’s breeks? Could he subtract more than her skin from off the singed cat? Could he peel the core of a rotten apple? Could he pare a grated cheese rind? Could he flay a skinned flint? Could he fleece a hog after Satan had shaved it as clean as a bantam’s egg?
Let no man dare to limit genius; least of all the genius of extortion.
Dr. Wolf screwed comparatively more out of young Frank than did any of the preceding screws. He turned him into a servant of all work and half starved him; money profit, L. 45 out of the L. 60, or three-fourths, whereas the others had only bagged one-half. But by this means he got a good servant without wages, and on half a servant’s food, clearing L. 22 and L. 12 in these two items.
Victim of our great national vice and foible, Vicariousness, this scion of a noble house, protected in theory by the Crown, vicariously sub-protected by the Chancellor, sub-vicariously sub-sham protected by his kin, was really flung unprotected into the fleece market, and might be seen — at the end of the long chain of subs. pros, vices, locos, shams, shuffles, swindles, and lies — shaking the carpets, making the beds, carrying the water, sweeping the rooms, and scouring the sordid vessels, of thirty patients in Drayton House, not one of whom was his equal either in birth or wealth; and of four menials, who were all his masters and hard ones. His work was always doing, never done. He was not the least mad nor bad, but merely of feeble intellect all round. Fifty thousand gentlemen’s families would have been glad of him at L. 300 a year, and made a son and a brother of him. But he was under the vicarious protection of the Lord Chancellor. Thin, half-starved, threadbare, out at elbows, the universal butt, scoffed at by the very lunatics, and especially ill treated by the attendants whose work he did gratis, he was sworn at, jeered, insulted, cuffed and even kicked, every day of his hard, hard life. And yet he was a gentleman, though a soft one; his hands, his features, his carriage, his address, had all an indefinable stamp of race. How had it outlived such crushing, degrading usage? I don’t know; how does a daisy survive the iron roller? Alfred soon found him out, and to everybody’s amazement, especially Frank’s, remonstrated gently but resolutely and eloquently, and soon convinced the majority, sane and insane, that a creature so meek and useful merited special kindness, not cruelty. One keeper, The Robin, alias Tom Wales, an ex-prize fighter, was a warm convert to this view. Among the maniacs only one held out, and said contemptuously he couldn’t see it.
“Well,” said Alfred, “lay a finger on him after this, and I’ll lay a hand on you, and aid your intellectual vision.”
Rooke and Hayes treated remonstrance with open and galling contempt. Yet the tide of opinion changed so, they did not care to defy it openly: but they bullied poor Beverley now and then on the sly, and he never told. He was too inoffensive for this world. But one day, as Alfred was sitting with his door ajar, writing a letter of earnest expostulation to the Commissioners, who had left his first unanswered, he heard Hayes at the head of the stairs call roughly, “Frank! Frank!”
“Sir,” replied the soft little voice of young Beverley.
“Come, be quick, young shaver.”
“I’m coming, sir,” and up ran Beverley.
“Here, take this tray downstairs.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stop, there’s a bit of bread for you.” And Hayes chucked him a crust, as one throws it to another man’s dog.
“Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Beverley, stooping down for it, and being habitually as hungry as a ratcatcher’s tyke, took an eager bite in that position.
“How dare you eat it there,” said Hayes brutally: “take it to your own crib: come, mizzle.” And with that lent him a contemptuous kick behind, which owing to his position sent him off his balance flat on the tray; a glass broke under him. Poor young Mr. Beverley uttered a cry of dismay, for he knew Hayes would not own himself the cause. Hayes cursed him for an awkward idiot, and the oath went off into a howl, for Alfred ran out at him brimful of Moses, and with a savage kick in the back and blow on the neck, administered simultaneously, hurled him head foremost down the stairs. Alighting on the seventh step, he turned a somersault, and bounded like a ball on to the landing below, and there lay stupefied. He picked himself up by slow degrees, and glared round with speechless awe and amazement up at the human thunderbolt that had shot out on him and sent him flying like a feather. He shook his fist, and limped silently away all bruises and curses, to tell Rooke and concert vengeance. Alfred, trembling still with ire, took Beverley to his room (the boy was as white as a sheet), and encouraged him, and made him wash properly, brushed his hair, dressed him in a decent tweed suit he had outgrown, and taking him under his arm, and walking with his own nose haughtily in the air, paraded him up and down the asylum, to show them all the best man in the house respected the poor soft gentleman. Ah, what a grand thing it is to be young! Beverley clung to his protector too much like a girl, but walked gracefully and kept step, and every now and then looked up at Alfred with a loving adoration, that was sweet, yet sad to see. Alfred marched him to Mrs. Archbold, and told his tale; for he knew Hayes would misrepresent it, and get him into trouble. She smiled on the pair; gently deplored her favourite’s impetuosity, entreated him not to go fighting with that great monster Rooke, and charmed him by saying, “Well, and Frank is a gentleman, when he is dressed like one.”
“Isn’t he?” said Alfred eagerly. “And whose fault is it he is not always dressed like one? Whose fault that here’s an earl’s nephew, ‘Boots in Hell’?”
“Not yours, Alfred, nor mine,” was the honeyed reply.
In vain did Mr. Hayes prefer his complaint to Dr. Wolf. The Archbold had been before him, and the answer was, “Served you right.”
These and many other good deeds did Alfred Hardie in Drayton House. But, as the days rolled on, and no answer came from the Commissioners, his own anxiety, grief, and dismay left him less and less able to sympathise with the material but smaller wrongs around him. He became silent, dejected.
At last he came to Mrs. Archbold, and said sternly his letters to the Commissioners were intercepted.
“I can’t believe that,” said she. “It is against the law.”
So it was: but law and custom are two.
“I am sure of it,” said he; “and may the eternal curse of Heaven light on the cowardly traitor and miscreant who has done it.” And he stalked gloomily away.
When he left her, she sighed at this imprecation from his lips; but did not repent. “I can’t part with him,” she said despairingly; “and if I did not stop his poor dear letters, Wolf would:” and the amorous crocodile shed a tear, and persisted in her double-faced course.
By-and-by, when she saw him getting thinner and paler, and his bright face downcast and inexpressibly sad, she shared his misery: ay, shed scalding tears for him: yet could not give him up; for her will was as strong as the rest of her was supple; and hers was hot love, but not true love like Julia’s.
Perhaps a very subtle observer, seeing this man and woman wax pale and spiritless together in one house, might have divined her secret. Dr. Wolf, then, was no such observer, for she made him believe she had a rising penchant for him. He really had a strong one for her.
While Alfred’s visible misery pulled at her heart-strings, and sometimes irritated, sometimes melted her, came curious complications; one of which requires preface.
Mrs. Dodd then was not the wife to trust blindly where her poor husband was concerned. She bribed so well that a keeperess in David’s first asylum told her David had been harshly used by an attendant. She instantly got Eve Dodd to take him away: and transfer him to a small asylum nearer London, and kept by a Mrs. Ellis. “Women are not cruel to men,” said the sagacious Lucy Dodd.
But, alas! if women are not cruel where sex comes in and mimics that wider sentiment, Humanity, women are deadly economical. Largely gifted with that household virtue, Mrs. Ellis kept too few servants, and, sure consequence in a madhouse, too many straitjackets, hobbles, muffs, leg-locks, bodybelts, &c. &c. Hence half her patients were frequently kept out of harm’s way by cruel restraints administered, not out of hearty cruelty, but female parsimony. Mrs. and Miss Dodd invaded the house one day when the fair economist was out, and found seven patients out of the twelve kept out of mischief thus: one in a restraint chair, two hobbled like asses, two chained like dogs, and two in straight-waistcoats, and fastened to beds by webbing and straps; amongst the latter, David, though quiet as a lamb.
Mrs. Dodd cried over him as if her heart would break, and made Miss Dodd shift him to a large asylum, where I believe he was very well used. But here those dreadful newspapers interfered; a prying into sweet secluded spots. They diversified Mrs. Dodd’s breakfast by informing her that the doctor of this asylum had just killed a patient; the mode of execution bloodless and sure, as became fair science. It was a man between sixty and seventy; an age at which the heart can seldom stand very much shocking, or lowering, especially where the brain is diseased. So they placed him in a shower-bath, narrow enough to impede respiration, without the falling water, which of necessity drives out air. In short a vertical box with holes all round the top.
Here the doctor ordered him a cold shower-bath of unparalleled duration: half an hour. To be followed by an unprecedented dose of tartar emetic. This double-barrelled order given, the doctor went away. (Formula.)
The water was down to forty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Half an hour’s shower-bath at that temperature in a roomy bath would kill the youngest and strongest man in her Majesty’s dominions.
For eight-and-twenty mortal minutes the poor old man stood in this vertical coffin under this cold cascade. Six hundred gallons of icy water were in that his last hour, his last half-hour, discharged upon his devoted head and doomed body.
He had to be helped away from this death-torrent he had walked into in high spirits, poor soul.
Even this change awakened no misgivings, no remorse; though you or I, or any man or woman picked at hazard out of the streets, would at once have seen that he was dying, he was duly dozed by the fire with four spoonfuls of antimonial tincture —to mak’ sicker. But even the “Destructive Art of Healing” cannot slay the slain. The old man cheated the emetic; for, before it could hurt him, he died of the bath; And his body told its own sad tale; to use the words of a medical eye-witness, it was “A PIECE OF ALABASTER.” The death-torrent had driven the whole circulation from the surface.24
24 This mode of execution is well known in the United States. They settle refractory prisoners with it periodically. But half an hour is not needed; twenty minutes will do the trick. “Harper’s Weekly,” a year or two ago, contained an admirable woodcut of a negro’s execution by water. In this remarkable picture you see the poor darkie seated powerless, howling and panting his life away under the deadly cascade, and there stands the stolid turnkey, erect, formal, stiff as a ramrod, pulling the deadly string with a sort of drill exercise air, and no more compunction nor reflection than if he himself was a machine constructed to pull strings or triggers on his own string being pulled by butcher or fool. A picture well studied, and so worth study.
Mrs. Dodd was terrified, and in spite of Sampson’s assurance that this was the asylum of all others they would not settle another patient in until the matter should have blown over, got Eve Dodd to write to Dr. Wolf, and offer L. 300 a year if he would take David at once, and treat him with especial consideration.
He showed this letter triumphantly to Mrs. Archbold, and she, blinded for a moment by feeling, dissuaded him from receiving Captain Dodd. He stared at her. “What, turn away a couple of thousand pounds?”
“But they will come to visit him; and perhaps see him.”
“Oh, that can be managed. You must be on your guard: and I’ll warn Rooke. I can’t turn away money on a chance.”
One day Alfred found himself locked into his room. This was unusual: for, though they called him a lunatic in words, they called him sane by all their acts. He half suspected that the Commissioners were in the house.
Had he known who really was in the house, he would have beaten himself to pieces against the door.
At dinner there was a new patient, very mild and silent, with a beautiful large brown eye, like some gentle animal’s.
Alfred was very much struck with this eye, and contrived to say a kind word to him after dinner. Finding himself addressed by a gentleman, the new comer handled his forelock and made a sea scrape, and announced himself as William Thompson; he added with simple pride, “Able Seaman;” then touching his forelock again, “Just come aboard, your honour.” After this, which came off glibly, he was anything but communicative. However, Alfred contrived to extract from him that he was rather glad to leave his last ship, on account of having been constantly impeded there in his duties by a set of lubbers, that clung round him and kept him on deck whenever the first lieutenant ordered him into the top.
The very next day, pacing sadly the dull gravel of his prison yard, Alfred heard a row; and there was the able seaman struggling with the Robin and two other keepers. He wanted to go to his duties in the foretop: to wit, the fork of a high elm-tree in the court-yard. Alfred had half a mind not to interfere. “Who cares for my misery?” he said. But his better nature prevailed, and he told the Robin he was sure going up imaginary rigging would do Thompson more good than harm.
On this the men reluctantly gave him a trial, and he went up the tree with wonderful strength and agility, but evident caution. Still Alfred quaked when he crossed his thighs tight over a limb of the tree forty feet from earth, and went carefully and minutely through the whole process of furling imaginary sails. However, he came down manifestly soothed by the performance, and, singular phenomenon, he was quite cool; and it was the spectators on deck who perspired.
“And what a pleasant voice he has,” said Alfred; “it quite charms my ear; it is not like a mad voice. It is like — I’m mad myself.”
“And he has got a fiddle, and plays it like a hangel, by all accounts,” said the Robin; “only he won’t touch it but when he has a mind.”
At night Alfred dreamed he heard Julia’s sweet mellow voice speaking to him; and he looked, and lo! it was the able seaman. He could sleep no more, but lay sighing.
Ere the able seaman had been there three days, Mrs. Dodd came unexpectedly to see him; and it was with the utmost difficulty Alfred was smuggled out of the way. Mrs. Archbold saw by her loving anxiety these visits would be frequent, and, unless Alfred was kept constantly locked up, which was repugnant to her, they would meet some day. She knew there are men who ply the trade of spies, and where to find them; she set one of them to watch Mrs. Dodd’s house, and learn her habits, in hopes of getting some clue as to when she might be expected.
Now it so happened that, looking for one thing, she found another which gave her great hopes and courage. And then the sight of Alfred’s misery tried her patience, and then he was beginning half to suspect her of stopping his letters. Passion, impatience, pity, and calculation, all drove her the same road, and led to an extraordinary scene, so impregnated with the genius of the madhouse — a place where the passions run out to the very end of their tether — that I feel little able to describe it. I will try and indicate it.
One fine Sunday afternoon, then, she asked Alfred languidly would he like to walk in the country.
“Would I like? Ah, don’t trifle with a prisoner,” said he sorrowfully.
She shook her head. “No, no, it will not be a happy walk. Rooke, who hates you, is to follow us with that terrible mastiff, to pull you down if you try to escape. I could not get Dr. Wolf to consent on any other terms. Alfred, let us give up the idea. I fear your rashness.”
“No, no, I won’t try to escape — from you. I have not seen a blade of grass this six months.”
The accomplished dissembler hesitated, yielded. They passed through the yard and out at the back door, which Alfred had so often looked wistfully at; and by-and-by reached a delicious pasture. A light golden haze streamed across it. Nature never seemed so sweet, so divine, to Alfred before; the sun as bright as midsummer, though not the least hot, the air fresh, yet genial, and perfumed with Liberty and the smaller flowers of earth. Beauty glided rustling by his side, and dark eyes subdued their native fire into softness whenever they turned on him; and scarce fifty yards in the rear hung a bully and a mastiff ready to tear him down if he should break away from beauty’s light hand, that rested so timidly on his. He was young, and stout-hearted, and relished his peep of liberty and nature, though blotted by Vulcan and Rooke. He chatted to Mrs. Archbold in good spirits. She answered briefly, and listlessly.
At last she stopped under a young chestnut-tree as if overcome with a sudden reflection, and turning half away from him leaned her head and hand upon a bough, and sighed. The attitude was pensive and womanly. He asked her with innocent concern what was the matter; then faintly should he take her home. All her answer was to press his hand with hers that was disengaged, and, instead of sighing, to cry.
The novice in woman’s wiles set himself to comfort her — in vain; to question her — in vain at first; but by degrees she allowed him to learn that it was for him she mourned; and so they proceeded on the old, old plan, the man extorting from the woman bit by bit just so much as she wanted all along to say, and would have poured in a stream if let quite alone.
He drew from his distressed friend that Dr. Wolf for reasons of his own had made special inquiries about the Dodds; that she had fortunately or unfortunately heard of this, and had questioned the person employed, hoping to hear something that might comfort Alfred. “Instead of that,” said she, “I find Miss Dodd is like most girls; out of sight is out of mind with her.”
“What do you mean?” said Alfred, trembling suddenly.
“Do not ask me. What a weak fool I was to let you see I was unhappy for you.”
“The truth is the truth,” gasped Alfred; “tell me at once.”
“Must I? I am afraid you will hate me; for I should hate any one who told me your faults. Well, then — if I must — Miss Dodd has a beau.”
“It is a lie!” cried Alfred furiously.
“I wish it was. But she has two in fact, both of them clergymen. However, one seems the favourite; at least they are engaged to be married; it is Mr. Hurd, the curate of the parish she lives in. By what I hear she is one of the religious ones; so perhaps that has brought the pair to an understanding.”
At these words a cold sickness rushed all over Alfred, beginning at his heart. He stood white and stupefied a moment; then, in the anguish of his heart, broke out into a great and terrible cry; it was like a young lion wounded with a poisoned shaft.
Then he was silent, and stood stock still, like petrified despair.
Mrs. Archbold was prepared for an outburst: but not of this kind. His anguish was so unlike a woman’s that it staggered her. Her good and bad angels, to use an expressive though somewhat too poetical phrase, battled for her. She had an impulse to earn his gratitude for life, to let him out of the asylum ere Julia should be Mrs. Hurd, and even liberty come too late for true love. She looked again at the statue of grief by her side; and burst out crying in earnest.
This was unfortunate. Shallow pity exuding in salt water leaves not enough behind to gush forth in good deeds.
She only tried to undo her own work in part; to comfort him a little with commonplaces. She told him in a soothing whisper there were other women in the world besides this inconstant girl, others who could love him as he deserved.
He made no answer to all she could say, but just waved his hand once impatiently. Petty consolation seemed to sting him.
She drew back discouraged; but only for a while. He was silent.
With one grand serpentine movement she came suddenly close to him, and, standing half behind him, laid her hand softly on his shoulder, and poured burning love in his ear. “Alfred,” she murmured, “we are both unhappy; let us comfort one another. I had pity on you at Silverton House, I pity you now: pity me a little in turn: take me out of this dreadful house, out of this revolting life, and let me be with you. Let me be your housekeeper, your servant, your slave. This news that has shocked you so has torn the veil from my eyes. I thought I had cooled my love down to friendship and tender esteem; but no, now I see you as unhappy as myself, now I can speak and wrong no one, I own I— oh Alfred my heart burns for you, bleeds for you, yearns for you, sickens for you, dies for you.”
“Oh, hush! hush! Mrs. Archbold. You are saying things you will blush for the next moment.”
“I blush now, but cannot hush; I have gone too far. And your happiness as well as mine is at stake. No young girl can understand or value such a man as you are: but I, like you, have suffered; I, like you, am constant; I, like you, am warm and tender; at my age a woman’s love is bliss to him who can gain it; and I love you with all my soul, Alfred. I worship the ground you walk on, my sweet, sweet boy. Say you the word, dearest, and I will bribe the servants, and get the keys, and sacrifice my profession for ever to give you liberty (see how sweet the open face of nature is, sweeter than anything on earth, but love); and all I ask is a little, little of your heart in return. Give me a chance to make you mine for ever; and, if I fail, treat me as I shall deserve; desert me at once; and then I’ll never reproach you; I’ll only die for you; as I have lived for you ever since I first saw your heavenly face.”
The passionate woman paused at last, but her hot cheek and heaving bosom and tender convulsive hand prolonged the pleading.
I am afraid few men of her own age would have resisted her; for voice and speech and all burning, melting, and winning; and then, so reasonable, lads; she did not stipulate for constancy.
But Alfred turned round to her blushing and sorrowful. “For shame!” he said; “this is not love: you abuse that sacred word. Indeed, if you had ever really loved, you would have pitied me and Julia long ago, and respected our love; and saved us by giving me my freedom long ago. I am not a fool: do you think I don’t know that you are my jailer, and the cunningest and most dangerous of them all?”
“You cruel, ungrateful!” she sobbed.
“No; I am not ungrateful either,” said he more gently. “You have always come between me and that kind of torture which most terrifies vulgar souls: and I thank you for it. Only if you had also pitied the deeper anguish of my heart, I should thank you more still. As it is, I forgive you for the share you have had in blasting my happiness for life; and nobody shall ever know what you have been mad enough in an unguarded moment to say; but for pity’s sake talk no more of love, to mock my misery.”
Mrs. Archbold was white with ire long before he had done this sentence. “You insolent creature,” said she; “you spurn my love; you shall feel my hate.”
“So I conclude,” said he coldly: “such love as yours is hard by hate.”
“It is,” said she: “and I know how I’ll combine the two. To-day I loved you, and you spurned me; ere long you shall love me and I’ll despise you; and not spurn you.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Alfred, feeling rather uneasy.
“What,” said she, “don’t you see how the superior mind can fascinate the inferior? Look at Frank Beverley — how he follows you about and fawns on you like a little dog.”
“I prefer his sort of affection to yours.”
“A gentleman and a man would have kept that to himself; but you are neither one nor the other; or you would have taken my offer, and then run away from me the next day, you fool. A man betrays a woman; he doesn’t insult her. Ah, you admire Frank’s affection; well, you shall imitate it. You couldn’t love me like a man; you shall love me like a dog.”
“How will you manage that, pray? “ he inquired with a sneer.
“I’ll drive you mad.”
She hissed this fiendish threat out between her white teeth.
“Ay, sir,” she said, “hitherto your reason has only encountered men. You shall see now what an insulted woman can do. A lunatic you shall be ere long, and then I’ll make you love me, dote on me, follow me about for a smile: and then I’ll leave off hating you, and love you once more, but not the way I did five minutes ago.”
At this furious threat Alfred ground his teeth, and said, “Then I give you my honour that the moment I see my reason the least shaken, I’ll kill you: and so save myself from the degradation of being your lover on any terms.”
“Threaten your own sex with that,” said the Archbold contemptuously; “you may kill me whenever you like; and the sooner the better. Only, if you don’t do it very quickly, you shall be my property, my brain-sick, love-sick slave.”
AFTER a defiance so bitter and deadly, Alfred naturally drew away from his inamorata. But she, boiling with love and hate, said bitterly, “We need not take Mr. Rooke into our secrets. Come, sir, your arm!”
He stuck it out ungraciously, and averted his head; she took it, suppressed with difficulty a petty desire to pinch, and so walked by his side. He was as much at his ease as if promenading jungles with a panther. She felt him quiver with repugnance under her soft hand; and prolonged the irritating contact. She walked very slowly, and told him with much meaning she was waiting for a signal. “Till then,” said she, “we will keep one another company;” biting the word with her teeth as it went out.
By-and-by a window was opened in the asylum, and a table-cloth hung out. Mrs. Archbold pointed it out to Alfred; he stared at it; and after that she walked him rapidly home in silence. But, as soon as the door was double-locked on him, she whispered triumphantly in his ear —
“Your mother-inlaw was expected today; that signal was to let me know she was gone.”
“My mother-inlaw!” cried the young man, and tried in vain to conceal his surprise and agitation.
“Ay; your mother-inlaw, that shall never be. Mrs. Dodd.”
“Mrs. Dodd here!” said Alfred, clasping his hands. Then he reflected, and said coolly: “It is false; what should she come here for?”
“To see your father-inlaw.”
“My father-inlaw? What, is he here, too?” said Alfred with an incredulous sneer.
“Yes, the raving maniac that calls himself Thompson, and that you took to from the first: he is your precious father-inlaw — that shall never be.”
Alfred was now utterly amazed, and bewildered. Mrs. Archbold eyed him in silent scorn.
“Poor man,” said he at last; and hung his head sorrowfully. “No wonder then his voice went so to my heart. How strange it all is! and how will it all end?”
“In your being a madman instead of an insolent fool,” hissed the viper.
At this moment Beverley appeared at the end of the yard. Mrs. Archbold whistled him to her like a dog. He came running zealously. “Who was that called while I was out?” she inquired.
“A polite lady, madam: she said sir to me, and thanked me.”
“That sounds like Mrs. Dodd,” said the Archbold quietly.
“Ah, but,” continued Frank, “there was another with her a beautiful young lady; oh, so beautiful!”
“Miss Julia Dodd,” said the Archbold grimly.
Alfred panted, and his eyes roved wildly in search of a way to escape and follow her; she could not be far off.
“Anybody else, Frank?” inquired Mrs. Archbold.
“No more ladies, madam; but there was a young gentleman all in black. I think he was a clergyman — or a butler.”
“Ah, that was her husband that is to be; that was Mr. Hurd. She can go nowhere without him, not even to see her old beau.”
At these words, every one of them an adder, Alfred turned on her furiously, and his long arm shot out of its own accord, and the fingers opened like an eagle’s claw. She saw, and understood, but never blenched. Her vindictive eye met his dilating flashing orbs unflinchingly.
“You pass for a woman,” he said, “and I am too wretched for anger.” He turned from her with a deep convulsive sob, and, almost staggering, leaned his brow against the wall of the house.
She had done what no man had as yet succeeded in; she had broken his spirit. And here a man would have left him alone. But the rejected beauty put her lips to his ear, and whispered into them, “This is only the beginning.” Then she left him and went to his room and stole all his paper, and pens, and ink, and his very Aristotle. He was to have no occupation now, except to brood, and brood, and brood.
As for Alfred, he sat down upon a bench in the yard a broken man: up to this moment he had hoped his Julia was as constant as himself. But no; either she had heard he was mad, and with the universal credulity had believed it, or perhaps, not hearing from him at all believed herself forsaken; and was consoling herself with a clergyman. Jealousy did not as yet infuriate Alfred. Its first effect resembled that of a heavy blow. Little Beverley found him actually sick, and ran to the Robin. The exprizefighter brought him a thimbleful of brandy, but he would not take it. “Ah no, my friends,” he said, “that cannot cure me; it is not my stomach; it is my heart. Broken, broken!”
The Robin retired muttering. Little Beverley kneeled down beside him, and kissed his hand with a devotion that savoured of the canine. Yet it was tender, and the sinking heart clung to it. “Oh, Frank!” he cried, “my Julia believes me mad, or thinks me false, or something, and she will marry another before I can get out to tell her all I have endured was for loving her. What shall I do? God protect my reason! What will become of me?”
He moaned, and young Frank sorrowed over him, till the harsh voice of Rooke summoned him to some menial duty. This discharged, he came running back; and sat on the bench beside his crushed benefactor without saying a word. At last he delivered this sapient speech: “I see. You want to get out of this place.”
Alfred only sighed hopelessly.
“Then I must try and get you out,” said Frank. Alfred shook his head.
“Just let me think,” said Frank solemnly; and he sat silent looking like a young owl: for thinking soon puzzled him, and elicited his intellectual weakness, whereas in a groove of duties he could go as smoothly as half the world, and but for his official, officious Protector, might just as well have been Boots at the Swan, as Boots and Chambermaid at the Wolf.
So now force and cunning had declared war on Alfred, and feebleness in person enlisted in his defence. His adversary lost no time; that afternoon Rooke told him he was henceforth to occupy a double bedded room with another patient.
“If he should be violent in the middle of the night, sing out, and we will come — if we hear you,” said the keeper with a malicious smile.
The patient turned out to be the able seaman. Here Mrs. Archbold aimed a double stroke; to shake Alfred’s nerves, and show him how very mad his proposed father-inlaw was. She thought that, if he could once be forced to realise this, it might reconcile him to not marrying the daughter.
The first night David did get up and paraded an imaginary deck for four mortal hours. Alfred’s sleep was broken; but he said nothing, and David turned in again, his watch completed.
Not a day passed now but a blow was struck. Nor was the victim passive; debarred writing materials, he cut the rims off several copies of the Times, and secreted them: then catching sight of some ink-blots on the back of Frank’s clothes-brush, scraped them carefully off, melted them in a very little water, and with a toothpick scrawled his wrongs to the Commissioners; he rolled the slips round a half-crown, and wrote outside, “Good Christian, keep this half-crown, and take the writing to the Lunacy Commissioners at Whitehall, for pity’s sake.” This done, he watched, and when nobody was looking, flung his letter, so weighted, over the gates; he heard it fall on the public road.
Another day he secreted a spoonful of black currant preserve, diluted it with a little water, and wrote a letter, and threw it into the road as before: another day, hearing the Robin express disgust at the usage to which he was now subjected, he drew him apart, and offered him a hundred pounds to get him out. Now the exprizefighter was rather a tender-hearted fellow, and a great detester of foul play. What he saw made him now side heartily with Alfred; and all he wanted was to be indemnified for his risk.
He looked down and said, “You see, sir, I have a wife and child to think of.”
Alfred offered him two hundred pounds.
“That is more than enough, sir,” said the Robin; “but you see I can’t do it alone. I must have a pal in it. Could you afford as much to Garrett? He is the likeliest; I’ve heard him say as much as that he was sick of the business.”
Alfred jumped at the proposal: he would give them two hundred apiece.
“I’ll sound him,” said the Robin; “don’t you speak to him, whatever. He might blow the gaff. I must begin by making him drunk, then he’ll tell me his real mind.”
One fine morning the house was made much cleaner than usual; the rotatory chair, in which they used to spin a maniac like a teetotum, the restraint chairs, and all the paraphernalia were sent into the stable, and so disposed that, even if found, they would look like things scorned and dismissed from service: for Wolf, mind you, professed the non-restraint system.
Alfred asked what was up, and found all this was in preparation for the quarterly visit of the Commissioners: a visit intended to be a surprise; but Drayton House always knew when they were coming, and the very names of the two thunderbolts that thought to surprise them.
Mrs. Archbold communicated her knowledge in off-hand terms. “It is only two old women: Bartlett and Terry.”
The gentlemen thus flatteringly heralded arrived next day. One an aged, infirm man, with a grand benevolent head, bald front and silver hair, and the gold-headed cane of his youth, now a dignified crutch: the other an ordinary looking little chap enough, with this merit — he was what he looked. They had a long interview with Mrs. Archbold first, for fear they should carry a naked eye into the asylum. Mr. Bartlett, acting on instructions, very soon inquired about Alfred; Mrs. Archbold’s face put on friendly concern directly. “I am sorry to say he is not so well as he was a fortnight ago — not nearly so well. We have given him walks in the country, too; but I regret to say they did him no real good; he came back much excited, and now he shuns the other patients, which he used not to do.” In short, she gave them the impression that Alfred was a moping melancholiac.
“Well, I had better see him,” said Mr. Bartlett, “just to satisfy the Board.”
Alfred was accordingly sent for, and asked with an indifferent air how he was.
He said he was very well in health, but in sore distress of mind at his letters to the Commissioners being intercepted by Mrs. Archbold or Dr. Wolf.
Mrs. Archbold smiled pityingly. Mr. Bartlett caught her glance, and concluded this was one of the patient’s delusions. (Formula.)
Alfred surprised the glances, and said, “You can hardly believe this, because the act is illegal. But a great many illegal acts, that you never detect, are done in asylums. However, it is not a question of surmise; I sent four letters in the regular way since I came. Here are their several dates. Pray make a note to inquire whether they have reached Whitehall or not.”
“Oh, certainly, to oblige you,” said Mr. Bartlett, and made the note.
Mrs. Archbold looked rather discomposed at that.
“And now, gentlemen,” said Alfred, “since Mrs. Archbold has had a private interview, which I see she has abused to poison your mind against me, I claim as simple justice a private interview to disabuse you.”
“You are the first patient ever told me to walk out of my own drawing-room,” said Mrs. Archbold, rising white with ire and apprehension, and sweeping out of the room.
By this piece of female petulance she gave the enemy a point in the game; for, if she had insisted on staying, Mr. Bartlett was far too weak to have dismissed her. As it was, he felt shocked at Alfred’s rudeness: and so small a thing as justice did not in his idea counterbalance so great a thing as discourtesy; so he listened to Alfred’s tale with the deadly apathy of an unwilling hearer. “Pour on: I will endure,” as poor Lear says.
As for Dr. Terry, he was pictorial, but null; effete; emptied of brains by all-scooping-Time. If he had been detained that day at Drayton House, and Frank Beverley sent back in his place to Whitehall, it would have mattered little to him, less to the nation, and nothing to mankind.
At last Mr. Bartlett gave Alfred some hopes he was taking in the truth; for he tore a leaf out of his memorandum-book, wrote on it, and passed it to Dr. Terry. The ancient took it with a smile, and seemed to make an effort to master it, but failed; it dropped simultaneously from his finger and his mind.
Not a question was put to Alfred; so he was fain to come to an end; he withdrew suddenly, and caught Mrs. Archbold at the keyhole. “Noble adversary!” said he, and stalked away, and hid himself hard by: and no sooner did the inspectors come out, and leave the coast clear, than he darted in and looked for the paper Mr. Bartlett had passed to Dr. Terry.
He found it on the floor: and took it eagerly up; and full of hope, and expectation, read these words:
WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE STUFF THE MATRON’S GOWN IS MADE OF? I SHOULD LIKE TO BUY MRS. BARTLETT ONE LIKE IT.
Alfred stood and read this again, and again he searched for some hidden symbolical meaning in the words. High-minded, and deeply impressed with his own wrongs, he could not conceive a respectable man, paid fifteen hundred a year to spy out wrongs, being so heartless hard as to write this single comment during the earnest recital of a wrong so gigantic as his. Poor Alfred learned this to his cost, that to put small men into great places is to create monsters. When he had realised the bitter truth, he put the stony-hearted paper in his pocket, crept into the yard, and sat down, and, for all he could do, scalding tears ran down his cheeks.
“Homunculi quanti sunt!” he sobbed; “homunculi quanti sunt!”
Presently he saw Dr. Terry come wandering towards him alone. The Archbold had not deigned to make him safe; senectitude had done that. Alfred, all heart — sick as he was, went to the old gentleman out of veneration for the outside of his head — which was Shakespearian — and pity for his bodily infirmity; and offered him an arm. The doctor thanked him sweetly, and said, “Pray, young man, have you anything to communicate?”
Then Alfred saw that the ancient man had already forgotten his face, and so looking at him with that rare instrument of official inspection, the naked eye, had seen he was sane; and consequently taken him for a keeper.
How swiftly the mind can roam, and from what a distance gather the materials of a thought! Flashed like lightning through Alfred’s mind this line from one of his pets, the Greek philosophers:
[Greek text]
“And this is the greatest stroke of art, to turn an evil into a good.”
Now the feebleness of this aged Inspector was an evil: the thing then was to turn it into a good. Shade of Plato, behold how thy disciple worked thee! “Sir,” said he, sinking his voice mysteriously, “I have: but I am a poor man: you won’t say I told you: it’s as much as my place is worth.”
“Confidence, strict confidence,” replied Nestor, going over beaten tracks; for he had kept many a queer secret with the loyalty which does his profession so much honour.
“Then, sir, there’s a young gentleman confined here, who is no more mad than you and I; and never was mad.”
“You don’t say so.”
“That I do, sir: and they know they are doing wrong, sir, for they stop all his letters to the Commissioners; and that is unlawful, you know. Would you like to take a note of it all, sir?”
The old fogie said he thought he should, and groped vaguely for his note-book: he extracted it at last like a loose tooth, fumbled with it, and dropped it: Alfred picked it up fuming inwardly.
The ancient went to write, but his fingers were weak and hesitating, and by this time he had half forgotten what he was going to say. Alfred’s voice quavered with impatience; but he fought it down, and offered as coolly as he could to write it for him: the offer was accepted, and he wrote down in a feigned hand, very clear —
“DRAYTON HOUSE, Oct. 5.— A sane patient, Alfred Hardie, confined here from interested motives. Has written four letters to the Commissioners, all believed to be intercepted. Communicated to me in confidence by an attendant in the house. Refer to the party himself, and his correspondence with the Commissioners from Dr. Wycherley’s: also to Thomas Wales, another attendant; and to Dr. Wycherley: also to Dr. Eskell and Mr. Abbott, Commissioners of Lunacy.”
After this stroke of address Alfred took the first opportunity of leaving him, and sent Frank Beverley to him.
Thus Alfred, alarmed by the hatred of Mrs. Archbold, and racked with jealousy, exerted all his intelligence and played many cards for liberty. One he kept in reserve; and a trump card too. Having now no ink nor colouring matter, he did not hesitate, but out penknife, up sleeve, and drew blood from his arm, and with it wrote once more to the Commissioners, but kept this letter hidden for an ingenious purpose. What that purpose was my reader shall divine.
WE left Julia Dodd a district visitor. Working in a dense parish she learned the depths of human misery, bodily and mental.
She visited an honest widow, so poor that she could not afford a farthing dip, but sat in the dark. When friends came to see her they sometimes brought a candle to talk by.
She visited a cripple who often thanked God sincerely for leaving her the use of one thumb.
She visited a poor creature who for sixteen years had been afflicted with a tumour in the neck, and had lain all those years on her back with her head in a plate; the heat of a pillow being intolerable. Julia found her longing to go, and yet content to stay: and praising God in all the lulls of that pain which was her companion day and night.
But were I to enumerate the ghastly sights, the stifling loathsome odours, the vulgar horrors upon horrors this refined young lady faced, few of my readers would endure on paper for love of truth what she endured in reality for love of suffering humanity, and of Him whose servant she aspired to be.
Probably such sacrifices of selfish ease and comfort are never quite in vain; they tend in many ways to heal our own wounds: I won’t say that bodily suffering is worse than mental; but it is realised far more vividly by a spectator. The grim heart-breaking sights she saw arrayed Julia’s conscience against her own grief; the more so when she found some of her most afflicted ones resigned, and even grateful. “What,” said she, “can they, all rags, disease and suffering, bow so cheerfully to the will of Heaven, and have I the wickedness, the impudence, to repine?”
And then, happier than most district visitors, she was not always obliged to look on helpless, or to confine her consolations to good words. Mrs. Dodd was getting on famously in her groove. She was high in the confidence of Cross and Co., and was inspecting eighty ladies, as well as working; her salary and profits together were not less than five hundred pounds a year, and her one luxury was charity, and Julia its minister. She carried a good honest basket, and there you might see her Bible wedged in with wine and meat, and tea and sugar: and still, as these melted in her round, a little spark of something warm would sometimes come in her own sick heart. Thus by degrees she was attaining not earthly happiness, but a grave and pensive composure.
Yet across it gusts of earthly grief came sweeping often; but these she hid till she was herself again.
To her mother and brother she was kinder, sweeter, and dearer, if possible, than ever. They looked on her as a saint; but she knew better; and used to blush with honest shame when they called her so. “Oh don’t, pray don’t, she would say with unaffected pain. “Love me as if I was an angel; but do not praise me; that turns my eyes inward and makes me see myself. I am not a Christian yet, nor anything like one.”
Returning one day from her duties very tired, she sat down to take off her bonnet in her own room, and presently heard snatches of an argument that made her prick those wonderful little ears of hers which could almost hear through a wall. The two concluding sentences were a key to the whole dialogue.
“Why disturb her?” said Mrs. Dodd. “She is getting better of ‘the Wretch;’ and my advice is, say nothing: what harm can that do?”
“But then it is so unfair, so ungenerous, to keep anything from the poor girl that may concern her.”
At this moment Julia came softly into the room with her curiosity hidden under an air of angelic composure.
Her mother asked after Mrs. Beecher, to draw her into conversation. She replied quietly that Mrs. Beecher was no better, but very thankful for the wine Mrs. Dodd had sent her. This answer given, she went without any apparent hurry and sat by Edward, and fixed two loving imploring eyes on him in silence. Oh, subtle sex! This feather was to turn the scale, and make him talk unquestioned. It told. She was close to him too, and mamma at the end of the room.
“Look here, Ju,” said he, putting his hands in his pockets, “we two have always been friends as well as brother and sister; and somehow it does not seem like a friend to keep things dark;” then to Mrs. Dodd: “She is not a child, mother, after all; and how can it be wrong to tell her the truth, or right to suppress the truth? Well then, Ju, there’s an advertisement in the ’Tiser, and it’s a regular riddle. Now mind, I don’t really think there is anything in it; but it is a droll coincidence, very droll; if it wasn’t there are ladies present, and one of them a district visitor, I would say, d — d droll. So droll,” continued he, getting warm, “that I should like to punch the advertiser’s head.”
“Let me see it, dear,” said Julia. “I dare say it is nothing worth punching about.”
“There,” said Edward. “I’ve marked it.”
Julia took the paper, and her eye fell on this short advertisement:
AILEEN AROON. — DISTRUST APPEARANCES.
Looking at her with some anxiety, they saw the paper give one sharp rustle in her hands, and then quiver a little. She bowed her head over it, and everything seemed to swim. But she never moved: they could neither of them see her face, she defended herself with the paper. The letters cleared again, and, still hiding her face, she studied and studied the advertisement.
“Come, tell us what you think of it,” said Edward. “Is it anything? or a mere coincidence?”
“It is a pure coincidence,” said Mrs. Dodd, with an admirable imitation of cool confidence.
Julia said nothing; but she now rose and put both arms round Edward’s neck, and kissed him fervidly again and again, holding the newspaper tight all the time.
“There,” said Mrs. Dodd: “see what you have done.”
“Oh, it is all right,” said Edward cheerfully. “The British fireman is getting hugged no end. Why, what is the matter? have you got the hiccough, Ju?”
“No; no! You are a true brother. I knew all along that he would explain all if he was alive: and he is alive.” So saying she kissed the ’Tiser violently more than once; then fluttered away with it to her own room ashamed to show her joy, and yet not able to hide it.
Mrs. Dodd shook her head sorrowfully: and Edward began to look rueful, and doubt whether he had done wisely. I omit the discussion that followed. But the next time his duties permitted him to visit them Mrs. Dodd showed him the ’Tiser in her turn, and with her pretty white taper finger, and such a look, pointed to the following advertisement:
AILEEN AROON. — I do DISTRUST
APPEARANCES. But if you ever loved me
explain them at once. I have something for
you from your dear sister.
“Poor simple girl,” said Mrs. Dodd, “not to see that, if he could explain at all, he would explain, not go advertising an enigma after acting a mystification. And to think of my innocent dove putting in that she had something for him from his sister; a mighty temptation for such a wretch!”
“It was wonderfully silly,” said Edward; “and such a clever girl, too; but you ladies can’t stick to one thing at a time; begging your pardon, mamma.”
Mrs. Dodd took no notice of this remark.
“To see her lower herself so!” she said. “Oh, my son, I am mortified.” And Mrs. Dodd leaned her cheek against Edward’s, and sighed.
“Now don’t you cry, mammy,” said he sorrowfully. “I’ll break every bone in his skin for your comfort.”
“Heaven forbid!” cried Mrs. Dodd anxiously; “what, are you not aware she would hate you?”
“Hate me: her brother!”
“She would hate us all if we laid a finger on that wretch. Pray interfere no more, love; foolish child, talking to me about women, and it is plain you know nothing of their hearts: and a good thing for you.” She then put on maternal authority (nobody could do it more easily) and solemnly forbade all violence.
He did not venture to contradict her now; but cherished his resolution all the more, and longed for the hour when he might take “the Wretch” by the throat, and chastise him, the more publicly the better.
Now, the above incident that revealed Julia’s real heart, which she had been hiding more or less all this time from those who could not sympathise with her, took eventually a turn unfavourable to “the Wretch.” So he might well be called. Her great and settled fear had always been that Alfred was dead. Under the immediate influence of his father’s cunning, she had for a moment believed he was false; but so true and loving a heart could not rest in that opinion. In true love so long as there is one grain of uncertainty, there is a world of faith and credulous ingenuity. So, as Alfred had never been seen since, as nobody could say he was married to another, there was a grain of uncertainty as to his unfaithfulness, and this her true heart magnified to a mountain.
But now matters wore another face. She was sure he had written the advertisement. Who but he, out of the few that take the words of any song to heart, admired Aileen Aroon? Who but he out of the three or four people who might possibly care for that old song, had appearances to explain away? And who but he knew they took in the Morning Advertiser? She waited then for the explanation she had invited. She read the advertising column every day over and over.
Not a word more.
Then her womanly pride was deeply wounded. What, had she courted an explanation where most ladies would have listened to none; and courted it in vain!
Her high spirit revolted. Her heart swelled against the repeated insults she had received: this last one filled the bitter cup too high.
And then her mother came in and assured her he had only inserted that advertisement to keep her in his power. He has heard you are recovering, and are admired by others more worthy of your esteem.
Julia cried bitterly at these arguments, for she could no longer combat them.
And Mr. Hurd was very attentive and kind. And when he spoke to Julia, and Julia turned away, her eye was sure to meet Mrs. Dodd’s eye imploring her secretly not to discourage the young man too much. And so she was gently pulled by one, and gently thrust by another, away from her first lover and towards his successor.
It is an old, old story. Fate seems to exhaust its malice on our first love. For the second the road is smoother. Matters went on so some weeks, and it was perfectly true that Mr. Hurd escorted both ladies one day to Drayton House, at Julia’s request, and not Mrs. Dodd’s. Indeed, the latter lady was secretly hurt at his being allowed to come with them.
One Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Dodd went alone to Drayton House by appointment. David was like a lamb, but, as usual, had no knowledge of her. Mrs. Archbold told her a quiet, intelligent, patient had taken a great fancy to him, and she thought this was adding much to his happiness. “May I see him to thank him?” asked Mrs. Dodd. “Oh, certainly,” said Mrs. Archbold; “I’ll inquire for him.” She went out but soon returned, saying, “He is gone out for a walk with the head keeper: we give him as much air and amusement as we can; we hope soon to send him out altogether cured.” “Truly kind and thoughtful,” said Mrs. Dodd. Soon after, she kissed Mrs. Archbold, and pressed a valuable brooch upon her: and then took leave. However, at the gate she remembered her parasol. Mrs. Archbold said she would go back for it. Mrs. Dodd would not hear of that: Mrs. Archbold insisted, and settled the question by going. She was no sooner in the house, than young Frank Beverley came running to Mrs. Dodd, and put the missing parasol officiously into her hand. “Oh, thank you, sir,” said she; “will you be so kind as to tell Mrs. Archbold I have it.” And with this they parted, and the porter opened the gate to her, and she got into her hired cab. She leaned her head back, and, as usual was lost in the sorrowful thoughts of what had been, and what now was. Poor wife, each visit to Drayton House opened her wound afresh. On reaching the stones, there was a turnpike This roused her up; she took out her purse and paid it. As she drew back to her seat, she saw out of the tail of her feminine eye the edge of something white under her parasol. She took up the parasol, and found a written paper pinned on to it: she detached this paper, and examined it all over with considerable curiosity. It consisted of a long slip about an inch and a quarter broad, rolled like tape, and tied with packthread. She could not see the inside, of course, but she read the superscription: it was firmly but clearly written, in red ink apparently.
Of the words I shall only say at present that they were strong and simple, and that their effect on the swift intelligence and tender heart of Mrs. Dodd was overpowering. They knocked at her heart; they drew from her an audible cry of pity more eloquent than a thousand speeches: and the next moment she felt a little faint; for she knew now the appeal was not in red ink, but in something very fit to pass between the heart of woe and the heart of pity. She smelt at her salts, and soon recovered that weakness: and next her womanly bosom swelled so with the milk of human kindness that her breath came short. After a little struggle she gushed out aloud, “Ah, that I will, poor soul; this very moment.”
Now, by this time she was close to her own house.
She stopped the cab at her door, and asked the driver if his horse was fresh enough to carry her to the Board of Lunacy: “It is at Whitehall, sir,” said she. “Lord bless you, ma’am,” said the cabman, “Whitehall? Why, my mare would take you to Whitechapel and back in an hour, let alone Whitehall.”
Reassured on that point Mrs. Dodd went in just to give the servant an order: but as she stood in the passage, she heard her children’s voices and also a friend’s; the genial, angry tones of Alexander Sampson, M. D.
She thought, “Oh, I must just show them all the paper, before I go with it;” and so after a little buzz about dinner and things with Sarah, mounted the stairs, and arrived among them singularly apropos, as it happened.
Men like Sampson, who make many foes, do also make stauncher friends than ever the Hare does, and are faithful friends themselves. The boisterous doctor had stuck to the Dodds in all their distresses; and if they were ever short of money, it certainly was not his fault: for almost his first word, when he found them in a lodging, was, “Now, ye’ll be wanting a Chick. Gimme pen and ink, and I’ll just draw ye one; for a hundre.” This being declined politely by Mrs. Dodd, he expostulated. “Mai — dear — Madam, how on airth can ye go on in such a place as London without a Chick?”
He returned to the charge at his next visit and scolded her well for her pride. “Who iver hard of refusing a Chick? a small inoffensive chick, from an old friend like me? Come now, behave! Just a wee chick, I’ll let y’ off for fifty.”
“Give us your company and your friendship,” said Mrs. Dodd; “we value them above gold: we will not rob your dear children, while we have as many fingers on our hands as other people.”
On the present occasion Dr. Sampson, whose affectionate respect for the leading London physicians has already displayed itself, was inveighing specially against certain specialists, whom, in the rapidity of his lusty eloquence, he called the Mad Ox. He favoured Julia and Edward with a full account of the maniform enormities he had detected them in during thirty years’ practice; and so descended to his present grievance. A lady, an old friend of his, was being kept in a certain asylum month after month because she had got money and relations, and had once been delirious. “And why was she delirious? because she had a brain fever, she got well in a fortnight.” This lady had thrown a letter over the wall addressed to him; somebody had posted it: he had asked the Commissioners to let him visit her; they had declined for the present. “Yon Board always sides with the strong against the weak,” said he. So now he had bribed the gardener, and made a midnight assignation with the patient; and was going to it with six stout fellows to carry her off by force. “That is my recipe for alleged Insanity,” said he. “The business will be more like a mejaeval knight carrying off a namorous nun out of a convint, than a good physician saving a pashint from the Mad Ox. However, Mrs. Saampson’s in the secret; I daunt say sh’ approves it; for she doesn’t. She says, ‘Go quietly to the Board o’ Commissioners.’ Sis I, ‘My dear, Boards are a sort of cattle that go too slow for Saampson, and no match at all for the Mad Ox.’”
At this conjuncture, or soon after, Mrs. Dodd came in with her paper in her hand, a little flurried for once, and after a hasty curtsey, said —
“Oh, Doctor Sampson, oh, my dears, what wickedness there is in the world! I’m going to Whitehall this moment; only look at what was pinned on my parasol at Drayton House.”
The writing passed from hand to hand, and left the readers looking very gravely at one another. Julia was quite pale and horror-stricken. All were too deeply moved, and even shocked, to make any commonplace comment; for it looked and read like a cry from heart to hearts.
“If you are a Christian, if you are human, pity a sane man here confined in, fraud, and take this to the Board of Lunacy at Whitehall. Torn by treachery from her I love, my letters all intercepted, pens and paper kept from me, I write this with a toothpick and my blood on a rim of ‘The Times.’ Oh God, direct it to some one who has suffered, and can feel for another’s agony.”
Dr. Sampson was the first to speak. “There,” said he, under his breath: “didn’t I tell you? This man is sane. There’s sanity in every line.”
“Well, but,” said Edward, “do you mean to say that in the present day —”
“Mai — dearr — sirr. Mankind niver changes. Whativer the muscles of man can do in the light, the mind and conscience of man will consent to do in the dark.”
Julia said never a word.
Mrs. Dodd, too, was for action not for talk. She bade them all a hasty adieu, and went on her good work.
Ere she got to the street door, she heard a swift rustle behind her; and it was Julia flying down to her, all glowing and sparkling with her old impetuosity, that had seemed dead for ever. “No, no,” she cried, panting with generous emotion; “it is to me it was sent. I am torn from him I love, and by some treachery I dare say: and I have suffered — oh you shall never know what I have suffered. Give it me, oh pray, pray, pray give it me. I’ll take it to Whitehall”
IF we could always know at the time what we are doing.
Two ladies carried a paper to Whitehall out of charity to a stranger.
Therein the elder was a benefactress to a man she had never spoken of but as “the Wretch;” the younger held her truant bridegroom’s heart, I may say, in her hand all the road and was his protectress. Neither recognised the hand-writing; for no man can write his own hand with a toothpick.
They reached Whitehall, and were conducted upstairs to a gentleman of pleasant aspect but powerful brow, seated in a wilderness of letters.
He waved his hand, and a clerk set them chairs: he soon after laid down his pen, and leaned gravely forward to hear their business. They saw they must waste no time; Julia looked at her mother, rose, and took Alfred’s missive to his desk, and handed it him with one of her eloquent looks, grave and pitiful. He seemed struck by her beauty and her manner.
“It was pinned on my parasol, sir, by a poor prisoner at Drayton House,” said Mrs. Dodd.
“Oh, indeed,” said the gentleman, and began to read the superscription with a cold and wary look. But thawed visibly as he read. He opened the missive and ran his eye over it. The perusal moved him not a little: a generous flush mounted to his brow; he rang the bell sharply. A clerk answered it; the gentleman wrote on a slip of paper, and said earnestly, “Bring me every letter that is signed with that name, and all our correspondence about him.”
He then turned to Mrs. Dodd, and put to her a few questions, which drew out the main facts I have just related. The papers were now brought in. “Excuse me a moment,” said he, and ran over them. “I believe the man is sane,” said he, “and that you will have enabled us to baffle a conspiracy, a heartless conspiracy.”
“We do hope he will be set free, sir,” said Mrs. Dodd piteously.
He shall, madam, if it is as I suspect. I will stay here all night but I will master this case; and lay it before the Board myself without delay.”
Julia looked at her mother, and then asked if it would be wrong to inquire “the poor gentleman’s name?”
“Humph!” said the official; “I ought not to reveal that without his consent. But stay! he will owe you much, and it really seems a pity he should not have an opportunity of expressing his gratitude. Perhaps you will favour me with your address: and trust to my discretion. Of course, if he does not turn out as sane as he seems, I shall never let him know it.”
Mrs. Dodd then gave her address; and she and Julia went home with a glow about the heart selfish people, thank Heaven, never know.
Unconsciously these two had dealt their enemy and Alfred’s a heavy blow; had set the train to a mine. Their friend at the office was a man of another stamp than Alfred had fallen in with.
Meantime Alfred was subjected to hourly mortifications and irritations. He guessed the motive, and tried to baffle it by calm self-possession: but this was far more difficult than heretofore, because his temper was now exacerbated and his fibre irritated by broken sleep (of this poor David was a great cause), and his heart inflamed and poisoned by that cruel, that corroding passion jealousy.
To think, that while he was in prison, a rival was ever at his Julia’s ear, making more and more progress in her heart! This corroder was his bitter companion day and night; and perhaps of all the maddeners human cunning could have invented this was the worst. It made his temples beat and his blood run boiling poison. Indeed, there were times when he was so distempered by passion that homicide seemed but an act of justice, and suicide a legitimate relief. For who could go on for ever carrying Hell in his bosom up and down a prison yard? He began to go alone! to turn impatiently from the petty troubles and fathomless egotism of those afflicted persons he had hitherto forced his sore heart to pity. Pale, thin, and wo-begone, he walked the weary gravel, like the lost ones in that Hall of Eblis whose hearts were a devouring fire. Even an inspector with a naked eye would no longer have distinguished him at first sight from a lunatic of the unhappiest class, the melancholiac.
“Ipse suum cor edens hominum vestigia vitans.”
Mrs. Archbold looked on and saw this sad sight, not with the pity it would once have caused, but with a sort of bitter triumph lightened by no pleasure, and darkened by the shadow of coming remorse. Yet up to this time she had shown none of that inconstancy of purpose which marks her sex; while she did go far to justify the poet’s charge:
“Nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned.”
Rooke had a hint to provoke Alfred to violence such as would justify them in subjecting so popular a patient to bodily restraint, composing draughts, and other quick maddeners. Rooke entered into the game zealously from two motives; he was devoted to Mrs. Archbold, and he hated Alfred, who had openly defied him, and mortified his vanity about Frank Beverley.
One Saturday Alfred was ordered out to walk with Rooke and Hayes and Vulcan. He raised no objection: suspected, felt homicidal, suppressed the impulse, and by this self-command he got time to give that letter to Beverley with instructions.
But, all the walk, he was saying to himself that Julia was in the house, and he was kept away from her, and a rival with her; this made him sicken and rage by turns. He came back in a state verging on fury.
On entering the yard poor Beverley, who had done his bit of cunning, and by reaction now relapsed into extra simplicity, came running, and said, “I’ve done it; she has got it.”
“What have you done? Who has got what?” cried Rooke.
“Don’t tell, Frank.”
“If you don’t I’ll shake your life out, ye young blackguard,” cried Rooke, seizing him and throttling him till he was black in the face.
Alfred’s long-pent fury broke out: he gnashed his teeth and dashed his fist in Rooke’s face.
Rooke staggered back and bellowed with pain and anger, then rushing at him incautiously, received a stinger that staggered him, and nearly closed his right eye. He took the hint, and put himself in a posture that showed he was skilled in the art of self-defence. He stopped two blows neatly, and returned a heavy one upon the ribs. Alfred staggered back some steps, but steadied himself, and, as Rooke rushed in too hastily to improve his advantage, caught him heavily on the other eye, but lost his own balance a little, which enabled Rooke to close; then came a sharp short rally of reechoing blows, and Rooke, not to be denied, got hold of his man, and a wrestling bout ensued, in which Alfred being somewhat weakened by misery and broken rest, Rooke’s great weight and strength enabled him, after a severe struggle, to fall with his antagonist under him, and knock the breath out of his body for the moment. Then Hayes, who had stood prudently aloof, came in and helped handcuff him. They could not walk up and down him for the Robin, who stood by with a professional air to see fair play.
“Ah, cold iron is your best chance,” he said satirically. “Never you mind, sir: you hit quick and well: I’d back you at long odds in the ring: both his peepers are in deep mourning.” He added, “A cow can beat a man wrestling.”
When Alfred was handcuffed they turned him loose. It soon transpired, however, that he was now a dangerous maniac (Formula) and to be confined in the noisy ward.
On hearing this he saw the trap he had fallen into; saw and trembled. He asked himself what on earth he should do; and presently the saying came back to him, “And this is the highest stroke of art, to turn evil into good.” He argued thus: Wolf’s love of money is my great evil; he will destroy me for money, do anything for money. Then suppose I offer him money to be honest. He begged an interview with Dr. Wolf on business. This was accorded at once. He asked the doctor plump whether he received a large sum to detain him under pretence of insanity.
“Not very, considering the trouble you sometimes give, Mr. Hardie,” was the dry reply.
“Well, then, Justice shall outbid rascality for once. I am a sane man, and you know it; a man of my word, and you know it. I’ll give you a thousand pounds to let me out of this place.”
Dr. Wolf’s eyes sparkled.
“You shall have any bond or security you like; and the money within a week of my deliverance.”
Dr. Wolf said he should be delighted to do it, if he could conscientiously.
At this piece of hypocrisy Alfred’s cheek reddened, and he could not speak.
“Well, well, I do see a great change in you for the better,” said Dr. Wolf. “If, as I suspect, you are convalescent, I will part with you without a thousand pounds or a thousand pence.
Alfred stared. Had he mistaken his man?
“I’ll tell you what, though,” said the smooth doctor. “I have got two pictures, one by Raphael, one by Correggio.”
“I know them,” said the quick-witted Alfred; “they are worth more than a thousand pounds.”
“Of course they are, but I would take a thousand pounds from you.”
“Throw me in my liberty, and I’ll make it guineas.”
“We will see about that.” And with this understanding the men of business parted. Dr. Wolf consulted Mrs. Archbold then and there.
“Impossible,” said she; “the law would dissolve such a bargain, and you would be exposed and ruined.”
“But a thousand pounds!” said the poor doctor.
“Oh, he offered me more than that,” said Mrs. Archbold.
“You don’t mean to say so; when was that?”
“Do you remember one Sunday that I walked him out, to keep clear of Mrs. Dodd? Have you not observed that I have not repeated the experiment?”
“Yes. But I really don’t know why.”
“Will you promise me faithfully not to take any notice if I tell you?”
The doctor promised.
Then she owned to him with manifest reluctance that Alfred had taken advantage of her kindness, her indiscretion, in walking alone with him, and made passionate love to her. “He offered me not a thousand pounds,” said she, “but his whole fortune, and his heart, if I would fly with him from these odious walls; that was his expression.”
Then seeing out of a corner of her eye that the doctor was turning almost green with jealousy, this artist proceeded to describe the love scene between her and Alfred, with feigned hesitation, yet minute detail. Only she inverted the parts: Alfred in her glowing page made the hot love; she listened abashed, confused, and tried all she could think of to bring him to better sentiments. She concluded this chapter of history inverted with a sigh, and said, “So now he hates me, I believe, poor fellow.”
“Do you regret your refusal?” asked Dr. Wolf uneasily.
“Oh no, my dear friend. Of course, my judgment says that few women at my age and in my position would have refused. But we poor women seldom go by our judgments.” And she cast a tender look down at the doctor’s feet.
In short, she worked on him so, that he left Alfred at her disposition, and was no sooner gone to his other asylum six miles off; than the calumniated was conducted by Hayes and Rooke through passage after passage, and door after door, to a wing of the building connected with the main part only by a covered way. As they neared it, strange noises became audible. Faint at first, they got louder and louder. Singing, roaring, howling like wolves. Alfred’s flesh began to creep. He stopped at the covered way: he would have fought to his last gasp sooner than go further, but he was handcuffed. He appealed to the keepers; but he had used them both too roughly: they snarled and forced him on, and shut him into a common flagged cell, with a filthy truckle-bed in it, and all the vessels of gutta-percha. Here he was surrounded by the desperate order of maniacs he at present scarcely knew but by report. Throughout that awful night he could never close his eyes for the horrible unearthly sounds that assailed him. Singing, swearing, howling like wild beasts! His right-hand neighbour reasoned high of faith and works, ending each pious argument with a sudden rhapsody of oaths and never slept a wink. His left-hand neighbour alternately sang, and shouted, “Cain was a murderer, Cain was a murderer;” and howled like a wolf, making night hideous. His opposite neighbour had an audience, and every now and then delivered in a high nasal key, “Let us curse and pray;” varying it sometimes thus: “Brethren, let us work double tides.” And then he would deliver a long fervent prayer, and follow it up immediately with a torrent of blasphemies so terrific, that coming in such a contrast they made Alfred’s body wet with perspiration to hear a poor creature so defy his Creator. No rest, no peace. When it was still, the place was like the grave; and ever and anon, loud, sharp, tremendous, burst a thunderclap of curses, and set those poor demented creatures all yelling again for half-an-hour, making the tombs ring. And at clock-like intervals a harmless but dirty idiot, who was allowed to roam the ward, came and chanted through the keyhole, “Everything is nothing, and nothing is everything.”
This was the only observation he had made for many years.
His ears assailed with horrors, of which you have literally no conception, or shadow of a conception, his nose poisoned with ammoniacal vapours, and the peculiar wild-beast smell that marks the true maniac, Alfred ran wildly about his cell trying to stop his ears, and trembling for his own reason. When the fearful night rolled away, and morning broke, and he could stand on his truckle-bed and see the sweet hoar-frost on a square yard of grass level with his prison bars, it refreshed his very soul, and affected him almost to tears. He was then, to his surprise, taken out, and allowed to have a warm bath and to breakfast with David and the rest; but I suspect it was done to watch the effect of the trial he had been submitted to. After breakfast, having now no place to go, he lay on a bench, and there exhausted nature overpowered him, and he fell fast asleep.
Mrs. Archbold came by on purpose, and saw him. He looked very pale and peaceful. There was a cut on his forehead due to Rooke’s knuckles. Mrs. Archbold looked down, and the young figure and haughty face seemed so unresisting and peaceful sad, she half relented, and shed some bitter tears. That did not, however, prevent her setting her female spies to watch him more closely than ever.
He awoke cold but refreshed, and found little Beverley standing by him with wet eyes. Alfred smiled and held out his hand like a captive monarch to his faithful vassal. “They shan’t put you in the noisy ward again,” sobbed Frank. “This is your last night here.”
“Hy, Frank, you rascal, my boots!” roared Rooke from an open window.
“Coming, sir — coming!”
Alfred’s next visitor was the Robin. He came whispering, “It is all right with Garrett, sir, and he has got a key of the back gate; but you must get back to your old room, or we can’t work.”
“Would to Heaven I could, Robin; another night or two in the noisy ward will drive me mad, I think.”
“Well, sir, I’ll tell you what you do: which we all have to do it at odd times: hold a candle to the devil: here she comes: I think she is everywhere all at one time.” The Robin then sauntered away, affecting nonchalance: and Alfred proceeded to hold the candle as directed. “Mrs. Archbold,” said he timidly rising from his seat at her approach.
“Sir,” said she haughtily, and affecting surprise.
“I have a favour to ask you, madam. Would you be so kind as to let me go back to my room?”
“What, you have found I am not so powerless as you thought!”
“I find myself so weak, and you so powerful that — you can afford to be generous.”
“I have no more power over you than you have over me.”
“I wish it was so.”
“I’ll prove it,” said she. “Who has got the key of your room? Hayes?” She whistled, and sent for him; and gave him the requisite order before Alfred. Alfred thanked her warmly.
She smiled, and went away disposed to change her tactics, and, having shown him how she could torment, try soothing means, and open his heart by gratitude.
But presently looking out of her window she saw the Robin and him together; and somehow they seemed to her subtle, observant eyes, to be plotting. The very suspicion was fatal to that officer. His discharge was determined on. Meantime she set her spies to watch him, and tell her if they saw or heard anything.
Now Mrs. Archbold was going out to tea that evening, and, as soon as ever this transpired, the keepers secretly invited the keeperesses to a party in the first-class patients drawing-room. This was a rare opportunity, and the Robin and Garrett put their heads together accordingly.
In the dusk of the evening the Robin took an opportunity and slipped a new key of the back gate into Alfred’s hand, and told him “the trick was to be done that very night:” he was to get Thompson to go to bed early; and, instead of taking off his clothes, was to wait in readiness. “We have been plying Hayes already, “ said the Robin, “and, as soon as she is off, we shall hocuss him, and get the key; and, while they are all larking in the drawing-room, off you go to Merrimashee.”
“Oh, you dear Robin! You have taken my breath away. But how about Vulcan?”
“Oh, we know how to make him amiable: a dog-fancier, a friend of mine, has provided the ondeniable where dogs is concerned: whereby Garrett draws the varmint into the scullery, and shuts him in, while I get the key from the other. It’s all right.”
“Ah, Robin,” said Alfred, “it sounds too good to be true. What? this my last day here!”
The minutes seemed to creep very slowly till eight o’clock came. Then he easily persuaded David to go to bed; Hayes went up and unlocked the door for them: it closed with a catch-lock. Hayes was drunk, but full of discipline, and insisted on the patients putting out their clothes; so Alfred made up a bundle from his portmanteau, and threw it out. Hayes eyed it suspiciously, but was afraid to stoop and inspect it closer: for his drunken instinct told him he would pitch on his head that moment: so he retired grumbling and dangling his key.
At the end of the corridor he met Mrs. Archbold full dressed, and with a candle in her hand. She held the candle up and inspected him; and a little conversation followed that sobered Mr. Hayes for a minute or two.
Mrs. Archbold was no sooner gone to her little tea-party than all the first-class ladies and gentlemen were sent to bed to get a good sleep for the good of their health, and the keepers and keeperesses took their place and romped, and made such a row, sleep was not easy within hearing of them. They sat on the piano, they sang songs to a drum accompaniment played on the table, they danced, drank, flirted, and enjoyed themselves like schoolboys. Hayes alone was gloomy and morose: so the Robin and Garrett consoled him, drank with him, and soothed him with the balm of insensibility: in which condition they removed him under charitable pretences, and searched his pockets in the passage for the key of Alfred’s room.
To their infinite surprise and disappointment it was not upon him.
The fact is, Mrs. Archbold had snatched it from him in her wrath, and put it in her own pocket. How far her suspicions went, how much her spies had discovered, I really don’t know; but somehow or other she was uneasy in her mind, and, seeing Hayes in such a state, she would not trust him during her absence, but took the key away with her.
The Robin and Garrett knew nothing of this, and were all abroad, but they thought Rooke must have the key; so they proceeded to drink with him, and were just about to administer a really effective soporific in his grog, when they and all the merry party were suddenly startled by violent ringing at the bell, and thundering and halloaing at the hall door. The men jumped to their feet and balanced themselves, and looked half wild, half stupid. The women sat, and began to scream: for they had heard a word that has terrors for us all: peculiar terrors for them.
This alarm was due to a personage hitherto undervalued in the establishment.
Mr. Francis Beverley had been THINKING. So now, finding all the patients boxed up, and their attendants romping in the drawing-room, he lighted seven fires, skilfully on the whole, for practice makes perfect; but, singular oversight, he omitted one essential ingredient in the fire, and that was the grate.
To be plain, Mr. Francis made seven bonfires of bed-curtains, chairs, and other combustibles in the servants’ garrets, lighted them contemporaneously, and retired to the basement, convinced he had taken the surest means to deliver his friend out of Drayton House: and with a certain want of candour that characterises the weak, proceeded to black his other bad master’s shoes with singular assiduity.
There was no wind to blow the flame; but it was a clear frost; and soon fiery tongues shot out of three garret-windows into the night, and lurid gleams burnished four more, and the old house was burning merrily overhead, and ringing with hilarity on the first floor.
But the neighbours saw, pointed, wondered, comprehended, shouted, rang, knocked, and surged round the iron gate. “Fire! fire! fire!” and “Fire!” went down the road, and men on horseback galloped for engines; and the terror-stricken porter opened and the people rushed in and hammered at the hall doors, and when Rooke ran down and opened, “Fire!” was the word that met him from a score of eager throats and glittering eyes.
“Fire! Where?” he cried.
“Where! Why, you are on fire. Blazing!”
He ran out and looked up at the tongues of flame and volleys of smoke. “Shut the gate,” he roared. “Call the police. Fire! fire!” And he dashed back, and calling to the other keepers to unlock all the doors they had keys of, ran up to the garrets to see what could be done. He came out awe-stricken at what he saw. He descended hastily to the third floor. Now the third floor of that wing was occupied principally by servants. In fact, the only patients at that time were Dodd and Alfred. Rooke called to the men below to send Hayes up to No. 75 with his key directly; he then ran down to the next floor — of which he had keys — and opened all the doors, and said to the inmates with a ghastly attempt at cheerfulness, belied by his shaking voice, “Get up, gentlemen; there is a ball and supper going on below.” He was afraid to utter the word “fire” to them. The other keepers were as rapid, each on his beat, and soon the more rational patients took the alarm and were persuaded or driven out half-dressed into the yard, where they cowered together in extremity of fear; for the fire began to roar overhead like a lion, and lighted up the whole interior red and bright. All was screaming and confusion; and then came a struggle to get the incurable out from the basement story. There was no time to handcuff them. The keepers trusted to the terror of the scene to cow them, and so opened the doors and got them out anyhow. Wild, weird forms, with glaring eyes and matted hair, leaped out and ran into the hall, and laughed, and danced, and cursed in the lurid reflection of the fires above. Hell seemed discharging demons. Men recoiled from them. And well they did; for now the skylight exploded, and the pieces fell tinkling on the marble hall fast as hail. The crowd recoiled and ran; but those awful figures continued their gambols. One picked up the burning glass and ground it in his hands that bled directly: but he felt neither burn nor cut. The keepers rushed in to withdraw them from so dangerous a place: all but one obeyed with sudden tameness: that one struggled and yelled like a demon. In the midst. of which fearful contest came a sudden thundering at a door on the third floor.
“What is that?” cried Rooke.
“It is Mr. Hardie,” screamed the Robin. “You have left him locked in.”
“I told Hayes to let him out long ago.”
“But Hayes hasn’t got the key. You’ve got it.”
“No, no. I tell you Hayes has got it.”
“No, no! Murder! murder! They are dead men. Run for Mrs. Archbold, somebody. Run! Here, hammers, hammers! for God’s sake, come and help me, break the door. Oh, Rooke, Rooke!”
“As I’m a man Hayes has got the key,” cried Rooke, stamping on the ground, and white with terror.
By this time Garrett had got a hammer, and he and Wales rushed wildly up the stairs to batter in the strong door if they could. They got to the third floor, but with difficulty; the smoke began to blind them and choke them, and fiery showers fell on them, and drove them back smarting and choking. Garrett sank down gasping at the stair-foot. Wales ran into the yard uttering pitiful cries, and pointing wildly upwards; but before he got there, a hand had broken through the glass of a window up in the third floor, the poor white hand of a perishing prisoner, and clutched the framework and tore at it.
At this hand a thousand white faces were now upturned amid groans of pity and terror, such as only multitudes can utter. Suddenly those anxious faces and glistening eyes turned like one, for an attempt, wild and unintelligible, but still an attempt, was about to be made to save that hand and its owner out of the very jaws of death.
Now amongst the spectators was one whose life and reason were at stake on that attempt.
Mrs. Dodd was hurrying homeward from this very neighbourhood when the fire broke out. Her son Edward was coming at nine o’clock to tea, and, better still, to sleep. He was leaving the fire brigade. It had disappointed him; he found the fire-escape men saved the lives, the firemen only the property. He had gone into the business earnestly too; he had invented a thing like a treble pouch hook, which could he fastened in a moment to the end of a rope, and thrown into the window, and would cling to the bare wall, if there was nothing better, and enable him to go up and bring life down. But he had never got a chance to try it; and, per contra, he was on the engine when they went tearing over a woman and broke her arm and collar-bone in the Blackfriars Road; and also when they went tearing over their own fire-dog, and crippled him. All this seemed out of character, and shocked Edward; and then his mother could not get over the jacket.
In a quarter of an hour he was to take off the obnoxious jacket for ever, and was now lounging at the station smoking a short pipe, when a man galloped up crying “Fire!”
“All right!” said Edward, giving a whiff. “Where?”
“Lunatic Asylum. Drayton House.”
Guess how long before the horses were to, and the engine tearing at a gallop down the road, and the firemen shouting “Fire! fire!” to clear the way, and Edward’s voice the loudest.
When the report of fire swept townward past Mrs. Dodd, she turned, and saw the glow.
“Oh dear,” said she, “that must be somewhere near Drayton House.” And full of the tender fears that fill such bosoms as hers for those they love, she could not go home till she had ascertained that it was not Drayton House. Moreover, Edward’s was the nearest station; she had little hope now of seeing him to tea. She sighed, and retraced her steps, and made timid inquiries, but could gain no clear information. Presently she heard galloping behind her, and the fireman’s wild sharp cry of fire. An engine drawn by two powerful brown horses came furiously, all on fire itself with red paint and polished steel gleaming in the lights; helmeted men clustered on it, and out of one of these helmets looked a face like a fighting lion’s, the eyes so dilated, the countenance in such towering excitement, the figure half rising from his seat as though galloping was too slow and he wanted to fly. It was Edward. Mother and son caught sight of one another as the engine thundered by, and he gave her a solemn ardent look, and pointed towards the fire; by that burning look and eloquent gesture she knew it was something more than a common fire. She trembled and could not move. But this temporary weakness was followed by an influx of wild vigour; she forgot her forty-two years, and flew to hover round the fire as the hen round water. Unfortunately she was too late to get any nearer than the road outside the gates, the crowd was so dense. And, while her pale face and anxious eyes, the eyes of a wife and a mother, were bent on that awful fire, the human tide flowed swiftly up behind her, and there she was wedged in. She was allowed her foot of ground to stand and look like the rest — no more. Mere unit in that mass of panting humanity, hers was one of the thousands of upturned faces lurid in the light of the now blazing roof. She saw with thousands the hand break the window and clutch the frame; she gasped with the crowd at that terrible and piteous sight, and her bosom panted for her fellow-creature in sore peril. But what is this? The mob inside utter a great roar of hope; the crowd outside strain every eye.
A gleaming helmet overtops the outer wall. It is a fireman mounting the great elm-tree in the madhouse yard. The crowd inside burst in a cheer. He had a rope round his loins; his face was to the tree. He mounted and mounted like a cat; higher, and higher, and higher, till he reached a branch about twelve feet above the window and as many distant from it laterally; the crowd cheered him lustily. But Mrs. Dodd, half distracted with terror, implored them not to encourage him. “It is my child!” she cried despairingly; “my poor reckless darling! Come down, Edward; for your poor mother’s sake, come down.”
“Dear heart,” said a woman, “it is the lady’s son. Poor thing!”
“Stand on my knee, ma’am,” said a coal-heaver.
“Oh no, sir, no. I could not look at him for the world. I can only pray for him. Good people, pray for us!” And she covered her face, and prayed and trembled and sobbed hysterically. A few yards behind was another woman, who had arrived later, yet like her was wedged immovable. This woman was more terror-stricken than Mrs. Dodd; and well she might; for she knew who was behind that fatal window: the woman’s name was Edith Archbold. The flames were now leaping through the roof, and surging up towards heaven in waves of fire six feet high. Edward, scorched and half blinded, managed to fasten his rope to the bough, and, calculating the distances vertical and lateral he had to deal with, took up rope accordingly, and launched himself into the air.
The crowd drew their breath so hard it sounded like a murmur. To their horror he missed the window, and went swinging back.
There was a cry of dismay. But Edward had never hoped to leap into the window; he went swinging by the rope back to the main stem of the tree, gave it a fierce spang with his feet, and by this means and a powerful gesture of his herculean loins got an inch nearer the window: back again, and then the same game; and so he went swinging to and fro over a wider and wider space; and, by letting out an inch of cord each swing, his flying feet came above the window-ledge, then a little higher, then higher still; and now, oh sight strange and glorious — as this helmeted hero, with lips clenched and great eyes that stared unflinchingly at the surging flames, and gleamed supernaturally with inward and outward fire, swang to and fro on his frail support still making for the window — the heads of all the hoping, fearing, admiring, panting crowd went surging and waving to and fro beneath; so did not their hearts only but their agitated bodies follow the course of his body, as it rushed to and fro faster and faster through the hot air starred with snow-flakes, and hail, of fire. And those his fellow-men for whom the brave fireman made this supernatural effort, did they know their desperate condition? Were they still alive? One little hour ago Alfred sat on the bed, full of hope. Every minute he expected to hear the Robin put a key into the door. He was all ready, and his money in his pocket. Alas! his liberator came not; some screw loose again. Presently he was conscious of a great commotion in the house. Feet ran up and down. Then came a smell of burning. The elm-tree outside was illuminated. He was glad at first; he had a spite against the place. But soon he became alarmed, and hammered at the door and tried to force it. Impossible. “Fire!” rang from men’s voices. Fire crackled above his head; he ran about the room like a wild creature; he sprang up at the window and dashed his hand through, but fell back. He sprang again and got his hand on some of the lighter woodwork; he drew himself up nearly to the window, and then the wood gave way and he fell to the ground, and striking the back of his head, nearly stunned himself; the flames roared fearfully now; and at this David, who had hitherto sat unconcerned, started up, and in a stentorian voice issued order upon order to furl every rag of sail and bring the ship to the wind. He thought it was a tempest. “Oh hush! hush!” cried Alfred in vain.. A beam fell from the roof to the floor, precursor of the rest. On this David thought the ship was ashore, and shouted a fresh set of orders proper to the occasion, so terribly alike are the angry voices of the sister-elements. But Alfred implored him, and got him to kneel down with him, and held his hand, and prayed.
And, even while they kneeled and Alfred prayed, Death and Life met and fought for them. Under the door, tight as it was, and through the keyhole, struggled a hot stifling smoke, merciful destroyer running before fire; and the shadow of a gigantic figure began to flicker in from the outside, and to come and go upon the wall. Alfred did not know what that was, but it gave him a vague hope: he prayed aloud as men pray only for their bodies. (The crowd heard him and hushed itself breathless.)
The smoke penetrated faster, blinding and stifling; the giant shadow came and went. But now the greater part of the roof fell in with an awful report; the blazing timbers thundered down to the basement with endless clatter of red-hot tiles; the walls quivered, and the building belched skyward a thousand jets of fire like a bouquet of rockets: and then a cloud of smoke. Alfred gave up all hope, and prepared to die. Crash! as if discharged from a cannon, came bursting through the window, with the roar of an applauding multitude and a mother’s unheeded scream, a helmeted figure, rope in hand, and alighted erect and commanding on the floor amidst a shower of splinters and tinkling glass. “Up, men, for your lives,” roared this fire-warrior, clutching them hard, and dragged them both up to their feet by one prodigious gesture: all three faces came together and shone in the lurid light; and he knew his father and “the Wretch,” and “the Wretch” knew him. “Oh!” “Ah!” passed like pistol shots; but not a word: even this strange meeting went for little, so awful was the moment, so great are Death and Fire. Edward clawed his rope to the bed; up to the window by it, dropped his line to fireman Jackson planted express below, and in another moment was hauling up a rope ladder: this he attached, and getting on it and holding his own rope by way of banister, cried, “Now, men, quick, for your lives.” But poor David called that deserting the ship, and demurred, till Alfred assured him the captain had ordered it. He then submitted directly, touched his forelock to Edward, whom he took for that officer, and went down the ladder; Alfred followed.
Now the moment those two figures emerged from the burning pile, Mrs. Dodd, already half dead with terror for her son, saw and knew her husband: for all about him it was as light as day.
What terror! what joy! what gratitude! what pride! what a tempest of emotions!
But her fears were not ended: Edward, not to overweight the ladder, went dangling by his hands along the rope towards the tree. And his mother’s eyes stared fearfully from him to the other, and her heart hung trembling on her husband descending cautiously, and then on his preserver, her son, who was dangling along by the hands on that frail support. The mob cheered him royally, but she screamed and hid her face again. At last both her darlings were safe, and then the lusty cheers made her thrill with pride and joy, till all of a sudden they seemed to die away, and the terrible fire to go out; and the sore-tried wife and mother drooped her head and swooned away, wedged in and kept from falling by the crowd.
Inside, the mob parted and made two rushes, one at the rescued men, one at the gallant fireman. Alfred and David were overpowered with curiosity and sympathy. They had to shake a hundred honest hands, and others still pressing on hurried them nearly off their feet.
“Gently, good friends; don’t part us,” said Alfred.
“He is the keeper,” said one of the crowd.
“Yes, I’m his keeper: and I want to get him quietly away. This excitement will do him harm else; good friends, help me out by that door.”
“All right,” was the cry, and they rushed with him to the back door. Rooke, who was about twenty yards off saw and suspected this movement. He fought his way and struggled after Alfred in silence. Presently, to his surprise, Alfred unlocked the door and whipped out with David, leaving the door open. Rooke shouted and halloaed: “Stop him! he is escaping,” and struggled madly to the door. Now another crowd had been waiting in the meadows; seeing the door open they rushed in and the doorway was jammed directly. In the confusion Alfred drew David along the side of the wall; told him to stay quiet, bolted behind an outhouse, and then ran across country for the bare life.
To his horror David followed him, and with a madman’s agility soon caught him.
He snorted like a spirited horse, and shouted cheerily, “Go ahead, messmate; I smell blue water.”
“Come on, then,” cried Alfred, half mad himself with excitement, and the pair ran furiously, and dashed through hedges and ditches, torn, bleeding, splashed, triumphant; behind them the burning madhouse, above them the spangled sky, the fresh free air of liberty blowing in their nostrils, and rushing past their ears.
Alfred’s chest expanded, he laughed for joy, he sang for joy, he leaped as he went; nor did he care where he went. David took the command, and kept snuffing the air, and shaping his course for blue water. And so they rushed along the livelong night.
Free.
A REPORT came round that the asylum was open in the rear. A rush was made thither from the front: and this thinned the crowd considerably; so then Mrs. Dodd was got out by the help of some humane persons, and carried into the nearest house, more dead than alive. There she found Mrs. Archbold in a pitiable state. That lady had been looking on the fire, with the key in her pocket, by taking which she was like to be a murderess: her terror and remorse were distracting, and the revulsion had thrown her into violent hysterics. Mrs. Dodd plucked up a little strength, and characteristically enough tottered to her assistance, and called for the best remedies, and then took her hand and pressed it, and whispered soothingly that both were now safe, meaning David and Edward. Mrs. Archbold thought she meant Alfred and David: this new shock was as good for her as cold water: she became quieter, and presently gulped out, “You saw them? You knew them (ump) all that way off?”
“Knew them?” said Mrs. Dodd; “why one was my husband, and the other my son.” Mrs. Archbold gave a sigh of relief. “Yes, madam,” continued Mrs. Dodd, “the young fireman, who went and saved my husband, was my own son, my Edward; my hero; oh, I am a happy wife, a proud mother.” She could say no more for tears of joy, and while she wept deliciously, Mrs. Archbold cried too, and so invigorated and refreshed her cunning, and presently she perked up and told Mrs. Dodd boldly that Edward had been seeking her, and was gone home; she had better follow him, or he would be anxious. “But my poor husband!” objected Mrs. Dodd.
“He is safe,” said the other; “I saw him (ump) with an attendant.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Dodd, with meaning, “that other my son rescued was an attendant, was he?”
“Yes.” (Ump.)
She then promised to take David under her especial care, and Mrs. Dodd consented, though reluctantly, to go home.
To her surprise Edward had not yet arrived, and Julia was sitting up, very anxious; and flew at her with a gurgle, and kissed her eagerly, and then, drawing back her head, searched the maternal eyes for what was the matter. “Ah, you may well look,” said Mrs. Dodd. “Oh, my child! what a night this has been;” and she sank into a chair, and held up her arms. Julia settled down in them directly, and in that position Mrs. Dodd told all the night’s work, told it under a running accompaniment of sighs and kisses, and ejaculations, and “dear mammas and “poor mammas,” and bursts of sympathy, astonishment, pity and wonder. Thus embellished and interrupted, the strange tale was hardly ended, when a manly step came up the stairs, and both ladies pinched each other, and were still as mice, and in walked a fireman with a wet livery, and a face smirched with smoke. Julia flew at him with a gurgle of the first degree, and threw her arms round his neck, and kissed both his blackened cheeks again and again, crying, “Oh my own, my precious, my sweet, brave darling, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, you are a hero, a Christian hero, that saves life, not takes it —” Mrs. Dodd checked her impetuous career by asking piteously if his mother was not to have him. On this, Julia drew him along by the hand, and sank with him at Mrs. Dodd’s knees, and she held him at arm’s length and gazed at him, and then drew him close and enfolded him, and thanked God for him; and then they both embraced him at once, and interwove him Heaven knows how, and poured the wealth of their womanly hearts out on him in a torrent, and nearly made him snivel. But presently something in his face struck Mrs. Dodd accustomed to read her children. “Is there anything the matter, love?” she inquired anxiously. He looked down and said, “I am dead sleepy, mamma, for one thing.”
“Of course he is, poor child,” said Julia, doing the submaternal; “wait till I see everything is comfortable,” and she flew off, turned suddenly at the door with “Oh, you darling!” and up to his bedroom and put more coals on his fire, and took a swift housewifely look all round.
Mrs. Dodd seized the opportunity. “Edward, there is something amiss.”
“And no mistake,” said he drily. “But I thought if I told you before her you might scold me.”
“Scold you, love? Never. Hush! I’ll come to your room by-and-by.”
Soon after this they all bade each other good night; and presently Mrs. Dodd came and tapped softly at her son’s door, and found him with his vest and coat off, and his helmet standing on the table reflecting a red coal; he was seated by the fire in a brown study, smoking. He apologised, and offered to throw the weed away. “No, no,” said she, suppressing a cough, “not if it does you good.”
“Well, mother, when you are in a fix, smoke is a soother, you know, and I’m in a regular fix.”
“A fix,” sighed Mrs. Dodd resignedly, and waited patiently all ears.
“Mamma,” said the fire-warrior, becoming speculative under the dreamy influence of the weed, “I wonder whether such a muddle ever was before. When a man is fighting with fire, what with the heat and what with the excitement, his pulse is at a hundred and sixty, and his brain all in a whirl, and he scarce knows what he is doing till after it is done. But I’ve been thinking of it all since. (Puff.) There was my poor little mamma in the mob; I double myself up for my spring, and I go at the window, and through it; now, on this side of it I hear my mother cry, ‘Edward come down;’ on the other side I fall on two men perishing in an oven; one is my own father, and the other is, who do you think? ‘The Wretch.’”
Mrs. Dodd held up her hands in mute amazement.
“I had promised to break every bone in his skin at our first meeting; and I kept my promise by saving his skin and bones, and life and all.” (Puff.)
Mrs. Dodd groaned aloud. “I thought it was he,” she said faintly. “That tall figure, that haughty grace! But Mrs. Archbold told me positively it was an attendant.”
“Then she told you a cracker. It was not an attendant, but a madman, and that madman was Alfred Hardie, upon my soul! Our Julia’s missing bridegroom.”
He smoked on in profound silence waiting for her to speak. But she lay back in her chair mute and all relaxed, as if the news had knocked her down.
“Come, now,” said Edward at last; “what is to be done? May I tell Julia? that is the question.”
“Not for the world,” said Mrs. Dodd, shocked into energy. “Would you blight her young life for ever, as mine is blighted?” She then assured him that, if Alfred’s sad state came to Julia’s ears, all her love for him would revive, and she would break with Mr. Hurd, and indeed never marry all her life. “I see no end to her misery,” continued Mrs. Dodd, with a deep sigh; “for she is full of courage; she would not shrink from a madhouse (why she visits lazar-houses every day); she would be always going to see her Alfred, and so nurse her pity and her unhappy love. No, no; let me be a widow with a living husband, if it is God’s will: I have had my happy days. But my child she shall not be so withered in the flower of her days for any man that ever breathed; she shall not, I say.” The mother could utter no more for emotion.
“Well,” said Edward, “you know best. I generally make a mess of it when I disobey you. But concealments are bad things too. We used to go with our bosoms open. Ah!” (Puff.)
“Edward,” said Mrs. Dodd, after some consideration, “the best thing is to marry her to Mr. Hurd at once. He has spoken to me for her, and I sounded her.”
“Has he? Well, and what did she say?”
“She said she would rather not marry at all, but live and die with me. Then I pressed her a little, you know. Then she did say she could never marry any but a clergyman, now she had lost her poor Alfred. And then I told her I thought Mr. Hurd could make her happy, and she would make me happy if she could esteem him; and marry him.”
“Well, mamma, and what then?”
“Why then, my poor child gave me a look that haunts me still — a look of unutterable love, and reproach, and resignation, and despair, and burst out crying so piteously I could say no more. Oh! oh! oh! oh!”
“Don’t you cry, mammy dear,” said Edward. “Ah, I remember when a tear was a wonder in our house.” And the fire-warrior sucked at his cigar, to stop a sigh.
“And n — now n — ot a d — day without them,” sighed Mrs. Dodd “But you have cost me none, my precious boy.”
“I’m waiting my time. (Puff.) Mamma, take my advice; don’t you fidget so. Let things alone. Why hurry her into marrying Mr. Hurd or anybody? Look here; I’ll keep dark to please you, if you’ll keep quiet to please me.”
At breakfast time came a messenger with a line from Mrs. Archbold, to say that David had escaped from Drayton House, in company with another dangerous maniac.
Mrs. Dodd received the blow with a kind of desperate resignation. She rose quietly from the table without a word, and went to put on her bonnet, leaving her breakfast and the note; for she did not at once see all that was implied in the communication. She took Edward with her to Drayton House. The firemen had saved one half of that building; the rest was a black shell. Mrs. Archbold came to them, looking haggard, and told them two keepers were already scouring the country, and an advertisement sent to all the journals.
“Oh, madam!” said Mrs. Dodd, “if the other should hurt him, or lead him somewhere to his death?”
Mrs. Archbold said she might dismiss this fear; the patient in question had but one illusion, and, though terribly dangerous when thwarted in that, was most intelligent in a general way, and much attached to Mr. Dodd; they were always together.”
A strange expression shot into Mrs. Dodd’s eye: she pinched Edward’s arm to keep him quiet, and said with feigned indifference —
“Then it was the one who was in such danger with my husband last night?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Archbold off her guard. It had not occurred to her that this handsome, fashionably-dressed young gentleman, was the fireman of last night. She saw her mistake, though, the moment he said bluntly, “Why, you told my mother it was an attendant.”
“Did I, madam?” asked Mrs. Archbold, mighty innocently: “I suppose I thought so. Well, I was mistaken, unfortunately.”
Mrs. Dodd was silent a moment, then, somewhat hastily bade Mrs. Archbold good-bye. She told the cabman to drive to an old acquaintance of ours, Mr. Green. He had set up detective on his own account. He was not at his office, but expected. She sat patiently down till he came in. They put their heads together, and Green dashed down to the asylum with a myrmidon, while Mrs. Dodd went into the City to obtain leave of absence from Cross and Co. This was politely declined at first, but on Mrs. Dodd showing symptoms of leaving them altogether, it was conceded. She returned home with Edward, and there was Mr. Green: he had actually traced the fugitives by broken fences, and occasional footsteps in the side clay of ditches, so far as to leave no doubt they had got upon the great south-eastern road. Then Mrs. Dodd had a female inspiration. “The Dover road! Ah! my husband will make for the sea.”
“I shouldn’t wonder, being a sailor,” said Green. “It is a pleasure to work with a lady like you, that puts in a good hint. Know anything about the other one, ma’am?”
Mrs. Dodd almost started at this off-hand question. But it was a natural one for Green to ask.
She said gravely, “I do. To my cost.”
Green’s eye sparkled, and he took out his note-book. “Now where is he like to make for?”
Mrs. Dodd seemed to wince at the question, and then turned her eyes inward to divine. The result was she gave a downright shudder, and said evasively, “Being with David, I hope and pray he will go towards the coast.”
“No, no,” said Green, “it won’t do to count on that altogether. How do we know which of the two will lead the other? You must please to put Mr. Dodd out of the question, ma’am, for a moment. Now we’ll say No. 2 had escaped alone: where would he be like to run to?”
Mrs. Dodd thus pressed, turned her eyes more and more inward, and said at last in a very low voice, and with a sort of concentrated horror — “He will come to my house.”
Mr. Green booked this eagerly. The lady’s emotion was nothing to him; the hint was invaluable, the combination interesting. “Well, ma’am,” said he, “I’ll plant a good man in sight of your door: and I’ll take the Dover road directly with my drag. My teeth weren’t strong enough for the last nut you gave me to crack: let us try this one. Tom Green isn’t often beat twice running.”
“I will go with you, Mr. Green.”
“Honoured and proud, ma’am. But a lady like you in my dog-cart along o’ me and my mate!”
Mrs. Dodd waived this objection almost contemptuously; she was all wife now.
It was agreed that Green should drive round for her in an hour. He departed for the present, and Edward proposed to go in the dog-cart too, but she told him no; she wanted him at home to guard his sister against “the Wretch.” Then seeing him look puzzled, “Consider, Edward,” said she, “he is not like your poor father: he has not forgotten. That advertisement, Aileen Aroon, it was from him, you know. And then why does he attach himself so to poor papa? Do you not see it is because he is Julia’s father? ‘The Wretch’ loves her still.”
Edward from puzzled looked very grave. “What a head you have got, mamma!” he said. “I should never have seen all this: yet it’s plain enough now, as you put it.”
“Yes, it is plain. Our darling is betrothed to a maniac; that maniac loves her, and much I fear she loves him. Some new calamity is impending. Oh, my son, I feel it already heavy on my heart. What is it to be? Is your father to be led to destruction, or will that furious wretch burst in upon your sister, and kill her, or perhaps kill Mr. Hard, if he catches them together? What may not happen now? The very air seems to me swarming with calamities.”
“Oh, I’ll take care of all that,” said Edward. And he comforted her a little by promising faithfully not to let Julia go out of his sight till her return.
She put on a plain travelling-dress. The dog-cart came. She slipped fifty sovereigns into Mr. Green’s hands for expenses, and off they went at a slapping pace. The horse was a great bony hunter of rare speed and endurance, and his long stride and powerful action raised poor Mrs. Dodd’s hopes, and the rushing air did her good. Green, to her surprise, made few inquiries for some miles on the Dover road; but he explained to her that the parties they were after had probably walked all night. “They don’t tire, that sort,” said Mr. Green.
At Dartford they got a doubtful intimation, on the strength of which he rattled on to Rochester. There he pulled up, deposited Mrs. Dodd at the principal inn till morning, and scoured the town for intelligence.
He inquired of all the policemen; described his men, and shrewdly added out of his intelligence, “Both splashed and dirty.”
No, the Bobbies had not seen them.
Then he walked out to the side of the town nearest London, and examined all the dealers in food. At last he found a baker who, early that morning, had sold a quartern loaf to two tall men without hats, “and splashed fearful; “ he added, “thought they had broken prison; but ’twas no business of mine: they paid for the bread right enough.”
On hearing they had entered Rochester hatless, the shrewd Mr. Green made direct to the very nearest slop-shop; and his sagacity was rewarded: the shopkeeper was a chatterbox, and told him yes, two gents out on a frolic had bought a couple of hats of him, and a whole set of sailor’s clothes. “I think they were respectable, too; but nothing else would satisfy him. So the young one he humoured him, and bought them. I took his old ones in exchange.”
At that Green offered a sovereign for the old clothes blindfold. The trader instantly asked two pounds, and took thirty shillings.
Green now set the police to scour the town for a gentleman and a common sailor in company, offered a handsome reward, and went to bed in a small inn, with David’s clothes by the kitchen fire. Early in the morning he went to Mrs. Dodd’s hotel with David’s clothes, nicely dried, and told her his tale. She knew the clothes directly, kissed them, and cried over them: then gave him her hand with a world of dignity and grace: “What an able man! Sir, you inspire me with great confidence.”
“And you me with zeal, ma’am,” said the delighted Green. “Why I’d go through fire and water for a lady like you, that pays well, and doesn’t grudge a fellow a bit of praise. Now you must eat a bit, ma’am, if it’s ever so little, and then we’ll take the road; for the police think the parties have left the town, and by their night’s work they must be good travellers.”
The dog-cart took the road, and the exhunter stepped out thirteen miles an hour.
Now at this moment Alfred and David were bowling along ahead with a perfect sense of security. All that first night, the grandest of his life, Alfred walked on air, and drank the glorious exhilarating breath of Freedom. But, when the sun dawned on them, his intoxicating joy began to be dashed with apprehension: hatless and bemired, might they not be suspected and detained by some officious authority?
But the slop-shop set that all right. He took a double-bedded room in The Bear, locked the door, put the key under his pillow, and slept till eleven. At noon they were on the road again, and as they swung lustily along in the frosty but kindly air, Alfred’s chest expanded, his spirits rose, and he felt a man all over. Exhilarated by freedom, youth, and motion, and a little inflated by reviving vanity, his heart, buoyant as his foot, now began to nurse aspiring projects: he would indict his own father, and the doctors, and immolate them on the altar of justice and publicly wipe off the stigma they had cast on him, and meantime he would cure David and restore him to his family.
He loved this harmless companion of his cell, his danger, and his flight; loved him for Julia’s sake, loved him for his own. Youth and vanity whispered, “I know more about madness than the doctors; I have seen it closer.” It struck him David’s longing for blue water was one of those unerring instincts that sometimes guide the sick to their cure. And then as the law permits the forcible recapture of a patient — without a fresh order or certificates — within fourteen days of his escape from an asylum, he did not think it prudent to show himself in London till that time should have elapsed. So, all things considered, why not hide a few days with David in some insignificant seaport, and revel in liberty and blue water with him all day long, and so by associations touch the spring of memory, and begin the cure? As for David, he seemed driven seaward by some unseen spur; he fidgeted at all delay; even dinner fretted him; he panted so for his natural element. Alfred humoured him, and an hour after sunset they reached the town of Canterbury. Here Alfred took the same precautions as before, and slept till nine o’clock.
When he awoke, he found David walking to and fro impatiently. “All right, messmate,” said Alfred, “we shall soon be in blue water.” He made all haste, and they were on the road again by ten, walking at a gallant pace.
But the dog-cart was already rattling along about thirty miles behind them. Green inquired at all the turnpikes and vehicles; the scent was cold at first, but warmer by degrees, and hot at Canterbury. Green just baited his gallant horse, and came foaming on, and just as the pair entered the town of Folkestone, their pursuers came up to the cross-roads, not five miles behind them.
Alfred went to a good inn in Folkestone and ordered a steak, then strolled with David by the beach, and gloried in the water with him. “After dinner we will take a boat, and have a sail,” said he. “See, there’s a nice boat, riding at anchor there.”
David snuffed the breeze and his eye sparkled, and he said, “Wind due east, messmate.” And this remark, slight as it was was practical, and gave Alfred great delight: strengthened his growing conviction that not for nothing had this charge been thrown on him. He should be the one to cure his own father; for Julia’s father was his: he had no father now. “All right,” said he gaily, “we’ll soon be on blue water: but first we’ll have our dinner, old boy, for I am starving.” David said nothing and went rather doggedly back to the inn with him.
The steak was on the table. Alfred told the waiter to uncover and David to fall to, while he just ran upstairs to wash his hands. He came down in less than two minutes; but David was gone, and the waiter standing there erect and apathetic like a wooden sentinel.
“Why, where is he?” said Alfred.
“Gent’s gone out,” was the reply.
“And you stood there and let him? you born idiot. Which way is he gone?”
“I don’t know,” said the waiter angrily, “I ain’t a p’liceman. None but respectable gents comes here, as don’t want watching.” Alfred darted out and scoured the town; he asked everybody if they had seen a tall gentleman dressed like a common sailor. Nobody could tell him: there were so many sailors about the port; that which in an inland town would have betrayed the truant concealed him here. A cold perspiration began to gather on Alfred’s brow, as he ran wildly all over the place.
He could not find him, nor any trace of him. At last it struck him that he had originally proposed to go to Dover, and had spoken of that town to David, though he had now glanced aside, making for the smaller ports on the south coast: he hired a horse directly, and galloped furiously to Dover. He rode down to the pier, gave his horse to a boy to hold, and ran about inquiring far David. He could not find him: but at last he found a policeman, who told him he thought there was another party on the same lay as himself: “No,” said the man correcting himself, “it was two they were after, a gentleman and a sailor. Perhaps you are his mate.”
Alfred’s blood ran cold. Pursued! and so hotly: “No, no,” he stammered; “I suspect I am on the same business.” Then he said cunningly (for asylums teach the frankest natures cunning), “Come and have a glass of grog and tell me all about it.” Bobby consented, and under its influence described Mrs. Dodd and her companions to him.
But not everybody can describe minutely. In the bare outlines, which were all this artist could furnish him, Alfred recognised at once, whom do you think? Mrs. Archbold, Dr. Wolf, and his arch enemy Rooke, the keeper. Doubtless his own mind, seizing on so vague a description, adapted it rather hastily to what seemed probable. Mrs. Dodd never occurred to him, nor that David was the sole, or even the main object of the pursuit. He was thoroughly puzzled what to do. However, as his pursuers had clearly scoured Dover, and would have found David if there, he made use of their labours and galloped back towards Folkestone. But he took the precaution to inquire at the first turnpike, and there he learned a lady and two men had passed through about an hour before in a dog-cart; it was a wonder he had missed them. Alfred gnashed his teeth; “Curse you,” he muttered. “Well, do my work in Folkestone, I’ll find him yet, and baffle you.” He turned his horse’s head westward and rode after David. Convinced that his lost friend would not go inland, he took care to keep near the cliffs, and had ever an eye on the beach when the road came near enough.
About eight miles west of Folkestone he saw a dog-cart going down a hill before him: but there was only a single person in it. However, he increased his pace and got close behind it as it mounted the succeeding hill which was a high one. Walking leisurely behind it his quick eye caught sight of a lady’s veil wrapped round the iron of the seat.
That made him instantly suspect this might be the dog-cart after all. But, if so, how came a stranger in it? He despised a single foe, and resolved to pump this one and learn where the others were.
While he was thinking how he should begin, the dog-cart stopped at the top of the hill, and the driver looked seaward at some object that appeared to interest him.
It was a glorious scene. Viewed from so great a height the sea expanded like ocean, and its light-blue waters sparkled and laughed innumerable in the breeze. “A beautiful sight, sir,” said the escaped prisoner, “you may well stop to look at it.” The man touched his hat and chuckled. “I don’t think you know what I am looking at, sir,” he said politely.
“I thought it was the lovely sea view; so bright, so broad, so free.
“No, sir; not but what I can enjoy that a bit, too: but what I’m looking at is an ‘unt. Do you see that little boat? Sailing right down the coast about eight miles off. Well, sir, what do you think there is in that boat? But you’ll never guess. A madman.”
“Ah!”
“Curious, sir, isn’t it: a respectable gentleman too he is, and sails well; only stark staring mad. There was two of ’em in company: but it seems they can’t keep together long. Our one steals a fisherman’s boat, and there he goes down channel. And now look here, sir; see this steam-tug smoking along right in front of us: she’s after him, and see there’s my governor aboard standing by the wheel with a Bobby and a lady: and if ever there was a lady she’s one;” here he lowered his voice. “She’s that mad gentleman’s wife, sir, as I am a living sinner.”
They both looked down on the strange chase in silence. “Will they catch her?” asked Alfred at last, under his breath.
“How can we be off it? steam against sails. And if he runs ashore, I shall be there to nab him.” Alfred looked, and looked: the water came into his eyes. “It’s the best thing that can befall him now,” he murmured. He gave the man half-a-crown, and then turned his horse’s head and walked him down the hill towards Folkestone. On his arrival there he paid for his horse, and his untasted dinner, and took the first train to London, a little dispirited; and a good deal mortified; for he hated to be beat. But David was in good hands, that was one comfort; and he had glorious work on hand, love and justice. He went to an out of the way inn in the suburbs, and, when he had bought a carpet-bag and some linen and other necessaries, he had but one sovereign left.
His heart urged him vehemently to go at once and find his Julia: but alas! he did not even know where she lived; and he dared not at present make public inquiries: that would draw attention to himself, and be his destruction; for Wolf stood well with the police, and nearly always recaptured his truant patients by their aid before the fourteen days had elapsed. He determined to go first to a solicitor: and launch him against his enemies, while compelled to shirk them in his own person. Curious position! Now, amongst his father’s creditors was Mr. Compton, a solicitor, known for an eccentric, but honourable man, and for success in litigation. Mr. Compton used to do his own business in Barkington, and employ an agent in London: but Alfred remembered to have heard just before his incarceration that he had reversed the parts, and now lived in London. Alfred found him out by the Directory, and called at his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He had to wait some time in the outer office listening to a fluent earnest client preaching within: but presently a sharp voice broke in upon the drone, and, after a few sentences, Mr. Compton ushered out a client with these remarkable words: “And as for your invention, it has been invented four times before you invented it, and never was worth inventing at all. And you have borrowed two hundred pounds of me in ninety loans, each of which cost me an hour’s invaluable time: I hold ninety acknowledgments in your handwriting; and I’ll put them all in force for my protection;” with this he turned to his head clerk: “Mr. Colls, take out a writ against this client; what is your Christian name, sir? I forget.”
“Simon,” said the gaping client, off his guard.
“Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Compton with sudden politeness: then resuming hostilities —“A writ in the Common Pleas against Simon Macfarlane: keep it in your drawer, Colls, and if ever the said Macfarlane does me the honour to call on me again serve him with it on the spot; and, if not, not; good morning, sir.” And with this he bolted into his own room and slammed its door. ‘The clerks opened the outer door to Mr. Macfarlane with significant grins, and he went out bewildered sorely, yea even like one that walketh abroad in his sleep. “Now, sir,” said Mr. Colls cheerfully to Alfred. But the new client naturally hesitated now: he put on his most fascinating smile, and said: “Well, Mr. Colls, what do you advise? Is this a moment to beard the lion in his den?”
At Alfred’s smile and address Colls fell in love with him directly, and assured him sotto voce, and with friendly familiarity, that now was his time. “Why, he’ll be as sweet as honey now he has got rid of a client.” With this he took Alfred’s name, and ushered him into a room piled with japanned tin boxes, where Mr. Compton sat, looking all complacency, at a large desk table, on which briefs, and drafts, and letters lay in seeming confusion. He rose, and with a benignant courtesy invited Alfred to sit down and explain his business.
The reader is aware our Oxonian could make a close and luminous statement. He began at the beginning, but soon disposed of preliminaries and came to his capture at Silverton. Then Mr. Compton quietly rang the bell, and with a slight apology to Alfred requested Colls to search for the draft of Mrs. Holloway’s will. Alfred continued. Mr. Compton listened keenly, noted the salient points on a sheet of brief-paper, and demanded the exact dates of every important event related.
The story finished, the attorney turned to Colls, and said mighty coolly, “You may go. The will is in my pocket: but I made sure he was a madman. They generally are, these ill-used clients.” (Exit Colls) “Got a copy of the settlement, sir, under which you take this ten thousand pounds?”
“No, sir.”
“Any lawyer seen it?”
“Oh yes; Mr. Crauford, down at Barkington.”
“Good. Friend of mine. I’ll write to him. Names and addresses of your trustees?”
Alfred gave them.
“You have brought the order on which you were confined, and the two certificates?”
“Not I,” said Alfred. “I have begged and prayed for a sight of them, and never could get one. That is one of the galling iniquities of the system; I call it ‘THE DOUBLE SHUFFLE.’ Just bring your mind to bear on this, sir: The prisoner whose wits and liberty have been signed away behind his back is not allowed to see the order and certificate on which he is confined — until after his release: that release he is to obtain by combating the statements in the order and certificates. So to get out he must first see and contradict the lies that put him in; but to see the lies that put him in, he must first get out. So runs the circle of Iniquity. Now, is that the injustice of Earth, or the injustice of Hell?”
Mr. Compton asked a moment to consider: “Well, I think is of the earth, earthy. There’s a mixture of idiocy in it the Devil might fairly repudiate. Young gentleman, the English Statutes of Lunacy are famous monuments of legislatorial incapacity: and indeed, as a general rule, if you want justice and wisdom, don’t you go to Acts of Parliament, but to the Common Law of England.”
Alfred did not appreciate this observation: he made no reply to it, but inquired, with some heat, “what he could do to punish the whole gang; his father, the certifying doctors, and the madhouse keepers?”
“Humph! You might indict them all for a conspiracy,” said Mr. Compton; “but you would be defeated. As a rule, avoid criminal proceedings where you have a civil remedy. A jury will give a verdict and damages where they would not convict on the same evidence. Yours is just one of those cases where Temper says, ‘indict!’ but Prudence says, ‘sue!’ and Law, through John Compton, its oracle in this square, says, sue the defendant and no other. Now, who is the true defendant here, or party liable in law?”
“The keeper of the asylum, for one.”
“No. If I remember right, all proceedings against him are expressly barred by a provision in the last statute. Let us see.”
He took down the statutes of the realm, and showed Alfred the clause which raises the proprietor of a madhouse above the civic level of Prince Royal. “Curse the law,” said Alfred bitterly.
“No, don’t curse the Law. Curse the Act if you like; but we can’t get on without the Law, neither of us. Try again.”
“The certifying doctor, sir?”
“Humph!” said Mr. Compton, knitting his brows: “a jury might give you a verdict. But it would probably be set aside by the full court, or else by a court of error. For, unless you could prove informality, barefaced negligence, or mala fides, what does it come to? A professional man, bound to give medical opinions to all comers, is consulted about you, and says he thinks you are insane: you turn out sane. Well, then, he was mistaken: but not more than he is in most of his professional opinions. We lawyers know what guesswork Medicine is: we see it in the witness-box. I hate suing opinions: it is like firing bullets at snipes in a wind. Try again.”
Alfred groaned. “Why there is nobody left but the rogue who signed the order.”
“And if you were a lawyer, that alone would tell you he is the defendant. Where a legal wrong has been committed by A. B. and C., and there is no remedy against A. or B., there must either be one against C., or none at all: but this Law abhors as Nature does a vacuum. Besides, this defendant has done the wrong complained of. In his person you sue an act, not an opinion. But of course you are not cool enough to see all this just at first.”
“Cool, sir,” said Alfred despairingly; “I am frozen with your remorseless law. What, of all these villains, may I only attack one, and can’t I imprison even him, as he has me? Such narrow law encourages men to violence, who burn under wrongs like mine.”
Mr. Compton looked keenly at his agitated, mortified client, but made no concession. He gave him a minute to digest the law’s first bitter pill: and then said, “If I am to act for you, you had better write a line to the Commissioners of Lunacy requesting them to hand me copies of the order and certificates.” Alfred wrote it.
“And now,” said Mr. Compton thoughtfully, “ I don’t think they will venture to recapture you during the fourteen days. But still they might; and we attorneys are wary animals. So please give me at once a full authority to act under advice of counsel for your protection.”
Alfred wrote as requested, and Mr. Compton put the paper in his drawer, remarking, “With this I can proceed by law or equity, even should you get into the asylum again.” He then dismissed Alfred somewhat abruptly, but with an invitation to call again after three clear days. Like most ardent suitors after their first interview with passionless law, he went away sadly chilled, and so home to his cheerless lodging, to count the hours till he could see Julia, and learn his fate from her lips.
This very morning a hasty note came to Edward from Folkestone, worded thus:
“Oh, Edward: my worst misgivings! The two have parted. Poor papa has taken a man’s boat and is in sight. We shall follow directly in a steamboat. But the other! You know my fears; you must be father and mother to that poor child till I come home — Your sad mother,
“LUCY DODD.”
Julia held out her hand for the note. Edward put it in his pocket.
“What is that for?” said the young lady.
“Why surely I may put my own property in my pocket.”
“Oh, certainly. I only want to look at it first.”
“Excuse me.”
“Are you in earnest, Edward? Not let me see dear mamma’s letter?” and the vivid face looked piteously surprised.
“Oh, I’ll tell you the contents. Papa had got to Folkestone and taken a boat, and gone to sea: then mamma took a steamboat and after him: so she will soon catch him, and is not that a comfort?”
“Oh, yes,” cried Julia, and was for some time too interested and excited to think of anything else. But presently she returned to the charge. “Anything else, dear?”
“Humph? Well, not of equal importance.”
“Oh, if it is of no importance, there can be no reason for not telling me. What was it?”
Edward coloured but said nothing. He thought however, and thus ran his thoughts: “She’s my intellectual superior and I’ve got to deceive her; and a nice mess I shall make of it.”
It is of importance,” said Julia, eyeing him. “You have told a story: and you don’t love your sister.” This fulminated, she drew herself up proudly and was silent. A minute afterwards, stealing a look at her, he saw her eyes suddenly fill with tears, apropos of nothing tangible.
“Now this is nice,” said he to himself
At noon she put on her bonnet to visit her district. He put on his hat directly, and accompanied her. Great was her innocent pleasure at that: it was the first time he had done her the honour. She took him to her poor people, and showed him off with innocent pride.
“Hannah, this is my brother.” Then in a whisper, “Isn’t he beautiful?” Presently she saw him looking pale; unheard of phenomenon! “There now, you are ill,” said she. “Come home directly, and be nursed.”
“No, no,” said he. “I only want a little fresh air. What horrid places what horrid sights and smells! I say, you must have no end of pluck to face them.”
“No, no, no. Dearest, I pray for strength: that is how I manage. And oh, Edward, you used to think the poor were not to be pitied. But now you see.”
“Yes, I see, and smell and all. You are a brave, good girl. Got any salts about you?”
“Yes, of course. There. But fancy a young lion smelling salts.”
“A young duffer, you mean; that has passed for game through the thing not being looked into close.”
“Oh, you can he close enough, where I want you to be open.”
No answer.
The next day he accompanied her again, but remained at the stairfoot while she went in to her patients; and, when she came down, asked her, Could no good Christian be found to knock that poor woman on the head who lived in a plate.
“No good Heathen, you mean,” said Julia.
“Why, yes,” said he; “the savages manage these things better.”
He also accompanied her shopping, and smoked phlegmatically outside the shops; nor could she exhaust his patience. Then the quick girl put this and that together. When they were at home again and her bonnet off, she looked him in the face and said sweetly, “I have got a watch-dog.” He smiled, and said nothing. “Why don’t you answer?” cried Julia impetuously.
“Because least said is soonest mended. Besides, I’m down upon you: you decoy me into a friendly conversation, and then you say biting things directly.”
“If I bite you, you sting me. Such want of confidence! Oh how cruel! how cruel! Why can you not trust me? Am I a child? No one is young who has suffered what I have suffered. Secrets disunite a family: and we were so united. And then you are so stupid; you keep a secret? Yes, like a dog in a chain; you can’t hide it one bit. You have undertaken a task you are not fit for, sir; to hide a secret you must be able to tell fibs: and you can’t: not for want of badness, but cleverness to tell them smoothly; you know it, you know it; and so out of your abominable slyness you won’t say a word. There, it is no use my trying to provoke him. I wish you were not so good-tempered; so apathetic I mean, of course.” Then, with one of her old rapid transitions, she began to caress him and fawn on him: she seated him in an arm-chair and herself on a footstool, and suddenly curling round his neck, murmured, “Dear, dear brother, have pity on a poor girl, and tell her is there any news that I have a right to hear, only mamma has given you your orders not to tell me; tell me, love!” This last in an exquisite whisper.
“Let me alone, you little fascinating demon,” said he angrily. “Ask mamma. I won’t tell you a word.”
“Thank you!” she cried, bounding to her feet; “you have told me. He is alive. He loves me still. He was bewitched, seduced, deluded. He has come to himself. Mamma has seen him. He wants to come and beg my pardon. But you are all afraid I shall forgive him. But I will not, for at the first word I’ll stop his mouth, and say, ‘If you were happy away from me, I suppose you would not have come back.’”
And instantly she burst out singing, with inspired eloquence and defiance —
“Castles are sacked in war,
Chieftains are scattered far,
Truth is a fixed star —
Aileen aroon.”
But, unable to sustain it, the poor Impetuosity dropped as quickly as she had mounted, and out went her arm on the table, and her forehead sank on her arm, and the tears began to run silently down the sweet face, so brave for a moment.
“W— will y — you allow me to light a cigar?” said Edward. “I’m wretched and miserable; you Tempest in petticoats, you!”
She made him a sign of assent with the hand that was dangling languidly, but she did not speak; nor did she appeal to him any more. Alienation was commencing. But what was worse than speaking her mind, she was for ever at the window now, looking up and down the street; and walking with her he felt her arm often tremble, and sometimes jerk. The secret was agitating her nerves, and destroying her tranquillity as much, or perhaps more, than if she had known all.
Mrs. Dodd wrote from Portsmouth: whereof anon.
Mr. Peterson called, and soon after him Mr. Hurd. Edward was glad to see them, especially the latter, whose visits seemed always to do Julia good.
Moreover, as Peterson and Hurd were rivals, it afforded Edward an innocent amusement to see their ill-concealed aversion to one another, and the admirable address and delicacy with which his sister conducted herself between them.
However, this pastime was cut short by Sarah coming in and saying, “There’s a young man wants to see you, sir.”
Julia looked up and changed colour.
“I think he is a fireman,” said Sarah. She knew very well he was a fireman, and also one of her followers. Edward went out and found one of his late brethren, who told him a young gentleman had just been inquiring for him at the station.
“What was he like?”
“Why, I was a good ways off, but I saw he was a tall one.”
“Six feet?”
“Full that.”
“Give you his name?’
“No: I didn’t speak to him: it was Andrew. Andrew says he asked if there was a fireman called Dodd: so Andrew said you had left; then the swell asked where you lived, and Andrew couldn’t tell him any more than it was in Pembroke Street. So I told him, says I, ‘Why couldn’t you call me? It is number sixty-six,’ says I. ‘Oh, he is coming back,’ says Andrew. However, I thought I’d come and tell you.” (And so get a word with Sarah, you sly dog.)
Edward thanked him, and put on his hat directly, for he could not disguise from himself that this visitor might be Alfred Hardie. Indeed, what more likely?
Messrs. Hurd and Peterson always tried to stay one another out whenever they met at 66, Pembroke Street. However, to make sure of not leaving Julia alone, Edward went in and asked them both to luncheon, at which time he said he should be back.
As he walked rapidly to the station he grew more and more convinced that it was Alfred Hardie. And his reflections ran like this. “What a headpiece mamma has! But it did not strike her he would come to me first. Yet how plain that looks now: for of course I’m the duffer’s only clue to Julia. These madmen are no fools, though. And how quiet he was that night! And he made papa go down the ladder first: that was the old Alfred Hardie; he was always generous: vain, overhearing, saucy, but noble with it all. I liked him: he was a man that showed you his worst, and let you find his best out by degrees. He hated to be beat: but that’s no crime. He was a beautiful oar, and handled his mawleys uncommon; he sparred with all the prizefighters that came to Oxford, and took punishment better than you would think; and a wonderful quick hitter; Alec Reed owned that. Poor Taff Hardie! And when I think that God has overthrown his powerful mind, and left me mine, such as it is! But the worst is my having gone on calling him ‘the Wretch’ all this time: and nothing too bad for him. I ought to be ashamed of myself. It grieves me very much. ‘When found make a note on;’ never judge a fellow behind his back again.
Arrived at the station, he inquired whether his friend had called again, and was answered in the negative. He waited a few minutes, and then, with the superintendent’s permission, wrote a note to Alfred, inviting him to dine at Simpson’s at six, and left it with the fireman. This done, he was about to return home, when another thought struck him. He got a messenger, and sent off a single line to Dr. Wolf, to tell him Alfred Hardie would be at Simpson’s at seven o clock.
But, when the messenger was gone, he regretted what he had done. He had done it for Alfred’s good; but still it was treason. He felt unhappy, and wended his way homeward disconsolately, realising more and more that he had not brains for the difficulties imposed upon him.
On entering Pembroke Street he heard a buzz. He looked up, and saw a considerable crowd collected in a semicircle. “Why that is near our house,” he said, and quickened his steps.
When he got near he saw that all the people’s eyes were bent on No. 66.
He dashed into the crowd. “What on earth is the matter?” he cried.
“The matter? Plenty’s the matter, young man,” cried one.
“Murder’s the matter,” said another.
At that he turned pale as death. An intelligent man saw his violent agitation, and asked him hurriedly if he belonged to the house.
“Yes. For mercy’s sake, what is it?”
“Make way there!” shouted the man. “He belongs. Sir, a madman has broke loose and got into your house. And I’m sorry to say he has just killed two men.”
“With a pistol,” cried several voices, speaking together.
ALFRED HARDIE spent three days writhing in his little lodging. His situation had been sadder, but never more irritating. By right possessor of thousands, yet in fact reduced to one suit, two shirts, and half-a-crown: rich in intellect, yet hunted as a madman: affianced to the loveliest girl in England, yet afraid to go near her for fear of being torn from her again, and for ever. All this could last but one week more; but a week’s positive torture was no trifle to contemplate, with a rival at his Julia’s ear all the time. Suppose she should have been faithful all these months, but in this last week should he worn out and give herself to another: such things had been known. He went to Lincoln’s Inn with this irritating fear tearing him like a vulture. Mr. Compton received him cheerfully, and told him he had begun operations in Hardie versus Hardie: had written to Thomas Hardie two days ago, and inquired his London solicitor, and whether that gentleman would accept service of the writ in Hardie versus Hardie.
“To Thomas Hardie? Why, what has he to do with it?” asked Alfred.
“He is the defendant in the suit.” Then seeing amazement and incredulity on Alfred’s face, he explained that the Commissioners of Lunacy had treated him with great courtesy; had at once furnished him with copies, not only of the order and certificates, but of other valuable documents. “And there,” said he, “lies the order; signed by Thomas Hardie, of Clare Court, Yorkshire.”
“Curse his impudence,” cried Alfred in a fury; “why, sir, he is next door to an idiot himself.”
“What does that matter? Ah, now, if I had gone in a passion and indicted him, there would be a defence directly; ‘no malice, defendant being non compos.‘ Whereas, by gently, quietly suing him, even if he was a lunatic, we would make him or his estate pay a round sum for falsely imprisoning a sane Briton. By-the-by, here is counsel’s opinion on your case,” and he handed him a short opinion of a distinguished Queen’s Counsel, the concluding words of which were these:
3. If the certificates and order are in legal form, and were made and given bona fide, no action lies for the capture or detention of Mr. Hardie.
“Why it is dead against me,” said Alfred. “There goes the one rotten reed you had left me.”
“Singularly dead,” said the attorney coolly; “he does not even say ‘I am of opinion.’ He is in great practice, and hardworked: in his hurry he has taken up the Lunacy Acts, and has forgotten that the rights of sane Englishmen are not the creatures of these little trumpery statutes. No, thank you; our rights are centuries older, and prevail wherever, by good luck, the statutes of the realm are silent; now they are all silent about incarcerating sane men. Besides, he gives no cases. What is an opinion without a precedent? A lawyer’s guess. I thought so little of his opinion that I sent the case to a clever junior, who has got time to think before he writes.” Colls entered soon after with the said junior’s opinion. Mr. Compton opened it, and saying, “Now let us see what he says,” read it to Alfred. It ran thus:
“There was clearly a right of action under the common law and it has been exercised. Anderdon v. Brothers; Paternoster v. Wynn, &c. Such a right can only be annulled by the express terms of a statute: now the 8 and 9 Victoria, cap. 100, sect. 99, so annuls it as against the madhouse proprietor only. That, therefore, is the statutory exception, and tends to confirm the common right. If the facts are as represented (on which, of course, I can form no opinion), Mr. Hardie can safely sue the person who signed the order for his alleged false imprisonment.
“I agree with you that the usual course by praying the Court of Chancery for a Commission de Lunatico Inquirendo, is timorous, and rests on prejudice. Plt., if successful, is saddled with his own costs, and sometimes with Deft.‘s, and obtains no compensation. It seems clear that a jury sitting at Nisi Prius can deal as well with the main fact as can a jury sitting by the order of the Chancellor; and I need not say the costs will go with their verdict, to say nothing of the damages, which may be heavy. On the other hand, an indictment is hazardous; and I think you can lose nothing by beginning with the suit. By having a shorthand writer at the trial, you may collect materials for an indictment, and also feel the pulse of the court; you can then confer upon the evidence with some counsel better versed in criminal law than myself. My advice is to sue Thomas Hardie; and declare in Tort.
“(Signed) BARROW.
“N.B.— I have been thus particular, because Hardie v. Hardie (if carried to a verdict) will probably be a leading case.”
“Who shall decide when counsel disagree?’ inquired Alfred satirically.
“That depends on where they do it. If in court, the judge. If here, the attorney.”
You appear sanguine, Mr. Compton,” said Alfred; “perhaps you would not mind advancing me a little money. I’ve only half-a-crown.”
“It is all ready for you in this drawer,” said Compton cheerfully. “See thirty sovereigns. Then you need not go to a bank.”
“What, you knew I should borrow?”
“Don’t all my clients begin by bleeding me? It is the rule of this office.”
“Then why don’t you give up business?”
“Because I bleed the opposite attorney’s client a pound or two more than my own bleeds me.”
He then made Alfred sign a promissory note for the thirty pounds: advised him to keep snug for one week more, and promised to write to him in two days, and send Thomas Hardie’s answer. Alfred left his address and went from Mr. Compton a lighter man. Convinced of his courage and prudence, he shifted one care off his own shoulders: and thought of love alone.
But, strange as it may appear, two cares are sometimes better for a man than one. Alfred, having now no worry to divert him from his deeper anxiety, was all love and jealousy; and quite overbalanced: the desire of his heart grew so strong it overpowered alike his patience and his prudence. He jumped into a cab, and drove to all the firemen’s stations on the Surrey side of the river, inquiring for Edward. At last he hit upon the right one, and learned that Julia lived in Pembroke Street; number unknown. He drove home to his lodgings; bought some ready-made clothes, and dressed like a gentleman: then told the cabman to drive to Pembroke Street. He knew he was acting imprudently; but he could not help it. And, besides, Mr. Compton had now written to his uncle, and begun the attack: that would surely intimidate his enemies, and turn their thoughts to defence, not to fresh offence. However, catching sight of a gunsmith’s shop on the way, he suddenly resolved to arm himself on the bare chance of an attack. He stopped the cab; went in and bought a double-barrelled pistol, with powder-flask, bullets, wads, and caps complete. This he loaded in the cab, and felt quite prudent after it. The prudence of youth!
He paid off the cab in Pembroke Street, and set about the task of discovering Julia. He inquired at several houses, but was unsuccessful. Then he walked slowly all down the street, looking up at all the windows. And I think, if he had done this the day before, he might have seen her, or she him: she was so often at the window now. But just then she had company to keep her in order.
He was unlucky in another respect. Edward came out of No. 66 and went up the street, when he himself was going down it not so very many yards off. If Alfred’s face had only been turned the other way he would have seen Edward, and all would have gone differently.
The stoutest hearts have their moments of weakness and deep dejection. Few timings are more certain, and less realised by ordinary men than this; from Palissy fighting with Enamel to Layard disinterring a city, this thing is so.
Unable to find Julia in the very street she inhabited, Alfred felt weak against fate. He said to himself, “If I find her, I shall perhaps wish I had never sought her.”
In his hour of dejection stern reason would be heard, and asked him whether all Mrs. Archbold had said could be pure invention; and he was obliged to confess that was too unlikely. Then he felt so sick at heart he was half minded to turn and fly the street. But there was a large yard close by him, entered by a broad and lofty gateway cut through one of the houses. The yard belonged to a dealer in hay: two empty waggons were there, but no men visible, being their dinner-time. Alfred slipped in here, and sat down on the shaft of a waggon; and let his courage ooze. He sighed, and sighed, and feared to know his fate. And so he sat with his face in his hands unmanned.
Presently a strain of music broke on his ear. It seemed to come from the street. He raised his head to listen. He coloured, his eyes sparkled; he stole out on tiptoe with wondering, inquiring face into the street. Once there, he stood spell-bound, thrilling from his heart, that seemed now on fire, to his fingers’ ends. For a heavenly voice was singing to the piano, just above his head; singing in earnest, making the very street ring. Already listeners were gathering, and a woman of the people said, “It’s a soul singing without a body.” Amazing good things are said in the streets. The voice was the voice of Julia; the song was Aileen Aroon, the hymn of constancy. So sudden and full was the bliss, which poured into the long and sore-tried listener at this sudden answer to his fears, that tears of joy trembled in his eyes. “‘Wretch that I was to doubt her,” he said: and unable to contain his longing, unable to wait and listen even to that which had changed his griefs and doubts into rapture, he was at the door in a moment. A servant opened it: “Miss Dodd?” he said, or rather panted; “you need not announce me. I am an old acquaintance.” He could not bear any one should see the meeting between him and his beloved; he went up the steep and narrow stair, guided by the hymn of constancy.
He stopped at the door, his heart was beating so violently.
Then he turned the handle softly, and stepped into the drawing-room; it was a double room: he took two steps and was in the opening, and almost at Julia’s back.
Two young clergymen were bending devotedly one on each side of her; it was to them she was singing the hymn of constancy.
Alfred started back as if he had been stung; and the music stopped dead short.
For she had heard his step, and, womanlike, was looking into her companions’ eyes first, to see if her ear had deceived her. What she saw there brought her slowly round with a wild look. Her hands rose toward her face, and she shrank away sideways from him as if he was a serpent, and her dilated eyes looked over her cringing shoulder at him, and she was pale and red and pale and red a dozen times in as many seconds.
He eyed her sorrowfully and sternly, taking for shame that strange mixture of emotions which possessed her. And so they met. Strange meeting for two true lovers, who had parted last upon their wedding eve.
No doubt, if they had been alone, one or other would have spoken directly; but the situation was complicated by the presence of two rivals, and this tied their tongues. They devoured one another with their eyes in silence; and then Julia rose slowly to her feet, and began to tremble from head to foot, as she looked at him.
“Is this intrusion agreeable to you, Miss Dodd?” said Mr. Hurd respectfully, by way of courting her. She made no reply, but only looked wildly at Alfred still, and quivered visibly.
“Pray, sir,” said Alfred, turning on Mr. Hurd, “have you any right to interfere between us two?”
“None whatever,” said Julia hastily. “Mr. Hurd, I need no one: I will permit no one to say a word to him. Mr. Hardie knows he cannot enter a house where I am-without an explanation.”
“What, before a couple of curates?”
“Do not be insolent to my friends, sir,” said Julia, panting.
This wounded Alfred deeply. “Oh, as you please,” said he. “Only if you put me on my defence before strangers, I shall, perhaps, put you to the blush before them.”
“Why do you come here, sir?” said Julia, not deigning to notice his threat.
“To see my betrothed.”
“Oh, indeed!” said she bitterly; “in that case why have you postponed your visit so long?”
“I was in prison.”
“In prison?”
“In the worst of all prisons; where I was put because I loved you; where I was detained because I persisted in loving you, you faithless, inconstant girl.”
He choked at these words; she smiled — a faint, uncertain smile. It died away, and she shook her head, and said sadly —
“Defend yourself, and then call me as many names as you like. Where was this prison?”
“It was an asylum: a madhouse.”
The girl stared at him bewildered. He put his hand into his pocket and took Peggy’s letter. “Read that,” he said. She held it in her hand, and looked him in the face to divine the contents. “Read it,” said he, almost fiercely; “that was the decoy.” She held it shaking in her hands, and stared at it. I don’t know whether she read it or not.
He went on: “The same villain who defrauded your father of his money, robbed me of my wife and my liberty: that Silverton House was a lunatic asylum, and ever since then (Oh, Julia, the agony of that day) I have been confined in one or other of those hells; sane amongst the mad; till Drayton House took fire, and I escaped: for what? To be put on my defence, by you. What have you suffered from our separations compared with the manifold anguish I have endured, that you dare to receive the most injured and constant of mankind like this, you who have had your liberty all this time, and have consoled yourself for my absence with a couple of curates?”
“For shame,” said Julia, blushing to the forehead, yet smiling in a way her companions could not understand.
“Miss Dodd, will you put up with these insults?” said Mr. Hurd.
“Ay, and a thousand more,” cried Julia, radiant, “and thank Heaven for them; they prove his sincerity. You, who have thought proper to stay and hear me insult my betrothed, and put my superior on his defence, look how I receive his just rebuke: Dear, cruelly used Alfred, I never doubted you in my heart, no not for a moment; forgive me for taunting you to clear yourself; you who were always the soul of truth and honour. Forgive me: I too have suffered; for I thought my Alfred was dead. Forgive me.”
And with this she was sinking slowly to her knees with the most touching grace, all blushes, tears, penitence, happiness, and love; but he caught her eagerly. “Oh! God forbid,” he cried: and in a moment her head was on his shoulder, and they mingled their tears together.
It was Julia who recovered herself first, and shrank from him a little, and murmured, “We are not alone.”
The misgiving came rather late: and they were alone.
The other gentlemen had comprehended at last that it was indelicate to remain: they had melted quietly away; and Peterson rushed down the street; but Hurd hung disconsolate about that very entry, where Alfred had just desponded before him.
“Sit by me, my poor darling, and tell me all,” said Julia.
He began; but, ere he had told her about his first day at his first asylum, she moaned and turned faint at the recital, and her lovely head sank on his shoulder. He kissed her, and tried to comfort her, and said he would not tell her any more.
But she said somewhat characteristically, “I insist on your telling me all — all. It will kill me.” Which did not seem to Alfred a cogent reason for continuing his narrative. He varied it by telling her that through all his misery the thought of her had sustained him. Alas, in the midst of their Elysium a rough voice was heard in the passage inquiring for Mr. Hardie. Alfred started up in dismay: for it was Rooke’s voice. “I am undone,” he cried. “They are coming to take me again; and, if they do, they will drug me; I am a dead man.”
“Fly!” cried Julia; “fly! upstairs: the leads.”
He darted to the door, and out on the landing.
It was too late. Rooke had just turned the corner of the stairs, and saw him. He whistled and rushed after Alfred. Alfred bounded up the next flight of stairs: but, even as he went, his fighting blood got up; he remembered his pistol: he drew it, turned on the upper landing, and levelled the weapon full at Rooke’s forehead. The man recoiled with a yell, and got to a respectful distance on the second landing. There he began to parley. “Come, Mr. Hardie, sir,” said he, “that is past a joke: would you murder a man?”
“It’s no murder to kill an assassin in defence of life or liberty; and I’ll kill you, Rooke, as I would kill a wasp, if you lay a finger on me.”
“Do you hear that?” shouted Rooke to some one below.
“Ay, I hear,” replied the voice of Hayes.
“Then loose the dog. And run in after him.”
There was a terrible silence; then a scratching was heard below: and, above, the deadly click of the pistol-hammers brought to full cock.
And then there was a heavy pattering rush, and Vulcan came charging up the stairs like a lion. He was half-muzzled; but that Alfred did not know; he stepped forward and fired at the tremendous brute somewhat unsteadily; and missed him, by an inch; the bullet glanced off the stairs and entered the wall within a yard of Rooke’s head: ere Alfred could fire again, the huge brute leaped on him, and knocked him down like a child, and made a grab at his throat; Alfred, with admirable presence of mind, seized a banister, and, drawing himself up, put the pistol to Vulcan’s ear, and fired the other barrel just as Rooke rushed up the stairs to secure his prisoner; the dog bounded into the air and fell over dead with shattered skull, leaving Alfred bespattered with blood and brains, and half blinded: but he struggled up, and tore the banister out in doing so, just as a heavy body fell forward at his feet: it was Rooke stumbling over Vulcan’s carcass so unexpectedly thrown in his path: Alfred cleared his eyes with his hand, and as Rooke struggled up, lifted the banister high above his head, and, with his long sinewy arm and elastic body, discharged a blow frightful to look at, for youth, strength, skill, and hate all swelled, and rose, and struck together in that one furious gesture. If the wood had held, the skull must have gone. As it was, the banister broke over’ the man’s head (and one half went spinning up to the ceiling). The man’s head cracked under the banister like a glass bottle; and Rooke lay flat and mute, within the blood running from his nose and ears. Alfred hurled the remnant of the banister down at Hayes and the others, and darted into a room (it was Julia’s bedroom), and was heard to open the window, and then drag furniture to the door, and barricade it. This done, he went to load his pistol, which he thought he had slipped into his pocket after felling Rooke. He found to his dismay it was not there. The fact was, it had slipped past his pocket and fallen down.
During the fight, shriek upon shriek issued from the drawing-room. But now all was still. On the stairs lay Vulcan dead, Rooke senseless: below, Julia in a dead faint. And all in little more than a minute.
Dr. Wolf arrived with the police and two more keepers, new ones in the place of Wales and Garrett discharged; and urged them to break into the bedroom and capture the maniac: but first he was cautious enough to set two of them to watch the back of the house. “There,” he said, “where that load of hay is going in: that is the way to it. Now stand you in the yard and watch.”
This last mandate was readily complied with; for there was not much to be feared on the stones below from a maniac self-immured on the second story. But to break open that bedroom door was quite another thing. The stairs were like a shambles already — a chilling sight to the eyes of mercenary valour.
Rooke was but just sensible: the others hung back. But presently the pistol was found sticking in a pool of gore. This put a new face on the matter; and Dr. Wolf himself showed the qualities of a commander. He sent down word to his sentinels in the yard to he prepared for any attempt on Alfred’s part, however desperate: and he sent a verbal message to a stately gentleman who was sitting anxious in lodgings over the way, after bribing high ad low, giving out money like water to secure the recapture, and so escape what he called his unnatural son’s vengeance; for he knew him to be by nature bold and vindictive like himself. After these preliminaries, Doctor Wolf headed his remaining forces — to wit, two keepers, and two policemen, and thundered at the bedroom door, and summoned Alfred to surrender.
Now among the spectators who watched and listened with bated breath, was one to whom this scene had an interest of its own. Mr. Hurd, disconcerted by Alfred’s sudden reappearance, and the lovers’ reconciliation, had hung about the entry very miserable; for he was sincerely attached to Julia. But, while he was in this stupor, came the posse to recapture Alfred, and he heard them say so. Then the shots were fired within, then Wolf and his men got in, and Mr. Hurd, who was now at the door, got in with them to protect Julia, and see this dangerous and inconvenient character disposed of. He was looking demurely on at a safish distance, when his late triumphant rival was summoned to surrender.
No reply.
Dr. Wolf coaxed.
No reply.
Dr. Wolf told him he had police as well as keepers, and resistance would be idle.
No reply.
Dr. Wolf ordered his men to break in the door.
After some little delay, one of the keepers applied a chisel, while a policeman held his truncheon ready to defend the operator. The lock gave way. But the door could not open for furniture.
After some further delay they took it off its hinges, and the room stood revealed.
To their surprise no rush was made at them. The maniac was not even in sight.
“He is down upon his luck,” whispered one of the new keepers; “we shall find him crouched somewhere.” They looked under the bed. He was not there. They opened a cupboard; three or four dresses hung from wooden pegs; they searched the gowns most minutely, but found no maniac hid in their ample folds. Presently some soot was observed lying in the grate; and it was inferred he had gone up the chimney.
On inspection the opening appeared almost too narrow. Then Dr. Wolf questioned his sentinels in the yard. “Have you been there all the time?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Seen nothing?”
“No, sir. And our eyes have never been off the window and the heads.”
Here was a mystery; and not a clue to its solution. The window was open; but five-and-twenty feet above the paved yard; had he leaped down he must have been dashed to pieces.
Many tongues began to go at once; in the midst of which Edward burst in, and found the two dead men of contemporary history consisted of a dead dog and a stunned man, who, having a head like a bullet, was now come to himself and vowing vengeance. He found Julia very pale, supported and consoled by Mr. Hurd. He was congratulating her on her escape from a dangerous maniac.
She rose and tottered away from him to her brother and clung to him. He said what he could to encourage her, then deposited her in an arm-chair and went upstairs; he soon satisfied himself Alfred was not in the house. On this he requested Dr. Wolf and his men to leave the premises. The doctor demurred. Edward insisted, and challenged him to show a magistrate’s warrant for entering a private house. The doctor was obliged to own he had none. Edward then told the policemen they were engaged in an illegal act; the police had no authority to take part in these captures. Now the police knew that very well; but, being handsomely bribed, they had presumed, and not for the first time, upon that ignorance of law which is deemed an essential part of a private citizen’s accomplishments in modern days. In a word, by temper and firmness, and a smattering of law gathered from the omniscient ’Tiser, Edward cleared his castle of the lawless crew. But they paraded the street, and watched the yard till dusk, when its proprietor ran rusty and turned them out.
Julia sat between Edward and Mr. Hurd, with her head thrown back and her eyes closed; and received in silence their congratulations on her escape. She was thinking of his. When they had quite done, she opened her eyes and said, “Send for Dr. Sampson. Nobody else knows anything. Oh pray, pray, pray send for Dr. Sampson.”
Mr. Hurd said he would go for Dr. Sampson. She thanked him warmly.
Then she crept away to her bedroom, and locked herself in, and sat on the hearthrug, and thought, and thought, and recalled every word and tone of her Alfred; comparing things old and new.
Dr. Sampson was a few miles out of town, visiting a patient. It was nine o’clock in the evening when he got Julia’s note; but he came on to Pembroke Street at once. Dr. Wolf and his men had retired; leaving a sentinel in the street, on the bare chance of Alfred returning. Dr. Sampson found brother and sister sitting sadly, but lovingly together. Julia rose upon his entrance. “Oh, Doctor Sampson! Now is he — what they say he is?”
“How can I tell, till I see ‘m?” objected the doctor.
“But you know they call people mad who are nothing of the kind; for you said so.”
Sampson readily assented to this. “Why it was but last year a surjin came to me with one Jackson, a tailor, and said, ‘Just sign a certificate for this man: his wife’s mad.’ ‘Let me see her,’ sid I. ‘What for,’ sis he, ‘when her own husband applies.’ ‘Excuse me,’ sis I, ‘I’m not a bat, I’m Saampson.’ I went to see her; she was nairvous and excited. ‘Oh, I know what you come about,’ said she. ‘But you are mistaken.’ I questioned her kindly, and she told me her husband was a great trile t’ her nairves. I refused to sign. On that disn’t the tailor drown himself in the canal nixt day? He was the madman; and she knew it all the time, but wouldn’t tell us; and that’s a woman all over.”
“Well then,” said Julia hopefully.
“Ay, but,” said Sampson, “these cases are exceptions after all; and the chances are nine to one he’s mad. Daun’t ye remember that was one of the solutions offered ye, whem he levanted on his wedding-day?” He added satirically, “And couldn’t all that logic keep in a little reason?”
This cynical speech struck Julia to the heart; she could not bear it, and retired to her own room.
Then Dr. Sampson saw his mistake, and said to Edward, with some concern, “Maircy on us, she is not in love with Him still, is she? I thought that young parson was the man now.”
Edward shook his head: but declined to go much into a topic so delicate as his sister’s affections: and just then an alarming letter was delivered from Mrs. Dodd. She wrote to the effect that David, favoured by the wind, had run into Portsmouth harbour before their eyes, and had disappeared, hidden, it was feared, by one of those low publicans, who provide bad ships with sailors, receiving a commission. On this an earnest conversation between Sampson and Edward.
It was interrupted in its turn.
Julia burst suddenly into the room, pale and violently excited, clasping her hands and crying, “He is there. His voice is like a child’s. Oh, Help me! He is hurt. He is dying.”