Chapter VIII: Corridor No. 4

Across the garden, and through an iron gate which he unlocked, and which itself formed part of a railing shutting off one wing of the house from the rest and from the grounds, George Wainwright walked; then up a short flight of steps, topped by a heavy door, which he also unlocked with a master key which he took from his pocket, and which closed behind him with a heavy clang; through a short stone passage, in a room leading off which, immediately inside the door--a bright, snug, cheerful little room, with a handful of fire alight in the grate, and the gas burning brightly over the mantelpiece, and a tea-tray and appurtenances brightly shining on the table--was a young woman--handsome, black-eyed, and rosy-cheeked, tall, strongly built, and neatly dressed in a close-fitting dark-gray gown--who started up at the sound of the approaching footsteps, and presented herself at the door.

"You on duty, Miss Marshall?" said George, with a smile and a bow.

"Yes, Mr. George, it's my night-turn again; comes round quicker than one thinks for, or than one hopes for, indeed! Going to see your sweetheart as usual, Mr. George?"

"Yes; I don't often miss; never, indeed, when I'm at home."

"Ah, if all other men were as thoughtful and as kind and as true to their sweethearts as you are to yours, there would be less need for these sort of houses in the world, Mr. George," said the young woman, with a somewhat scornful toss of her head.

"Come, come, Miss Marshall," cried George, laughingly, "you've no occasion to talk in that manner, I'm sure. Besides, I might retort, and say that if all women were as kind and as loving and as pleased to see their sweethearts as mine is to see me, if they remained true to them for as many years as mine has remained true to me, if they were as patient and as quiet--yes, and I think as silent--as mine is, they would have a greater chance of retaining men's affections."

"Poor dear Madame!" said Miss Marshall. "Ah, you don't see many like her!"

"I never saw one," said George. "But she will be keeping awake on the chance of my coming to say goodnight to her."

And with another smile and bow he passed on.

First down another and a longer stone passage, the doors leading from either side of which were wide open, showing bathrooms, kitchens, and other domestic penetralia; then up a flight of stairs to a landing covered with cocoa-nut matting, and giving on to a long corridor, on the stone-coloured wall of which was painted in large black letters, "Corridor No. 4." Closed doors here--doors of dormitories, where the inmates were shut in for the night: some tossing on their dream-haunted pillows; some haply--God knows--enjoying a mental rest as soft and sweet as the slumber which enchained them, borne away to the bygone days, when they thought and felt and knew, ere the brain was distraught, and the memory snapped, and the mind either warped or void. All was perfectly quiet as George passed along, stopping at length before a door which was closed but not locked, and at which he tapped lightly. Lightly, but with a sound which was quickly heard, for a soft voice cried immediately "_Entrez!_" and he opened the door, and went in.

It was a pretty little room, considerably too lofty for its breadth--a long narrow slip of a place, which some people with pleasant development of mortuary tendencies might have rendered unpleasantly like a grave. But it was tricked out with a pretty wall-paper, all rosebuds and green leaves; some good photographs of foreign scenery were framed on the walls; a wooden Swiss peasant with a clock-face let into the centre of his waistcoat, and its works ticking and running and whirring away in the centre of his anatomy, stood on the mantelpiece; the fireplace was filled up with bright-gilded shavings; and the bed, instead of being the mere ordinary iron stump bedstead to be found in other dormitories of the house, was gay with white hangings, and blue bows tastefully disposed here and there.

On it lay a woman, who had risen on her elbow at George's knock, and who remained in the same attitude, awaiting his approach. A woman of small stature evidently, and delicately made, with small well-cut features and small bones. Her hair, as snow-white as the cap under which it was looped up, contrasted oddly with the deep ruddy bronze of her complexion; such bronze as, travelling south, you first begin to notice among the Lyonnaises, and afterwards find so common along the shores of the Mediterranean. But Time, though he had changed the colour of her locks--and to be so very white now, they must necessarily have been raven black before--had failed in dimming the lustre of her marvellous eyes; they remained large, and dark, and appealing, as they must have been in earliest youth. Full of liquid love and kindliness were they too, as they beamed a welcome to George, a welcome seconded by her outstretched hand, which rested on his head as he bent down beside her.

"You are late, George," she said, with the faintest foreign accent; "but I had not given you up."

"No, _maman_, you know better than that; you know that whenever I am at home I never think of going to bed without saying goodnight to _maman_. But I am late, dear; I have had friends sitting with me, and they have only just gone."

"Friends, eh? Ah, that must be odd to see friends. And you took them for a _promenade_ on the Lac, and you---- _Ah, bah! quelle enfantillage!_ your friends were men, of course. Some of those who sing so sweetly sometimes? No! but still men? Ah, no one else has ever come here."

"No one else, _maman?_"

"See, George, come closer. _She_ has not come?"

"No, _maman_," said the young man, rising, and regarding her with a look of genuine affection and pity. "No, _maman_, not yet."

"Ah, not yet--always not yet," she said, letting her elbow relax, and falling back in the bed--"always not yet!" And she covered her face with her hands, removing them after a few minutes to say: "But she will come? she will come?"

"Oh yes, dear, let us trust so," said George, quietly.

She looked at him, first earnestly, then wistfully, for several minutes; then she dried the tears which, unseen by him, almost unknown to her, had been trickling down her face, and said in a trembling voice: "Goodnight, my boy."

"Goodnight, _maman_. God bless you!"

And he bent over her, and kissed her forehead.

"_Dieu me bénisse!_" she said, with a half-smile. "In time, George, when _she_ comes back! Meantime, _Dieu te bénisse_, my son!"

He bent his head again, and she encircled it with her arms, brushed each of his cheeks with her lips, and kissed his hand; then murmuring, "Goodnight," sank back on her pillow.

George took up his lamp, and crept silently from the room, and down the corridor, down the stairs, and towards the outer door. As he passed Miss Marshall's room he looked in, and saw her, bright, brisk, and cheerful, sitting at her needlework, an epitome of neatness and propriety. George could not refrain from stopping in his progress, and saying:

"You don't look much like a 'keeper,' Miss Marshall. I had a friend with me to-night, who laughingly asked me to show him the night-watch of such places as these, of whom he had read in songs and novels. I think he would have been rather astonished if I had brought him across the garden and introduced him to you."

"Oh, they're not much 'count, those kind of trash, I think, Mr. George," said Miss Marshall, who was eminently practical. "I read about 'em often enough when I was a nursery-governess, and before I came into the profession. I daresay he expected to see a man with big whiskers, with a sword and a brace of pistols in his belt, and perhaps two big dogs following him up and down the passages! At least, I know that used to be my idea. You found Madame Vaughan all well and quiet and comfortable, Mr. George? And left her so, no doubt?"

"Oh yes. She was just the same as usual, poor dear."

"Oh, poor dear, indeed! If they were all like her, one need not grumble about one's life here. There never was such a sweet creature. I'm sure if one-half of the sane women, the sensible creatures who expect one to possess all the cardinal virtues and to look after four of their brats for sixteen pounds a-year, were anything like as nice, or as sensible, or as sane, for the matter of that, as Madame Vaughan, the world would be a much nicer place to live in. She expected you, I suppose, sir?"

George Wainwright knew perfectly that Miss Marshall was, as the phrase is, "making conversation;" that she cared little about the patient whose state she was discussing; cared probably less about him. But he knew also that in the discharge of her duty she had to sit up all night, until relieved by one of the day-nurses at six o'clock in the morning; that she naturally enough grasped at any chance of making a portion, however small, of this time pass more pleasantly, with somebody to look at and somebody's voice to listen to. And she was a pretty girl and a good girl, and he was not particularly tired and was particularly good-natured; so he thought he would stop and chat with her for a few minutes.

"Oh yes, she expected me," he said; "so I should have been horribly sorry if I had neglected to go to her. One must be selfish indeed to deny anyone so much pleasure when it can be afforded by merely stepping across the garden."

"Did she speak of the usual subject, sir?"

"The child? Oh, yes; asked if anyone had come, as usual; and when I answered her, felt sure that her child would come speedily."

"I suppose there's no foundation for that idea of hers?"

"That the child will come, or, indeed, so far as we know, that she ever had a child, is, I imagine, the merest hallucination. At all events, from the number of years she has been here, her child, if she ever had one, must be a tolerably well-grown young lady, and not likely to be recognisable by, or to recognise her, poor thing!"

"Yes, indeed, Mr. George; and it's odd that of all our ladies, with the exception of poor Mrs. Stoneycroft, who, I imagine, is just kept here out of the Doctor's kindness and charity, Madame is the only one who never has any friends come to see her."

"She has outlived all her friends; that is to say, she has outlived their recollection of her. Nothing so easily forgotten as the trace of people we once knew, but who can no longer be of use to us, or administer to our vanity, our pleasure, or our amusement. I was at a cemetery the other day, and saw there an enormous and magnificent tombstone which a man had ordered to be erected over his wife; but before the order had been executed the man had married again, declined to pay for his extravagance in mortuary sculpture, and contented himself with a simple headstone. And the gardener told me that it is very seldom that the floral graves are kept up beyond the first twelve months. So it is not likely that in this, which, to such poor creatures as Madame Vaughan, is not much better than a living tomb, the occupants should be held in any long remembrance."

"I'm sure it's very kind of the Doctor to take such care of these poor creatures, Mr. George; more especially when he's not paid for it."

"That is not the case with Madame Vaughan. I think--in fact, I'm sure--she was one of the patients of my father's predecessor, and was made over to him on the transfer of the business; but though she has no friends to come and see her, the sum for her maintenance here is regularly discharged by a firm of solicitors who have money in trust for the purpose, and by whom it has been paid from the first."

"And is there nothing known of her history, Mr. George; who were her friends, or where she came from?"

"Nothing now. Dr. Bulph, I suppose, had some sort of information; but he was an odd man, and so long as his half-yearly bills were paid, did not trouble himself much further, I fancy."

"Lord, what a life!" said Miss Marshall, casting a sidelong glance at the little looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and smoothing her hair. "And it will end here, I suppose? The Doctor does not think she will ever be cured, Mr. George?"

"No, indeed!" said George, shaking his head. "And if she were, what would become of her? She has been here for nearly twenty years, and the outer world would be as strange and as impossible to her as it was to the released prisoner of the Bastille, who prayed to be taken back to his dungeon."

"Ah well, I should pray to be taken to my grave," said the practical Miss Marshall, "if I thought no one cared for me----"

"Ah, now you're talking of an impossibility, Miss Marshall," said George, rising. "If ever I have a necessity to expose the absurdity of that saying which advances the necessity for 'beauty sleep,' I shall bring you forward as my example; for you're never in bed by midnight, and are often up all night; and yet I should like to see anyone who could rival you in briskness or freshness. Goodnight, Miss Marshall."

"Goodnight, Mr. George."

As he rose, shook hands, and taking up his lamp made his way across the garden, the nurse looked after him with a pleased expression, and said to herself:

"What a nice young man that is!--so pleasant and kind! Nice-looking too, though a trifle old-fashioned and heavy; not like--ah, well, never mind. But much too good to mope away his life in this wretched old place, anyhow."

And when George reached his rooms he smiled to himself, and said:

"Well, if that little talk, and those little compliments, have the result of making Miss Marshall show any extra amount of kindness to my poor _maman_, my time will not have been ill bestowed."

George Wainwright was tolerably correct in all he had said regarding Madame Vaughan, though he had but an imperfect knowledge of her history. At the time when her mental malady first rendered it necessary that she should be placed under restraint, the private lunatic asylums of England were in a very different condition from what they are now. They were for the most part held by low-born ignorant men, who derived their entire livelihood from the sums of money paid for the maintenance of the unfortunate wretches confided to their charge, and whose gains were consequently greater in proportion to the manner in which they ignored or refused the requirements of their inmates. A person calling himself a physician, and perhaps in possession of some purchased degree, hired at a small stipend and non-resident, looked in occasionally, asked a few questions, and signed certificates destined to hoodwink official eyes, which in those days never saw too clearly at the best of times. But the staff of keepers, male and female, was always numerous and efficient. Those were the merry days of the iron collar and the broad leather bastinado, of the gag and the cold bath, of the irons and the whipping-post. They did not care much about what the Lunacy Commissioners did, or wrote, or exacted, in those days, and each man did what he thought best for himself. The date of the Commissioners' visits, which then were few and far between, were accurately known long beforehand; the "medical attendant" was on the spot; the patients, such as were visible, were tricked up into a proper state of cleanliness and order; and the others were duly hidden away until the authorities had departed. The licensing was a farce, only to be exceeded in absurdity by the other regulations; and villany, blackguardism, brutality, and chicanery reigned supreme.

For two years after Madame Vaughan was first received into the asylum--God help us!--as it was called, the outer world was mercifully a blank to her. She arrived in a settled state of stupor, in which she remained, cowering in a corner of the room which she shared with other afflicted creatures, but taking no heed of them, of the antics which they played, of the yells and shrieks which they uttered, of the fantastic illusions of which they were the victims, of the punishment which their conduct brought upon them. Her face covered by her hands, her poor body ever rocking to and fro, there she remained for ever in the one spot until nightfall, when she crept to the miserable couch allotted to her, and curling herself up as an animal in its slumber, was unheard, almost unseen, until the next day. The wretched food which they gave her, coarse in quality and meagre in quantity, she ate in silence; in silence she bore the spoken ribaldry, and the practical jokes which in the first few weeks after her admission the guardians of the establishment, and indeed the great proprietor himself, amused themselves by heaping upon her; so that in a little time she was found incapable of administering to their amusement, and was suffered to remain unmolested.

At the end of the time mentioned, a change took place in the condition of the patient under the following circumstances. One of the nurses had had her married sister and niece to visit her; and after tea, by way of a cheerful amusement, the visitors were conducted through the female ward. The child, a little girl of five or six years old, frightened out of her life, hung back as she entered the gloomy room, where women in every stage of mania, some fierce and shrieking, some silent and moody, were collected. But her aunt, the nurse, laughed at the child's fears; and the mother, who through the hospitality of their entertainer had, after the clearing away of the tea-equipage, been provided with a beverage which both cheered and inebriated, bade the girl not to be a fool; and on her still hanging back and evincing an intention of bursting into tears, administered to her a severe thump on the back, which had the effect of causing the little one to break forth at once into a howl.

From the first instant of the child's entrance into the room, Madame Vaughan had roused herself from her usual attitude. The sound of the child's pattering feet seemed to act on her with electrical influence. She raised her head from out her hands; she sat up erect, bright, observant. The corner in which she sat was dark, and no one was in the habit of taking any notice of her. So she sat, watching the shrinking child. She heard the mocking laugh with which the nurse sneered at the little one's terror, she heard the harsh tones in which the mother chid the child, and saw the blow which followed on the words. Then she made two springs forward, and the next minute had the woman on the ground, and was grappling at her throat. The attendants sprang upon her, released the woman from her grasp, and led her shrieking to her cell.

"My child, my child! why did she strike my child?" were the words which she screamed forth; almost the first which those in the asylum had ever heard her utter; so, at least, the nurse told the proprietor, who, with other assistants, male as well as female, was speedily on the spot.

"She used to sit as quiet as quiet, never opening her mouth, as you know very well, sir," said the woman, "and was sittin' just as usual, so far as I know, when my sister here, as I was showing round, fetched her little gal a smack on the head because she wouldn't come on; and then Vaughan springs at her like a wild-beast, and wanted to tear the life out of her, she did, a murderin' wretch!"

"Had she ever said anything about a child before?" asked the proprietor.

"Never said nothing about anybody, and certingly nothing about a child," replied the nurse.

"And it was because she saw this child struck that she burst out, and she's hollerin' about the child now--is that it?"

"Jest so, sir," replied the nurse, looking at a mark of teeth on her hand, and shaking her head viciously in the direction in which the patient had been led away.

"That's it, Agar," said the proprietor; "I thought we should get at it some day. Couldn't get anything out of the cove I first saw, and the lawyers were as tight as wax. 'You'll get your money,' they says. 'We're responsible for that,' they says, 'and that ought to be enough for you.' They wouldn't let on, any of 'em, what it was that had upset her at first; but I knew it would come out sooner or later, and it's come out now, though. She's gone off her head grievin' after a kid, and no two ways about it."

"Ah!" said Mr. Agar, who was a man of few words; "shouldn't wonder. Question is, what's to be done with her now? Mustn't be allowed to kick up these wagaries, you know; we shall have the neighbours complainin' again. Screamed and yelled and bit and fisted away like a good un, she did. We ain't had such a rumpus since the Tiger's time."

"She must be taught manners," said the proprietor, significantly. "Tell your missus to look after her. This woman," indicating the nurse with his elbow, "ain't any good when it comes to a rough and tumble, and I'm doubtful if Vaughan won't give us some trouble yet."

So Madame Vaughan was delivered over to the tender mercies of Mrs. Agar, and underwent some of the tortures which she had seen inflicted upon others. She was punished cruelly for her outbreak; but that done, there was an end of it. The proprietor was wrong in his surmise that she would give them further trouble. She lapsed back into her old silent state, cowering in her old corner, rocking to and fro after her old fashion; and thus she remained, when the proprietor, having made sufficient money, and having had several hints that certain malpractices of his, if further indulged in, would probably bring him to the Old Bailey, handed over his business to Dr. Bulph.

It was during Dr. Bulph's time that the poor lady had a severe bodily illness, during which she was sedulously attended by Dr. Bulph himself--a clever, hard man of the world, not unkind, but probably prompted in his attention to his patient by the feeling that it would be unwise to let a regularly-paid income of three hundred pounds a-year slip through his fingers if a little trouble on his part could save it. When she became convalescent, her mental condition seemed to have altered. Instead of being dull and moping, she was bright and restless, ever asking about her child, who, as it seemed to her poor distraught fancy, had been with her just before her illness. Dr. Bulph had had some idea, that when her bodily ailment left her, there was a chance that her mind might have become at last clearer; but he shook his head when he saw these new symptoms. Her child, her child! what had been done with it? Why had they taken it away? Why was it kept from her? That was the constant, incessant burden of her cry, sometimes asked almost calmly, sometimes with piteous wailings or fierce denunciations of their cruelty. Nothing satisfied her, nothing appeased her. Madame Vaughan's case was evidently a very bad one indeed: and when Dr. Bulph took Dr. Wainwright, who was about purchasing his business, the round of his establishment, he pointed Madame Vaughan out to him, and said: "That will be a noisy one, I'm afraid, until the end."

The doctor was wrong in his prophecy. Dr. Wainwright, with as much skill and far more _savoir faire_ than his predecessor, adopted very different tactics. Although since the departure of the first proprietor of the asylum no cruelty had been inflicted on the patients, all of them who were at all intractable or difficult to govern had been kept in restraint. The first thing that Dr. Wainwright did, when he took possession, was to give them an amount of liberty which they had not previously enjoyed. Poor Madame Vaughan, falling into one of her shrieking-fits of "My child! where's my child?" was surprised on looking up to see the tall figure of the new doctor in the open doorway of her room; and her screams died away as she looked at his handsome smiling face, and heard his voice say in soft tones: "Where is she? Come, let us look for her." Then he took her gently by the arm and led her into the garden, round which they walked together. The new sense of liberty, the air blowing on her cheeks, the fresh smell of the flowers--these unaccustomed delights had a wonderful influence on the poor sufferer. For a time, at least, she forgot the main burden of her misery in the delight she experienced in dwelling on them; and thenceforward, though she recurred constantly, daily indeed, to her one theme of sorrow, it was never with the poignant bitterness of former times. She grew attached to the doctor, whose quiet interested manner suited her wonderfully, and formed a singular attachment for George, then a young man just entering on his office duties, looking forward to his coming with a sweet motherly tenderness, which he seemed to reciprocate in a most filial manner.

From that time forward Madame Vaughan's lot, as far as her melancholy condition permitted, was a happy one. No acute return of mania ever supervened; she remained in a state of harmless quiet; and save for her invariable expectation of the arrival of her child, a hope which she never failed to indulge in, it would have been impossible to think that the quiet, well-dressed, white-haired lady, who tended the flowers, and settled the ornaments of her little room, or paced regularly up and down the garden, sometimes alone, sometimes conversing with Dr. Wainwright, or leaning reliantly on George's arm, was the inmate of a lunatic asylum, and had gone through such tempestuous scenes as fall to her lot in the early days of her residence there. The "noisy one" had indeed come to be the gentlest member of that strange household; and one of the greatest annoyances which Dr. Wainwright ever experienced was when one of the members of the lawyers' firm who paid the annual stipend for the poor lady's care happened to call with the cheque, and on the doctor's wishing him to witness the comparative happy state to which the patient had arrived, said shortly that "he had enough to do in his business with people who were only sane enough to prevent their being shut up, and that he didn't want to have anything to do with those who were a stage further advanced in the disease."

On the morning after the events recorded in the beginning of this chapter, George Wainwright found a small pencil-note placed on the huge can of cold water which was brought to him for his bath. Opening it, he read:

"DEAR MR. GEORGE,--Madame hopes she shall see you before you go into town this morning. She has something special to say to you. I have told her I was sure you would not fail her.--Yours, L. MARSHALL."

In compliance with this wish, George presented himself immediately after breakfast at Madame Vaughan's room. He found her ready dressed, and anxiously expecting him.

"Why, _maman_," he commenced, "already up and doing! Your bright activity is an actual reproach to a sluggard like myself. But I heard you wanted me, and I'm here."

"Would you mind taking a turn in the garden, George?" she asked. "The morning looks very fine, and I've something to say to you that I think should be said in the sunlight and among the flowers."

"Something pleasant, then, I argue from that," he said. "And you know I'd do a great deal more than give up a few minutes from my dry dull old office to be of any pleasant use to you; besides, work is slack just now--it always is at this time of the year--and I can easily be spared. Come, let us walk."

She threw a shawl over her head and shoulders with, as George could not help remarking, all the innate grace and ease of a Frenchwoman, took his arm, and descended the stairs into the garden. It was indeed a lovely morning, just at that time when Summer makes her last determined fight before gracefully surrendering to Autumn. The turf was yet green and soft, though somewhat faded here and there by the sun's long-continued power, and the air was mild; but the paths were already flecked with leaves, and ruddy tints were visible on the extreme outer foliage of the trees. When they arrived in the grounds, they found several of the patients already there; some chattering to each other, others walking moodily apart. Many of them seemed to treat Madame Vaughan with marked deference, and exhibited that deference in immediately clearing out of the way, and leaving her and her companion unmolested in their walk.

After a few turns up and down, George said:

"Well, _maman_, and the special business?"

"Ah yes, George, I had forgotten," said Madame, pressing her hand to her head. "I dreamed about _her_ last night, George--about my child."

"Not an uncommon dream for you, surely, _maman?_" said George kindly. "What you are always thinking of by day will most probably not desert your mind at night."

"No, not at all uncommon; but I have never dreamed of her as I dreamed last night. George, she is coming; you will see her very soon."

"I! But you, _maman_--you will see her too?"

"I am not so sure of that, George. She was all dim and indistinct in my dream. I think I shall be dead, George; but you will see her; I shall have the comfort of knowing that, and--and of knowing that you will love her, George."

"Why, _maman_, of course I shall love her, for your sake."

"No, George; for her own. You will love her for her own sake, and you will marry her, my son."

"_Maman, maman!_" said George, taking her hand, and looking up into her face with a loving smile. "But how do you know that she will consent? You forget I am an old bachelor, and----"

"You will marry her, George," said Madame, her face clouding over at once. "And yet--and yet she is but an infant, poor child!"

"There, there, _maman_ darling----"

"No, no; don't attempt to get out of it. And yet I saw it all--you and she at St. Peter's after Tenebrae, and I--and----"

"Now this is a question for my father to be consulted on," said George. "He is the only man who could help us in this difficulty, and he's away in the country, you know. We must wait till he comes back;" and he drew her quietly towards the house.

"Poor dear _maman!_" said George Wainwright to himself, as he stood waiting for the omnibus which was to bear him into town. "What a strange idea! Not so far wrong, though! A phantom evolved from a diseased brain, a nothing. A creature without existence is the only wife I'm ever likely to have! I only wish young Paul was as heart-free, and as likely to remain so."