Hard Cash

CHAPTER XXXII

AT two o'clock an attendant stole on tiptoe to the strong-room, unlocked the door, and peeped cautiously in. Seeing the dangerous maniac quiet, he entered with a plate of lukewarm beef and potatoes, and told him bluntly to eat. The crushed one said he could not eat. “You must,” said the man. “Eat!” said Alfred; “of what do you think I am made! Pray put it down and listen to me. I'll give you a hundred pounds to let me out of this place; two hundred; three.”

A coarse laugh greeted this proposal. “You might as well have made it a thousand when you was about it.”

“So I will,” said Alfred eagerly, “and thank you on my knees besides. Ah, I see you don't believe I have money. I give you my honour I have ten thousand pounds: it was settled on me by my grandfather, and I came of age last week.”

“Oh, that's like enough,” said the man carelessly. “Well, you are green. Do you think them as sent you here will let you spend your money? No, your money is theirs now.”

And he sat down with the plate on his knee and began to cut the meat in small pieces; while his careless words entered Alfred's heart, and gave him such a glimpse of sinister motives and dark acts to come as set him shuddering.

“Come none o' that,” said the man, suspecting this shudder. He thought it was the prologue to some desperate act; for all a chained madman does is read upon this plan: his terror passes for rage, his very sobs for snarls.

“Oh, be honest with me,” said Alfred imploringly; “do you think it is to steal my money the wretch has stolen my liberty?”

“What wretch?”

“My father.”

“I know nothing about it,” said the man sullenly, “in course there's mostly money behind, when young gents like you come to be took care of. But you musn't go thinking of that, or you'll excite yourself again. Come you eat your vittles like a Christian, and no more about it.”

“Leave it, that is a good fellow; and then I'll try and eat a little by-and-bye. But my grief is great—oh Julia! Julia! what shall I do? And I am not used to eat at this time. Will you, my good fellow?”

“Well, I will, now you behave like a gentleman,” said the man.

Then Alfred coaxed him to take off the handcuffs. He refused, but ended by doing it; and so left him.

Four more leaden hours rolled by, and then this same attendant (his name was Brown) brought him a cup of tea. It was welcome to his parched throat; he drank it, and ate a mouthful of the meat to please the man, and even asked for some more tea.

At eight four keepers came into his room, undressed him, compelled him to make his toilette, &c., before them, which put him to shame—being a gentleman—almost as much as it would a woman. They then hobbled him, and fastened his ankles to the bed, and put his hands into muffles, but did not confine his body; because they had lost a lucrative lodger only a month ago, throttled at night in a strait-waistcoat.

Alfred lay in this plight, and compared with anguish unspeakable his joyful anticipations of this night with the strange and cruel reality. “My wedding night! my wedding night!” he cried aloud, and burst into a passion of grief.

By-and-bye he consoled himself a little with the hope that he could not long be incarcerated as a madman, being sane; and his good wit told him his only chance was calmness. He would go to sleep and recover composure to bear his wrongs with dignity, and quietly baffle his enemies.

Just as he was dropping off' he felt something crawl over his face. Instinctively he made a violent motion to put his hands up. Both hands were confined; he could not move them. He bounded, he flung, he writhed. His little persecutors were quiet a moment, but the next they began again. In vain he rolled and writhed, and shuddered with loathing inexpressible. They crawled, they smelt, they bit.

Many a poor soul these little wretches had distracted with the very sleeplessness the madhouse professed to cure, not create, in conjunction with the opiates, the confinement and the gloom of Silverton House, they had driven many a feeble mind across the line that divides the weak and nervous from the unsound.

When he found there was no help, Alfred clenched his teeth and bore it:—“Bite on, ye little wretches,” he said “bite on, and divert my mind from deeper stings than yours—if you can.”

And they did; a little.

Thus passed the night in mental agony, and bodily irritation and disgust. At daybreak the feasters on his flesh retired, and utterly worn out and exhausted, he sank into a deep sleep.

At half-past seven the head keeper and three more came in, and made him dress before them. They handcuffed him, and took him down to breakfast in the noisy ward; set him down on a little bench by the wall like a naughty boy, and ordered a dangerous maniac to feed him.

The dangerous maniac obeyed, and went and sat beside Alfred with a basin of thick gruel and a great wooden spoon. He shovelled the gruel down his charge's throat mighty superciliously from the very first; and presently, falling into some favourite and absorbing train of thought, he fixed his eye on vacancy, and handed the spoonfuls over his left shoulder with such rapidity and recklessness that it was more like sowing than feeding. Alfred cried out “Quarter! I can't eat so fast as that, old fellow.”

Something in his tone struck the maniac; he looked at Alfred full, Alfred looked at him in return, and smiled kindly but sadly.

“Hallo!” cried the maniac.

“What's up now?” said a keeper fiercely.

“Why this man is sane. As sane as I am.”

At this there was a horse laugh.

“Saner,” persisted the maniac; “for I am a little queer at times, you know.”

“And no mistake, Jemmy. Now what makes you think he is sane?”

“Looked me full in the face, and smiled at me.”

“Oh, that is your test, is it?”

“Yes, it is. You try it on any of those mad beggars there and see if they can stand it.”

“Who invented gunpowder?” said one of the insulted persons, looking as sly and malicious as a magpie going to steal.

Jemmy exploded directly: “I did, ye rascal, ye liar, ye rogue, ye Baconian!” and going higher, and higher in this strain, was very soon handcuffed with Alfred's handcuffs, and seated on Alfred's bench and tied to two rings in the wall. On this his martial ardour went down to zero: “Here is treatment, sir,” said he piteously to Alfred. “I see you are a gentleman; now look at this. All spite and jealousy because I invented that invaluable substance, which has done so much to prolong human life and alleviate human misery.”

Alfred was now ordered to feed Jemmy; which he did: so quickly were their parts inverted.

Directly after breakfast Alfred demanded to see the proprietor of the asylum.

Answer: Doesn't live here.

The Doctor then.

Oh, he has not come.

This monstrosity irritated Alfred: “Well, then,” said he, “whoever it is that rules this den of thieves, when those two are out of it.”

“I rule in Mr. Baker's absence,” said the head keeper, “and I'll teach you manners, you young blackguard. Handcuff him.”

In five minutes Alfred was handcuffed and flung into a padded room.

“Stay there till you know how to speak to your betters,” said the head keeper.

Alfred walked up and down grinding his teeth with rage for five long hours.

Just before dinner Brown came and took him into a parlour, where Mrs. Archbold was seated writing. Brown retired. The lady finished what she was doing, and kept Alfred standing like a schoolboy going to be lectured. At last she said, “I have sent for you to give you a piece of advice: it is to try and make friends with the attendants.”

“Me make friends with the scoundrels! I thirst for their lives. Oh, madam, I fear I shall kill somebody here.”

“Foolish boy; they are too strong for you. Your worst enemies could wish nothing worse for you than that you should provoke them.” In saying these words she was so much more kind and womanly that Alfred conceived hopes, and burst out, “Oh, madam, you are human then; you seem to pity me; pray give me pen and paper, and let me write to my friends to get me out of this terrible place; do not refuse me.”

Mrs. Archbold resumed her distant manner without apparent effort: she said nothing, but she placed writing materials before him. She then left the room, and locked him in.

He wrote a few hasty ardent words to Julia, telling her how he had been entrapped, but not a word about his sufferings—he was too generous to give her needless pain—and a line to Edward, imploring him to come at once with a lawyer and an honest physician, and liberate him.

Mrs. Archbold returned soon after, and he asked her if she would lend him sealing-wax: “I dare not trust to an envelope in such a place as this,” said he. She lent him sealing-wax.

“But how am I to post it?” said he.

“Easily: there is a box in the house; I will show you.”

She took him and showed him the box: he put his letters into it, and in the ardour of his gratitude kissed her hand. She winced a little and said, “Mind, this is not by my advice; I would never tell my friends I had been in a madhouse; oh, never. I would be calm, make friends with the servants—they are the real masters—and never let a creature know where I had been.”

“Oh, you don't know my Julia,” said Alfred; “she will never desert me, never think the worse of me because I have been entrapped illegally into a madhouse.”

“Illegally, Mr. Hardie! you deceive yourself; Mr. Baker told me the order was signed by a relation, and the certificates by first-rate lunacy doctors.”

“What on earth has that to do with it, madam, when I am as sane as you are?”

“It has everything to do with it. Mr. Baker could be punished for confining a madman in this house without an order and two certificates; but he couldn't for confining a sane person under an order and two certificates.”

Alfred could not believe this, but she convinced him that it was so.

Then he began to fear he should be imprisoned for years: he turned pale, and looked at her so piteously, that to soothe him she told him sane people were never kept in asylums now; they only used to be.

“How can they?” said she. “The London asylums are visited four times a year by the commissioners, and the country asylums six times, twice by the commissioners, and four times by the justices. We shall be inspected this week or next; and then you can speak to the justices: mind and be calm; say it is a mistake; offer testimony; and ask either to be discharged at once or to have a commission of lunacy sit on you. Ten to one your friends will not face public proceedings: but you must begin at the foundation, by making the servants friendly—and by—being calm.” She then fixed her large grey eyes on him and said, “Now if I let you dine with me and the first-class patients, will you pledge me your honour to 'be calm,' and not attempt to escape?” Alfred hesitated at that. Her eye dissected his character all the time. “I promise,” said he at last with a deep sigh. “May I sit by you? There is something so repugnant in the very idea of mad people.”

“Try and remember it is their misfortune, not their crime,” said Mrs. Archbold, just like a matronly sister admonishing a brother from school.

She then whistled in a whisper for Brown, who was lurking about unseen all the time. He emerged and walked about with Alfred, and by-and-bye, looking down from a corridor, they saw Mrs. Archbold driving the second-class women before her to dinner like a flock of animals. Whenever one stopped to look at anything, or try and gossip, the philanthropic Archbold went at her just like a shepherd's dog at a refractory sheep, caught her by the shoulders, and drove her squeaking headlong.

At dinner Alfred was so fortunate as to sit opposite a gentleman, who nodded and grinned at him all dinner with a horrible leer. He could not, however, enjoy this to the full for a little distraction at his elbow: his right hand neighbour kept forking pieces out of his plate and substituting others from his own. There was even a tendency to gristle in the latter. Alfred remonstrated gently at first; the gentleman forbore a minute, then recommenced. Alfred laid a hand very quietly on his wrist and put it back. Mrs. Archbold's quick eye surprised this gesture: “What is the matter there?” said she.

“Oh, nothing serious, madam,” replied Alfred; “only this gentleman does me the honour to prefer the contents of my plate to his own.”

“Mr. Cooper!” said the Archbold sternly.

Cooper, the head keeper, pounced on the offender, seized him roughly by the collar, dragged him from the table, knocking his chair down, and bundled him out of the room with ignominy and fracas, in spite of a remonstrance from Alfred, “Oh, don't be so rough with the poor man.”

Then the novice laid down his knife and fork, and ate no more. “I am grieved at my own ill-nature in complaining of such a trifle,” said he when all was quiet.

The company stared considerably at this remark: it seemed to them a most morbid perversion of sensibility; for the deranged, thin-skinned beyond conception in their own persons, and alive to the shadow of the shade of a wrong, are stoically indifferent to the woes of others.

Though Alfred was quiet as a lamb all day, the attendants returned him to the padded room at night, because he had been there last night. But they only fastened one ankle to the bed-post: so he encountered his Lilliputians on tolerably fair terms—numbers excepted: they swarmed. Unable to sleep, he put out his hand and groped for his clothes. But they were outside the door, according to rule.

Day broke at last: and he took his breakfast quietly with the first-class patients. It consisted of cool tea in small basins instead of cups, and table-spoons instead of tea-spoons; and thick slices of stale bread thinly buttered. A few patients had gruel or porridge instead of tea. After breakfast Alfred sat in the first-class patients' room and counted the minutes and the hours till Edward should come. After dinner he counted the hours till tea-time. Nobody came; and he went to bed in such grief and disappointment as some men live to eighty without ever knowing.

But when two o'clock came next day, and no Edward, and no reply, then the distress of his soul deepened. He implored Mrs. Archbold to tell him what was the cause. She shook her head and said gravely, it was but too common; a man's nearest and dearest were very apt to hold aloof from him the moment he was put into an asylum.

Here an old lady put in her word. “Ah, sir, you must not hope to hear from anybody in this place. Why, I have been two years writing and writing, and can't get a line from my own daughter. To be sure she is a fine lady now: but it was her poor neglected mother that pinched and pinched to give her a good education, and that is how she caught a good husband. But it's my belief the post in our hall isn't a real post: but only a box; and I think it is contrived so as the letters fall down a pipe into that Baker's hands, and so then when the postman comes——” The Archbold bent her bushy brows on this chatty personage. “Be quiet, Mrs. Dent; you are talking nonsense, and exciting yourself: you know you are not to speak on that topic. Take care.”

The poor old woman was shut up like a knife; for the Archbold had a way of addressing her own sex that crushed them. The change was almost comically sudden to the mellow tones in which she addressed Alfred the very next moment, on the very same subject: “Mr. Baker, I believe, sees the letters: and, where our poor patients (with a glance at Dent) write in such a way as to wound and perhaps terrify those who are in reality their best friends, they are not always sent. But I conclude your letters have gone. If you feel you can be calm, why not ask Mr. Baker? He is in the house now; for a wonder.”

Alfred promised to be calm; and she got him an interview with Mr. Baker.

He was a full-blown pawnbroker of Silverton town, whom the legislature, with that keen knowledge of human nature which marks the British senate, permitted, and still permits, to speculate in Insanity, stipulating, however, that the upper servant of all in his asylum should be a doctor; but omitting to provide against the instant dismissal of the said doctor should he go and rob his employer of a lodger—by curing a patient.

As you are not the British legislature, I need not tell you that to this pawnbroker insanity mattered nothing, nor sanity: his trade lay in catching, and keeping, and stinting, as many lodgers, sane or insane, as he could hold.

There are certain formulae in these quiet retreats, which naturally impose upon greenhorns such as Alfred certainly was, and some visiting justices and lunacy commissioners would seem to be. Baker had been a lodging-house keeper for certified people many years, and knew all the formulae: some call them dodges: but these must surely be vulgar minds. Baker worked “the see-saw formula.”

“Letters, young gentleman?” said he: “they are not in my department They go into the surgery, and are passed by the doctor, except those he examines and orders to be detained.”

Alfred demanded the doctor.

“He is gone,” was the reply. (Formula.)

Alfred found it as hard to be calm as some people find it easy to say that word over the wrongs of others.

The next day, but not till the afternoon, he caught the doctor: “My letters! Surely, sir, you have not been so cruel as to intercept them?”

“I intercept no letters,” said the doctor, as if scandalised at the very idea. “I see who writes them, and hand them to Mr. Baker, with now and then a remark. If any are detained, the responsibility rests with him.”

“He says it rests with you.”

“You must have misunderstood him.”

“Not at all, sir. One thing is clear; my letters have been stolen either by him or you; and I will know which.”

The doctor parried with a formula.

“You are excited, Mr. Hardie. Be calm, sir, be calm: or you will be here all the longer.”

All Alfred obtained by this interview was a powerful opiate. The head-keeper brought it him in bed. He declined to take it. The man whistled, and the room filled with keepers.

“Now,” said Cooper, “down with it, or you'll have to be drenched with this cowhorn.”

“You had better take it, sir,” said Brown; “the doctor has ordered it you.”

“The doctor? Well, let me see the doctor about it.”

“He is gone.”

“He never ordered it me,” said Alfred. Then fixing his eyes sternly on Cooper, “You miscreants, you want to poison me. No, I will not take it. Murder! murder!”

Then ensued a struggle, on which I draw a veil: but numbers won the day, with the help of handcuffs and a cowhorn.

Brown went and told Mrs. Archbold, and what Alfred had said.

“Don't be alarmed,” said that strong-minded lady: “it is only one of the old fool's composing draughts. It will spoil the poor boy's sleep for one night, that is all. Go to him the first thing in the morning.”

About midnight Alfred was seized with a violent headache and fever: towards morning he was light-headed, and Brown found him loud and incoherent: only he returned often to an expression Mr. Brown had never heard before—

“Justifiable parricide. Justifiable parricide. Justifiable patricide.”

Most people dislike new phrases. Brown ran to consult Mrs. Archbold about this one. After the delay inseparable from her sex, she came in a morning wrapper; and they found Alfred leaning over the bed and bleeding violently at the nose. They were a good deal alarmed, and tried to stop it: but Alfred was quite sensible now, and told them it was doing him good.

“I can manage to see now,” he said; “a little while ago I was blind with the poison.”

They unstrapped his ankle and made him comfortable, and Mrs. Archbold sent Brown for a cup of strong coffee and a glass of brandy. He tossed them off; and soon after fell into a deep sleep that lasted till tea-time. This sleep the poor doctor ascribed to the sedative effect of his opiate. It was the natural exhaustion consequent on the morbid excitement caused by his cursed opiate.

“Brown,” said Mrs. Archbold, “if Dr. Bailey prescribes again, let me know. He shan't square this patient with his certificates, whilst I am here.”

This was a shrewd, but uncharitable, speech of hers. Dr. Bailey was not such a villain as that.

He was a less depraved, and more dangerous animal: he was a fool.

The farrago he had administered would have done an excited maniac no good, of course, but no great harm. It was dangerous to a sane man: and Alfred to the naked eye was a sane man. But then Bailey had no naked eye left: he had been twenty years an M. D. The certificates of Wycherley and Speers were the green spectacles he wore—very green ones—whenever he looked at Alfred Hardie.

Perhaps in time he will forget those certificates, and, on his spectacles dropping off, he will see Alfred is sane. If he does, he will publish him as one of his most remarkable cures.

Meanwhile the whole treatment of this ill-starred young gentleman gravitated towards insanity. The inner mind was exasperated by barefaced injustice and oppression; above all, by his letters being stopped; for that convinced him both Baker and Bailey, with their see-saw evasions, knew he was sane, and dreaded a visit from honest, understanding men: and the mind's external organ, the brain, which an asylum professes to soothe, was steadily undermined by artificial sleeplessness. A man can't sleep in irons till he is used to them and, when Alfred was relieved of these, his sleep was still driven away by biting insects and barking dogs, two opiates provided in many of these placid Retreats, with a view to the permanence rather than the comfort of the lodgers.

On the eighth day Alfred succeeded at last in an object he had steadily pursued for some time: he caught the two see-saw humbugs together.

“Now,” said he, “you say he intercepts my letters; and he says it is you who do it. Which is the truth?”

They were staggered, and he followed up his advantage: “Look me in the face, gentlemen,” said he. “Can you pretend you do not know I am sane? Ah, you turn your heads away. You can only tell this bare-faced lie behind my back. Do you believe in God, and in a judgment to come? Then, if you cannot release me, at least don't be such scoundrels as to stop my letters, and so swindle me out of a fair trial, an open, public trial.”

The doctor parried with a formula. “Publicity would be the greatest misfortune could befall you. Pray be calm.”

Now, an asylum is a place not entirely exempt from prejudices: and one of them is, that any sort of appeal to God Almighty is a sign or else forerunner of maniacal excitement.

These philosophers forget that by stopping letters, evading public trials, and, in a word, cutting off all appeals to human justice, they compel the patient to turn his despairing eyes, and lift his despairing voice to Him, whose eye alone can ever really penetrate these dark abodes.

However, the patient who appealed to God above a whisper in Silverton Grove House used to get soothed directly. And the tranquillising influences employed were morphia, croton oil, or a blister.

The keeper came to Alfred in his room. “Doctor has ordered a blister.”

“What for? Send for him directly.”

“He is gone.”

This way of ordering torture, and then coolly going, irritated Alfred beyond endurance. Though he knew he should soon be powerless, he showed fight; made his mark as usual on a couple of his zealous attendants; but not having room to work in was soon overpowered, hobbled, and handcuffed: then they cut off his hair, and put a large blister on the top of his head.

The obstinate brute declined to go mad. They began to respect him for this tenacity of purpose: a decent bedroom was allotted him; his portmanteau and bag were brought him, and he was let walk every day on the lawn with a keeper; only there were no ladders left about, and the trap-door was locked, i.e. the iron gate.

On one of these occasions he heard the gatekeeper whistle three times consecutively; his attendant followed suit, and hurried Alfred into the house, which soon rang with treble signals.

“What is it?” inquired Alfred.

“The visiting justices are in sight: go into your room, please.”

“Yes, I'll go,” said Alfred, affecting cheerful compliance, and the man ran off.

The whole house was in a furious bustle. All the hobbles, and chains, and instruments of restraint were hastily collected and bundled out of sight, and clean sheets were being put on many a filthy bed whose occupant had never slept in sheets since he came there, when two justices arrived and were shown into the drawing-room.

During the few minutes they were detained there by Mrs. Archbold, who was mistress of her whole business, quite a new face was put on everything and everybody; ancient cobwebs fell; soap and water explored unwonted territories: the harshest attendants began practising pleasant looks and kind words on the patients, to get into the way of it, so that it might not come too abrupt and startle the patients visibly under the visitors' eyes: something like actors working up a factitious sentiment at the wing for the public display, or like a racehorse's preliminary canter. Alfred's heart beat with joy inexpressible. He had only to keep calm, and this was his last day at Silverton Grove. The first thing he did was to make a careful toilet.

The stinginess of relations, and the greed of madhouse proprietors, make many a patient look ten times madder than he is, by means of dress. Clothes wear out in an asylum, and are not always taken off, though Agriculture has long and justly claimed them for her own. And when it is no longer possible to refuse the Reverend Mad Tom or Mrs. Crazy Jane some new raiment, then consanguineous munificence does not go to Pool or Elise, but oftener to paternal or maternal wardrobes, and even to the ancestral chest, the old oak one, singing:

“Poor things, they are out of the world: what need for them to be in the fashion!” (Formula.)

This arrangement keeps the bump of self-esteem down, especially in women, and so co-operates with many other little arrangements to perpetuate the lodger.

Silverton Grove in particular was supplied with the grotesque in dress from an inexhaustible source. Whenever money was sent Baker to buy a patient a suit, he went from his lunacy shop to his pawnbroker's, dived headlong into unredeemed pledges, dressed his patient as gentlemen are dressed to reside in cherry-trees; and pocketed five hundred per cent. on the double transaction. Now Alfred had already observed that many of the patients looked madder than they were—thanks to short trousers and petticoats, holey gloves, ear-cutting shirt-collars, frilled bosoms, shoes made for and declined by the very infantry: coats short in the waist and long in the sleeves, coalscuttle bonnets, and grand-maternal caps. So he made his toilet with care, and put his best hat on to hide his shaven crown. He then kept his door ajar, and waited for a chance of speaking to the justices. One soon came: a portly old gentleman, with a rubicund face and honest eye, walked slowly along the corridor, looking as wise as he could, cringed on by Cooper and Dr. Bailey; the latter had arrived post haste, and Baker had been sent for. Alfred came out, touched his hat respectfully, and begged a private interview with the magistrate. The old gentleman bowed politely, for Alfred's dress, address, and countenance, left no suspicion of insanity possible in an unprejudiced mind.

But the doctor whispered in his ear, “Take care, sir. Dangerous!”

Now this is one of the most effective of the formulae in a private asylum. How can an inexperienced stranger know for certain that such a statement is a falsehood? And even the just do not love justice—to others—quite so well as they love their own skins. So Squire Tollett very naturally declined a private interview with Alfred; and even drew back a step, and felt uneasy at being so near him. Alfred implored him not to be imposed upon. “An honest man does not whisper,” said he. “Do not let him poison your mind against me; on my honour, I am as sane as you are, and he knows it. Pray, pray use your own eyes and ears, sir, and give yourself a chance of discovering the truth in this stronghold of lies.”

“Don't excite yourself, Mr. Hardie,” put in the doctor parentally. (Formula.)

“Don't you interrupt me, doctor; I am as calm as you are. Calmer; for, see, you are pale at this moment; that is with fear that your wickedness in detaining a sane man here is going to be exposed. Oh, sir,” said he, turning to the justice, “fear no violence from me, not even angry words; my misery is too deep for irritation, or excitement. I am an Oxford man, sir, a prize man, an Ireland scholar. But, unfortunately for me, my mother left me ten thousand pounds, and a heart. I love a lady whose name I will not pollute by mentioning it in this den of thieves. My father is the well-known banker, bankrupt, and cheat, of Barkington. He has wasted his own money, and now covets his neighbour's and his son's. He had me entrapped here on my wedding-day, to get hold of my money, and rob me of her I love. I appeal to you, sir, to discharge me, or, if you have not so much confidence in your own judgment as to do that, then I demand a commission of lunacy, and a public inquiry.”

Dr. Bailey said, “That would be a most undesirable exposure, both to yourself and your friends.” (Formula.)

“It is only the guilty who fear the light, sir,” was the prompt reply.

Mr. Tollett said he thought the patient had a legal right to a commission of lunacy if there was property, and he took note of the application. He then asked Alfred if he had any complaint to make of the food, the beds, or the attendants.

“Sir,” said Alfred, “I leave those complaints to the insane ones: with me the gigantic wrong drives out the petty worries. I cannot feel my stings for my deep wound.”

“Oh, then, you admit you are not treated unkindly here?”

“I admit nothing of the kind, sir. I merely decline to encumber your memory with petty injuries, when you are good enough to inquire into a monstrous one.”

“Now that is very sensible and considerate,” said Mr. Tollett. “I will see you, sir, again before we leave.”

With this promise Alfred was obliged to be content. He retired respectfully, and the justice said, “He seems as sane as I am.” The doctor smiled. The justice observed it, and not aware that this smile was a formula, as much so as a prizefighter's or a ballet-dancer's, began to doubt a little: He reflected a moment, then asked who had signed the certificates.

“Dr. Wycherley for one.”

“Dr. Wycherley? that is a great authority.”

“One of the greatest in the country, sir.”

“Oh, then one would think he must be more or less deranged.”

“Dangerously so at times. But in his lucid intervals you never saw a more quiet gentlemanly creature.” (Formula.)

“How sad!”

“Very. He is my most interesting patient (formula), though terribly violent at times. Would you like to see the medical journal about him?”

“Yes; by-and-bye.”

The inspection then continued: the inspector admired the clean sheets that covered the beds, all of them dirty, some filthy: and asked the more reasonable patients to speak freely and say if they had any complaint to make. This question being, with the usual sagacity of public inspectors, put in the presence of Cooper and the doctor, who stuck to Tollett like wax, the mad people all declared they were very kindly treated. The reason they were so unanimous was this: they knew by experience that, if they told the truth, the justices could not at once remedy their discomforts, whereas the keepers, the very moment the justices left the house, would knock them down, beat them, shake them, strait-jacket them, and starve them: and the doctor, less merciful, would doctor them. So they shook in their shoes, and vowed they were very comfortable in Silverton Grove.

Thus, in later days, certain Commissioners of Lunacy inspecting Accomb House, extracted nothing from Mrs. Turner, but that she was happy and comfortable under the benignant sway of Metcalf the mild—there present. It was only by a miracle the public learned the truth, and miracles are rare.

Meantime, Alfred had a misgiving. The plausible doctor had now Squire Tollett's ear, and Tollett was old, and something about him reminded the Oxonian of a trait his friend Horace had detected in old age:

He knew there was another justice in the house, but he knew also he should not be allowed to get speech with him, if by cunning or force it could be prevented. He kept his door ajar. Presently Nurse Hannah came bustling along with an apronful of things, and let herself into a vacant room hard by. This Hannah was a young woman with a pretty and rather babyish face, diversified by a thick biceps muscle in her arm that a blacksmith need not have blushed for. And I suspect it was this masculine charm, and not her feminine features, that had won her the confidence of Baker and Co., and the respect of his female patients: big or little, excited or not excited, there was not one of them this bicipital baby-face could not pin by the wrists, and twist her helpless into a strong-room, or handcuff her unaided in a moment; and she did it, too, on slight provocation. Nurse Hannah seldom came into Alfred's part of the house; but when she did meet him, she generally gave him a kind look in passing; and he had resolved to speak to her, and try if he could touch her conscience, or move her pity. He saw what she was at, but was too politic to detect her openly and irritate her. He drew back a step, and said softly, “Nurse Hannah! Are you there?”

“Yes, I am here,” said she sharply, and came out of the room hastily, and shut it. “What do you want, sir?”

Alfred clasped his hands together. “If you are a woman, have pity on me.”

She was taken by surprise. “What can I do?” said she in some agitation. “I am only a servant.”

“At least tell me where I can find the Visiting Justice, before the keepers stop me.”

“Hush! Speak lower,” said Hannah. “You have complained to one, haven't you?”

“Yes, but he seems a feeble old fogy. Where is the other? Oh, pray tell me?”

“I mustn't: I mustn't In the noisy ward. There, run.”

And run he did.

Alfred was lucky enough to get safe into the noisy ward without being intercepted. And then he encountered a sunburnt gentleman, under thirty, in a riding-coat, with a hunting-whip in his hand: it was Mr. Vane, a Tory squire and large landholder in the county.

Now, as Alfred entered at one door, Baker himself came in at the other, and they nearly met at Vane. But Alfred saluted him first, and begged respectfully for an interview.

“Certainly, sir,” said Mr. Vane.

“Take care, sir; he is dangerous,” whispered Baker. Instantly Mr. Vane's countenance changed. But this time Alfred overheard the formula, and said quietly: “Don't believe him, sir. I am not dangerous; I am as sane as any man in England. Pray examine me, and judge for yourself.”

“Ah, that is his delusion,” said Baker. “Come, Mr. Hardie, I allow you great liberties, but you abuse them. You really must not monopolise his Worship with your fancies. Consider, sir, you are not the only patient he has to examine.”

Alfred's heart sank: he turned a look of silent agony on Mr. Vane.

Mr. Vane, either touched by that look, or irritated by Baker's pragmatical interference, or perhaps both, looked that person coolly in the face, and said sternly: “Be silent, sir; and let the gentleman speak to me.”

CHAPTER XXXIII

ALFRED thus encouraged told his story with forced calmness, and without a word too much. Indeed, so clear and telling was the narrative, and the logic so close, that incoherent patients one or two stole up and listened with wonder and a certain dreamy complacency; the bulk, however, held aloof apathetic: inextricably wrapped in fictitious Autobiography.

His story told, Alfred offered the Dodds in evidence that the fourteen thousand pounds was no illusion, and referred to his sister and several friends as witnesses to his sanity, and said the letters he wrote were all stopped in the asylum: and why? That no honest man or woman might know where he was.

He ended by convincing Mr. Vane he was a sane and injured man, and his father a dark designing person.

Mr. Vane asked him whether he had any other revelations to make. Alfred replied, “Not on my own account, but for the sake of those afflicted persons who are here for life. Well, the beds want repaving; the vermin thinning; the instruments of torture want abolishing, instead of hiding for an hour or two when you happen to come: what do the patients gain by that? The madmen dare not complain to you, sir, because the last time one did complain to the justices (it was Mr. Petworth), they had no sooner passed through the iron gate, than Cooper made an example of him; felled him with his fist, and walked up and down him on his knees, crying, 'I'll teach you to complain to the justices.' But one or two gentlemanly madmen, who soon found out that I am not one of them, have complained to me that the attendants wash them too much like Hansom cabs, strip them naked, and mop them on the flag-stones, then fling on their clothes without drying them. They say, too, that the meat is tough and often putrid, the bread stale, the butter rancid, the vegetables stinted, since they can't be adulterated. And as for sleep, it is hardly known; for the beds are so short your feet stick out; insects, without a name to ears polite, but highly odoriferous and profoundly carnivorous, bite you all night; and dogs howl eternally outside; and, when exhausted nature defies even these enemies of rest, then the doctor, who seems to be in the pay of Insanity, claps you on a blister by brute force, and so drives away sleep, Insanity's cure, or hocuses you by brute force as he did me, and so steals your sleep, and tries to steal your reason, with his opium, henbane, morphia, and other tremendous brain-stealers. With such a potion, sir, administered by violence, he gave me in one night a bursting fever, headache, loss of sight, and bleeding at the nose; as Mrs. Archbold will tell you. Oh, look into these things, sir, in pity to those whom Heaven has afflicted: to me they are but strokes with a feather. I am a sane man torn from love and happiness, and confined among the mad; discomfort is nothing to me; comfort is nothing; you can do nothing for me but restore me to my dignity as a man, my liberty as a Briton, and the rights as a citizen I have been swindled out of by a fraudulent bankrupt and his tools, two venal doctors, who never saw me but for one five minutes, but came to me ready bribed at a guinea apiece, and so signed away my wits behind my back.”

“Now, Mr. Baker,” said Vane, “what do you say to all this?”

Baker smiled with admirable composure, and replied with crafty moderation, “He is a gentleman, and believes every word he says; but it is all his delusions. Why, to begin, sir, his father has nothing to do with putting him in here; nothing on earth. (Alfred started; then smiled incredulous.) And, in the next place, there are no instruments of restraint here, but two pair of handcuffs and two strait jackets, and these never hardly used; we trust to the padded rooms, you know. And, sir,” said he, getting warm, which instantly affected his pronunciations “if there's a hinsect in the ouse, I'll heat im.”

Delusion is a big word, especially in a mad-house; it overpowers a visitor's understanding. Mr. Vane was staggered. Alfred, whose eager eyes were never off his face, saw this with dismay, and feeling that, if he failed in the simpler matter, he should be sure to fail in establishing his sanity, he said with inward anxiety, though with outward calmness, “Suppose we test these delusions?”

“With all my heart,” said Vane.

Baker's countenance fell.

“Begin with the instruments of restraint. Find me them.”

Baker's countenance brightened up; he had no fear of their being found.

“I will,” said Alfred: “please to follow me.”

Baker grinned with anticipated triumph.

Alfred led the way to a bedroom near his own; and asked Mr. Baker to unlock it. Baker had not the key; no more had Cooper. The latter was sent for it; he returned, saying the key was mislaid.

“That I expected,” said Alfred. “Send for the kitchen poker, sir: I'll soon unlock it.”

“Fetch the kitchen poker,” said Vane.

“Good gracious! sir,” said Cooper; “he only wants that to knock all our brains out. You have no idea of his strength and ferocity.”

“Well lied, Cooper,” said Alfred ironically.

“Fetch me the poker,” said Vane.

Cooper went for it, and came back with the key instead.

The door was opened, and they all entered. Alfred looked under the bed. The rest stood round it.

There was nothing to be seen but a year's dust

Alfred was dumb-foundered, and a cold perspiration began to gather on his brow. He saw at once a false move would be fatal to him.

“Well, sir,” said Vane grimly. “Where are they?”

Alfred caught sight of a small cupboard; he searched it; it was empty. Baker and Cooper grinned at his delusion quietly, but so that Vane might see that formula. Alfred returned to the bed and shook it. Cooper and Baker left off grinning; Alfred's quick eye caught this, and he shook the bed violently, furiously.

“Ah!” said Mr. Vane, “I hear a chink.”

“It is an iron bedstead and old,” suggested Baker.

Alfred tore off the bed-clothes, and then the mattress. Below the latter was a framework, and below the framework a receptacle about six inches deep, five feet long, and three broad, filled with chains, iron belts, wrist-locks, muffles, and screw-locked hobbles, &c.; a regular Inquisition.

If Baker had descended from the Kemble family, instead of rising from nothing, he could not have acted better. “Good Heavens!” cried he, “where do these come from? They must have been left here by the last proprietor.”

Vane replied only by a look of contempt, and ordered Cooper to go and ask Mr. Tollett to come to him.

Alfred improved the interval. “Sir,” said he, “all my delusions, fairly tested, will turn out like this.”

“They shall be tested, sir; I give you my word.”

Mr. Tollett came, and the two justices commenced a genuine scrutiny—their first. They went now upon the true method, in which all these dark places ought to be inspected. They did not believe a word; they suspected everything; they examined patients apart, detected cruelty, filth and vermin under philanthropic phrases and clean linen; and the upshot was they reprimanded Baker and the attendants severely, and told him his licence should never be renewed, unless at their next visit the whole asylum was reformed. They ordered all the iron body-belts, chains, leg-locks, wrist-locks, and muffs, to be put into Mr. Tollett's carriage, and concluded a long inspection by inquiring into Alfred's sanity: at this inquiry they did not allow Baker to be even present, but only Dr. Bailey.

First they read the order; and found it really was not Alfred's father who had put him into the asylum. Then they read the certificates, especially Wycherley's. It accused Alfred of headache, insomnia, nightly visions, a rooted delusion (pecuniary), a sudden aversion to an affectionate father; and at the doctor's last visit, a wild look (formula), great excitement, and threats of violence without any provocation to justify them. This overpowered the worthy squires' understandings to begin. But they proceeded to examine the three books an asylum has to keep by law: the visitor's book, the case book, and the medical journal. All these were kept with the utmost looseness in Silverton House as indeed they are in the very best of these places. However, by combining the scanty notices in the several books, they arrived at this total:

“Admitted April 11. Had a very wild look, and was much excited. Attempted suicide by throwing himself into a tank. Attacked the keepers for rescuing him, with prodigious strength and violence. Refused food.”

And some days after came an entry with his initials instead of his name, which was contrary to law. “A. H. Much excited. Threats. Ordered composing draught.”

And a day or two after: “A. H. Excited. Blasphemous. Ordered blister.”

The first entry, however, was enough. The doctor had but seen real facts through his green spectacles, and lo! “suicide,” “homicide,” and “refusal of food,” three cardinal points of true mania.

Mr. Vane asked Dr. Bailey whether he was better since he came.

“Oh, infinitely better,” said Dr. Bailey. “We hope to cure him in a month or two.”

They then sent for Mrs. Archbold, and had a long talk with her, recommending Alfred to her especial care: and, having acted on his judgment and information in the teeth of those who called him insane, turned tail at a doctor's certificate; distrusted their eyesight at an unsworn affidavit.

Alfred was packing up his things to go away; bright as a lark. Mrs. Archbold came to him, and told him she had orders to give him every comfort; and the justices hoped to liberate him at their next visit.

The poor wretch turned pale. “At their next visit!” he cried, “What, not to-day? When is their next visit?”

Mrs. Archbold hesitated: but at last she said, “Why you know; I told you; they come four times every year.”

The disappointment was too bitter. The contemptible result of all his patience, self-command, and success, was too heart-breaking. He groaned aloud. “And you can come with a smile and tell me that; you cruel woman.” Then he broke down altogether and burst out crying. “You were born without a heart,” he sobbed.

Mrs. Archbold quivered at that. “I wish I had been,” said she, in a strange, soft, moving voice; then, casting an eloquent look of reproach on him, she went away in visible agitation, and left him sobbing. Once out of his sight she rushed into another room, and there, taking no more notice of a gentle madwoman, its occupant, than of the bed or the table, she sank into a chair, and, throwing her head back with womanly abandon, hid her hand upon her bosom that heaved tempestuously.

And soon the tears trickled out of her imperious eyes, and ran unrestrained.

The mind of Edith Archbold corresponded with her powerful frame, and bushy brows. Inside this woman all was vigour: strong passions, strong good sense to check or hide them; strong will to carry them out. And between these mental forces a powerful struggle was raging. She was almost impenetrable to mere personal beauty, and inclined to despise early youth in the other sex; and six months spent with Alfred in a quiet country house would probably have left her reasonably indifferent to him. But the first day she saw him in Silverton House he broke through her guard, and pierced at once to her depths; first he terrified her by darting through the window to escape: and terror is a passion. So is pity; and never in her life had she overflowed with it as when she saw him drawn out of the tank and laid on the grass. If, after all, he was as sane as he looked, that brave high-spirited young creature, who preferred death to the touch of coarse confining hands!

No sooner had he filled her with dismay and pity, than he bounded from the ground before her eyes and fled. She screamed, and hoped he would escape; she could not help it. Next she saw him fighting alone against seven or eight, and with unheard-of prowess almost beating them. She sat at the window panting, with clenched teeth and hands, and wished him to beat, and admired him, wondered at him. He yielded, but not to them: to her. All the compliments she had ever received were tame compared with this one. It thrilled her vanity. He was like the men she had read of, and never seen: the young knights of chivalry. She glowed all over at him, and detecting herself in time was frightened. Her strong good sense warned her to beware of this youth, who was nine years her junior, yet had stirred her to all her depths in an hour; and not to see him nor think of him too much. Accordingly she kept clear of him altogether at first. Pity soon put an end to that; and she protected and advised him, but with a cold and lofty demeanour put on express. What with her kind acts and her cold manner he did not know what to make of her; and often turned puzzled earnest eyes upon her, as much as to say, Are you really my friend or not? Once she forgot herself and smiled so tenderly in answer to these imploring eyes, that his hopes rose very high indeed. He flattered himself she would let him out of the asylum before long. That was all Julia's true lover thought of.

A feeling hidden, and not suppressed, often grows fast in a vigorous nature. Mrs. Archbold's fancy for Alfred was subjected to this dangerous treatment; and it smouldered, and smouldered, till from a penchant it warmed to a fancy, from a fancy to a passion. But penchant, fancy, or passion, she hid it with such cunning and resolution, that neither Alfred nor even those of her own sex saw it; nor did a creature even suspect it, except Nurse Hannah; but her eyes were sharpened by jealousy, for that muscular young virgin was beginning to sigh for him herself, with a gentle timidity that contrasted prettily with her biceps muscle and prowess against her own sex.

Mrs. Archbold had more passion than tenderness, but what woman is not to be surprised and softened? When her young favourite, the greatest fighter she had ever seen, broke down at the end of his gallant effort and began to cry like a girl, her bowels of compassion yearned within her, and she longed to cry with him. She only saved herself from some imprudence by flight, and had her cry alone. After a flow of tears, such a woman is invincible; she treated Alfred at tea-time with remarkable coldness and reserve. This piece of acting led to unlooked-for consequences: it emboldened Cooper, who was raging against Alfred for telling the justices, but had forborne from violence for fear of getting the house into a fresh scrape. He now went to the doctor, and asked for a powerful drastic. Bailey gave him two pills, or rather boluses, containing croton oil—inter alia; for Bailey was one of the farraginous fools of the unscientific science. Armed with this weapon of destruction, Cooper entered Alfred's bedroom at night, and ordered him to take them: he refused. Cooper whistled, and four attendants came. Alfred knew he should soon be powerless. He lost no time, sprang at Cooper, and with his long arm landed a blow that knocked him against the wall, and in this position, where his body could not give, struck him again with his whole soul, and cut his cheek right open. The next minute he was pinned, handcuffed, and in a straitjacket, after crippling one assailant with a kick on the knee.

Cooper, half stunned, and bleeding like a pig, recovered himself now, and burned for revenge. He uttered a frightful oath, and jumped on Alfred as he lay bound and powerless, and gave him a lesson he never forgot.

Every art has its secrets: the attendants in such madhouses as this have been for years possessed of one they are too modest to reveal to justices, commissioners, or the public; the art of breaking a man's ribs, or breast-bone, or both, without bruising him externally. The convicts at Toulon arrive at a similar result by another branch of the art: they stuff the skin of a conger eel with powdered stone; then give the obnoxious person a sly crack with it; and a rib backbone is broken with no contusion to mark the external violence used. But Mr. Cooper and his fellows do their work with the knee-joint: it is round, and leaves no bruise. They subdue the patient by walking up and down him on their knees. If they don't jump on him, as well as promenade him, the man's spirit is often the only thing broken; if they do, the man is apt to be broken bodily as well as mentally. Thus died Mr. Sizer in 1854, and two others quite recently. And how many more God only knows: we can't count the stones at the bottom of a dark well.

Cooper then sprang furiously on Alfred, and went kneeling up and down him. Cooper was a heavy man, and his weight crushed and hurt the victim's legs; but that was a trifle: as often as he kneeled on Alfred's chest, the crushed one's whole framework seemed giving way, and he could scarcely breathe. But Brown drew Cooper back by the collar, saying, “D'ye want to kill him?” And at this moment Mrs. Archbold, who was on the watch, came in with Hannah and another nurse, and the three women at a word from their leader pinned Cooper simultaneously, and, taking him at a disadvantage, handcuffed him in a moment with a strength, sharpness, skill, and determination not to be found in women out of a madhouse—luckily for the newspaper husbands.

The other keepers looked astounded at this masterstroke; but, as no servant had ever affronted Mrs. Archbold without being dismissed directly, they took their cue and said, “We advised him, ma'am, but he would not listen to us.”

“Cooper,” said Mrs. Archbold as soon as she recovered her breath, “you are not fit for your place. To-morrow you go, or I go.”

Cooper, cowed in a moment by the handcuffs, began to whine and say that it was all Alfred's fault.

But Mrs. Archbold was now carried away by two passions instead of one, and they were together too much for prudence. She took a handful of glossy locks out of her bosom and shook them in Cooper's face.

“You monster!” said she; “you should go, for that, if you were my own brother.”

The two young nurses assented loudly, and turned and cackled at Cooper for cutting off such lovely hair.

He shrugged his shoulders at them, and said sulkily to Mrs. Archbold, “Oh, I didn't know. Of course, if you have fallen in love with him, my cake is burnt. 'Tisn't the first lunatic you have taken a fancy to.”

At this brutal speech, all the more intolerable for not being quite false, Mrs. Archbold turned ashy pale, and looked round for a weapon to strike him dead; but found none so handy and so deadly as her tongue.

“It's not the first you have tried to MURDER,” said she. “I know all about that death in Calton Retreat: you kept it dark before the coroner; but it is not too late, I'll open the world's eyes. I was only going to dismiss you, sir: but you have insulted me. I'll hang you in reply.”

Cooper turned very pale and was silent; his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.

But a feeble, unexpected voice issued from the bed and murmured cheerfully, though with some difficulty, a single word—

“Justice!”

At an expression so out of place they all started with surprise.

Alfred went on: “You are putting the saddle on the wrong horse. The fault lies with those villains Baker and Bailey. Cooper is only a servant, you know, and obeys orders.”

“What business had the wretch to cut your hair off?” said Mrs. Archbold, turning on Alfred with flashing eyes. Her blood once up, she was ready to quarrel even with him for taking part against himself.

“Because he was ordered to put on a blister, and hair must come off before a blister can go on,” replied Alfred soberly.

“That is no excuse for him beating you and trying to break your front teeth.”

She didn't mind so much about his side ribs.

“No,” replied Alfred. “But I hit him first: look at the bloke's face. Dear Mrs. Archbold, you are my best friend in this horrid place, and you have beautiful eyes; and, talk of teeth, look at yours! But you haven't much sense of justice, forgive me for saying so. Put the proposition into signs; there is nothing like that for clearing away prejudice. B. and C. have a scrimmage: B begins it, C. gets the worst of it; in comes A. and turns away—C. Is that justice? It is me you ought to turn away; and I wish to Heaven you would: dear Mrs. Archbold, do pray turn me away, and keep the other blackguard.”

At this extraordinary and, if I may be allowed the expression, Alfredian speech, the men first stared, and then laughed; the women smiled, and then were nearer crying than laughing.

And so it was, that justice handcuffed, straitjacketed, blistered, and impartial, sent from its bed of torture a beam through Cooper's tough hide to his inner heart. He hung his head and stepped towards Alfred: “You're what I call a man,” he said. “I don't care a curse whether I stay or go, after what she has said to me. But, come what may, you're a gentleman, and one as can put hisself in a poor man's place. Why, sir, I wasn't always so rough; but I have been twenty years at it; and mad folk they'd wear the patience out of Jove, and the milk of human kindness out of saints and opossums. However, if I was to stay here all my life, instead of going to-morrow, I'd never lift hand to trouble you again, for you taking my part again yourself like that.”

“I'll put that to the test,” said Mrs. Archbold sharply. “Stay—on your probation. Hannah!”

And Baby-face biceps at a look took off his handcuffs; which she had been prominent in putting on.

This extraordinary scene ended in the men being dismissed, and the women remaining and going to work after their kind.

“The bed is too short for one thing,” said Hannah. “Look at his poor feet sticking out and cold as a stone: just feel of them, Jane.”

“No, no; murder!” cried Alfred; “that tickles.”

Hannah ran for a chair, Jane for another pillow. Mrs. Archbold took off his handcuffs, and, passing her hand softly and caressingly over his head, lamented the loss of his poor hair. Amongst them they relieved him of his straitjacket, set up his head, covered his feet, and he slept like a top for want of drastics and opiates, and in spite of some brilliant charges by the Lilliputian cavalry.

After this the attendants never molested Alfred again; nor did the doctor; for Mrs. Archbold got his boluses, and sent them up to a famous analysing chemist in London, and told him she had; and said, “I'll thank you not to prescribe at random for that patient any more.” He took the lady's prescription, coming as it did in a voice quietly grim, and with a momentary but wicked glance shot from under her black brows.

Alfred was all the more miserable at his confinement: his melancholy deepened now there was no fighting to excite him. A handsome bright young face clouded with sadness is very pitiable, and I need not say that both the women who had fallen in love with him had their eyes, or at least the tails of their eyes, for ever on his face. The result varied with the characters of the watchers. That young face, ever sad, made Mrs. Archbold sigh, and long to make him happy under her wing. How it wrought on the purer and more womanly Hannah will be revealed by the incident I have to relate. Alfred was sitting on a bench in the corridor bowed down by grief, and the Archbold lurking in a room hard by, feasting her eyes on him through an aperture in the door caused by the inspection plate being under repair—when an erotic maniac was driven past. She had obtained access—with marvellous cunning—to the men's side; but was now coming back with a flea in her ear, and faster than she went; being handcuffed and propelled by Baby-face biceps. On passing the disconsolate Alfred the latter eyed him coyly, gave her stray sheep a coarse push—as one pushes a thing—and laid a timid hand, gentle as falling down, upon the rougher sex. Contrast sudden and funny.

“Don't be so sad, sir,” she murmured, cooing like the gentlest of doves. “I can't bear to see you look like that.”

Alfred looked up, and met her full with his mournful honest eyes. “Ah, Hannah, how can I be anything but sad, imprisoned here, sane amongst the mad?”

“Well, and so am I, sir; so is Mrs. Archbold herself.”

“Ay, but you have not been entrapped, imprisoned on your wedding-day. I cannot even get a word sent to my Julia, my wife that ought to be. Only think of the affront they have made me put on her I love better, ten times better, than myself. Why, she must have been waiting for me; humiliated perhaps by my absence. What will she think of me? The rogues will tell her a thousand lies: she is very high spirited, Hannah, impetuous like myself, only so gentle and so good. Oh, my angel, my angel; I shall lose you for ever.”

Hannah clasped her hands, with tears in her eyes: “No, no,” she cried; “it is a burning shame to part true lovers like you and her. Hush! speak low. Brown told me you are as well as he is.”

“God bless him for it, then.”

“You have got money, they say; try it on with Brown.”

“I will. Oh you darling. What is the matter?”

For Baby-face was beginning to whimper.

“Oh, nothing, sir; only you are so glad to go; and we shall be sorry to part with you: but you won't care for that—oh! oh! oh!”

“What, do you think I shall forget you and your kindness? Never: I'll square accounts with friends and foes; not one shall be forgotten.”

“Don't offer me any of your money,” sobbed Hannah, “for I wouldn't touch it. Good-bye,” said she: “I shan't have as much as a kiss for it I'll be bound: good-bye,” said she again, and never moved.

“Oh, won't you, though,” cried Alfred gaily. “What is that? and that? and that? Now, what on earth are you crying about? Dry your tears, you dear good-hearted girl: no, I'll dry them for you.”