Ashgate Asylum was a great gray accumulation of stone, standing at the
head of a wide avenue of beech trees on a chalky ridge of the Chiltern
Hills. Here in a long ward lay Mrs. Raeburn, fantasies riding day and
night through the darkness of her mind.
Jenny and May used to go once a fortnight to visit her sad seclusion. In
a way it was a fruitless errand of piety, for she never recognized her
daughters, staring at them from viewless eyes. Nobody else in the family
made the slow, dreary journey through the raw spring weather. To be sure
every fortnight Charlie intended to go; but something always cropped up
to prevent him, and as he was unable to realize the need for instancy,
he finally made up his mind to postpone any visit to the early summer,
when, as he optimistically announced, it would no doubt be time to fetch
his wife home completely cured.
Jenny and May used to be met at the railway station by the Asylum
brougham, which would bear them at a jogging pace up the straight
melancholy avenue and set them down by the main entrance beside which
hung the huge bell-chain whose clangor seemed to wake a multitude of
unclean spirits. Often, as they walked nervously over the parquet of the
lobby ample as a cloister, and past a succession of cheerful
fire-places, Jenny would fancy she heard distant screams, horrid cries,
traveling down the echoing corridors that branched off at every few
paces. The nurse who was directing them would talk away pleasantly
without apparent concern, without seeming to notice those patients
allowed a measure of liberty. Jenny and May, however, could hardly
refrain from shrieking out in terror as they shivered by these furtive,
crouching shapes whose gaze was concentrated on things not seen by them.
In the long ward at whose extreme end their mother's bed was situated,
these alternations of embarrassment and fear became even more acute.
Nearly all the occupants of the beds had shaved heads which gave them,
especially the gray-haired women, a very ghastly appearance. Many of
them would mutter audible comments on the two girls as they passed
along, comparing them extravagantly to angels or to long-lost friends
and relatives. Some would whimper in the terrible imagination that Jenny
and May had arrived to hurt them. The girls were glad when the battery
of mad eyes was passed and they could stand beside their mother's bed.
"Here are your daughters come all this long way to see you, Mrs.
Raeburn," the nurse would announce, and "Well, mother," or "How are you
now, mother?" they would shyly inquire.
Mrs. Raeburn could not recognize them, but would regard them from
wide-open eyes that betrayed neither friendliness nor dislike.
"Won't you say you're glad to see them?" the nurse would ask.
Then sometimes Mrs. Raeburn would bury herself in the bedclothes to lie
motionless until they had gone, or sometimes she would count on her
fingers mysterious sums and ghostly numerals comprehended in the dim
mid-region where her soul sojourned. If Jenny or May looked up in
embarrassment, they would see all around them reasonless heads, some
smiling and bobbing and beckoning, some grimacing horribly, and every
one, save the listless head they loved best, occupied with mad
speculations upon the identity of the two girls. After every visit, as
hopelessly they were leaving the ward, the nurse would say:
"I expect your mother will be better next time you come and able to talk
a bit."
They would be shown into a stuffy little parlor while the brougham was
being brought round, a stuffy little room smelling of plum-cake and
sherry. In the window hung a cage containing an old green paroquet that
all the time swore softly to itself and seemed in the company of the mad
to have lost its own clear bird's intelligence. Then back they would
drive along the straight, wet avenue in a sound of twilight gales, back
to the rain-soaked, dreary little station in whose silent waiting-room
they would sit, crying softly to themselves, until the Marylebone train
came in.
These visits continued for six weeks, and then, on the fourth visit,
just as April had starred the Chilterns with primroses, the nurse
whispered while they were walking through the ward's distraught glances:
"I think your mother will know you to-day."
"Why?" Jenny whispered back.
"I think she will, somehow."
Up the ward they went with hearts beating expectantly, while the voices
of the mad folk chattered on either side. "Look at her golden hair."
"That's St. Michael. Holy Michael, pray for us." One young woman with
pallid, tear-washed face was moaning: "Why can't I be dead, oh, why
can't I be dead?" And an old woman, gray as an ash tree, was muttering
very quickly to herself: "Oh, God help me; O, dear Lord help me!" on and
on without a pause in the gibbering reiteration. Some of the patients
waved and bobbed as usual, mopping and mowing and imparting wild secrets
from the wild land in which they lived, and others scowled and shook
their twisted fists. This time, indeed, their mother did look different,
as if from the unknown haunted valleys in which her soul was imprisoned
she had gained some mountain peak with a view of home.
"How are you, mother?" Jenny asked.
Mrs. Raeburn stared at her perplexed but not indifferent. Nor did she
try to hide herself as usual. Suddenly she spoke in a voice that to her
daughters seemed like the voice of a ghost.
"Is that little May?"
May's ivory cheeks were flushed with nervous excitement as, by an effort
of brave will, she drew near to the mad mother's couch.
"Yes, it is little May," said Mrs. Raeburn, fondling her affectionately.
"Poor little back. Poor little thing. What a dreadful misfortune. My
fault, all my fault. I shouldn't have bothered about cleaning up so
much, not being so far gone as I was. Poor little May. I'm very ill--my
head is hurting dreadfully."
Suddenly over the face of the tortured woman came a wonderful change, a
relief not mortal by its radiance. She sank back on her pillow in a
vision of consolation. Jenny leaned over her. "Mother," she whispered,
"don't you know me? It's Jenny! Jenny!" she cried in agony of longing to
be recognized.
"Jenny," repeated her mother, as if trying to make the name fit in with
some existing fact of knowledge. "Jenny?" she murmured more faintly.
"No, not Jenny, Cupid."
"What's she mean?" whispered May.
"She's thinking of the ballet. It was last time she saw me on the
stage."
"Cupid," Mrs. Raeburn went on. "Yes, it's Cupid. And Cupid means love.
Love! God bless all good people. It's a fine day. Yes, it is a fine day.
I'm very fond of this window, Carrie; I think it's such a cheerful view.
Look at those lovely clouds. What a way you can see--right beyond the
'Angel' to the country. Those aunts are coming again. Tut, tut. What do
_they_ want to come here for? They sha'n't have her, they sha'n't have
my Jenny. Jenny!" cried Mrs. Raeburn, recognizing at last her best-loved
daughter. "I meant you to be so sweet and handsome, my Jenny! Oh, be
good, my pretty one, my dainty one. I wish you'd see about that knob,
Charlie. You _never_ remember to get a new one."
Then, though her eyes were rapturous and gay again, her mind wandered
further afield in broken sentences.
"I think you'd better kiss her good-bye," the nurse said.
Softly each daughter kissed that mother who would always remain the
truest, dearest figure in their lives.
Downstairs in the stuffy little parlor, Dr. Weever interviewed them.
"Whoever allowed you two girls to come here?" he asked sharply. "You've
no business to visit such a place. You're too young."
"Will our mother get better?" Jenny asked.
"Your poor mother is dying and you should be glad, because she suffers
great pain all the time." His voice was harsh, but, nevertheless, full
of tenderness.
"Will she die soon?" Jenny whispered. May was sobbing to herself.
"Very soon."
"Then I'd better tell my father to come at once?"
"Certainly, if he wants to see his wife alive."
Jenny did not go to the Orient that night, and when her father came in,
she told him how near it was to the end.
"What, dying?" said Charlie, staggered by a thought which had never
entered his mind. "Dying? Go on, don't make a game of serious things
like death."
"She is dying. And the doctor said if you wanted to see her alive, you
must go at once."
"I'll go to-night," said Charlie, feeling helplessly for his best hat.
Just then came a double-knock at the door.
"That means she's dead already," said Jenny in a dull monotone.