Dr. Williamson was a rising young practitioner at Roxham, and what is
more, a gentleman and a doctor of real ability.
On the night that Lady Bellamy took the poison he sat up very late,
till the dawn, in fact, working up his books of reference with a view
to making himself as much the master as possible of the symptoms and
most approved treatment in such cases of insanity as appeared to
resemble Angela Caresfoot’s. He had been called in to see her by Mr.
Fraser, and had come away intensely interested from a medical point of
view, and very much puzzled.
At length he shut up his books with a sigh—for, like most books, though
full of generalities, they did not tell him much—and went to bed.
Before he had been asleep very long, however, the surgery bell was
violently rung, and, having dressed himself with the rapidity
characteristic of doctors and schoolboys, he descended to find a
frightened footman waiting outside, from whom he gathered that
something dreadful had happened to Lady Bellamy, who had been found
lying apparently dead upon the floor of her drawing-room. Providing
himself with some powerful restoratives and a portable electric battery
he drove rapidly over to Rewtham House.
Here he found the patient laid upon a sofa in the room where she had
been found, and surrounded by a mob of terrified and half-dressed
servants. At first he thought life was quite extinct, but presently he
fancied that he could detect a faint tremor of the heart. He applied
the most powerful of his restoratives and administered a sharp current
from the battery, and, after a considerable time, was rewarded by
seeing the patient open her eyes—but only to shut them again
immediately. Directing his assistant to continue the treatment, he
tried to elicit some information from the servants as to what had
happened, but all he could gather was that the maid had received a
message not to sit up. This made him suspicious of an attempt at
suicide, and just then his eye fell upon a wineglass that lay upon the
floor, broken at the shank. He took it up; in the bowl there was still
a drop or two of liquid. He smelt it, then dipped his finger in and
tasted it, with the result that his tongue was burnt and became rough
and numb. Then his suspicions were confirmed.
Presently Lady Bellamy opened her eyes again, and this time there was
intelligence in them. She gazed round her with a wondering air. Next
she spoke.
“Where am I?”
“In your own drawing-room, Lady Bellamy. Be quiet now, you will be
better presently.”
She tried first to move her head, then her arm, then her lower limbs,
but they would not stir. By this time her faculties were wide awake.
“Are you the doctor?” she said.
“Yes, Lady Bellamy.”
“Then tell me why cannot I move my arms.”
He lifted her hand; it fell again like a lump of lead—and Dr.
Williamson looked very grave. Then he applied a current of electricity.
“Do you feel that?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Why cannot I move? Do not trifle with me, tell me quick.”
Dr. Williamson was a young man, and had not quite conquered
nervousness. In his confusion, he muttered something about “paralysis.”
“How is it that I am not dead?”
“I have brought you back to life, but pray do not talk.”
“You fool, why could you not let me die? You mean that you have brought
my mind to life, and left my body dead. I feel now that I am quite
paralysed.”
He could not answer her, what she said was only too true, and his look
told her so. She gazed steadily at him for a moment as he bent over
her, and realized all the horrors of her position, and for the first
time in her life her proud spirit absolutely gave way. For a few
seconds she was silent, and then, without any change coming over the
expression of her features—for the wild gaze with which she had faced
eternity was for ever frozen there—she broke out into a succession of
the most heart-rending shrieks that it had ever been his lot to listen
to. At last she stopped exhausted.
“Kill me!” she whispered, hoarsely, “kill me!”
It was a dreadful scene.
As the doctors afterwards concluded, rightly or wrongly, a very curious
thing had happened to Lady Bellamy. Either the poison she had taken—and
they were never able to discover what its exact nature was, nor would
she enlighten them—had grown less deadly during all the years that she
had kept it, or she had partially defeated her object by taking an
overdose, or, as seemed more probable, there was some acid in the wine
in which it had been mixed that had had the strange effect of rendering
it to a certain degree innocuous. Its result, however, was, as she
guessed, to render her a hopeless paralytic for life.
At length the patient sank into the coma of exhaustion, and Dr.
Williamson was able to leave her in the care of a brother practitioner
whom he had sent for, and in that of his assistant. Sir John had been
sent for, but had not arrived. It was then eleven o’clock, and at one
the doctor was summoned as a witness to attend the inquest on George
Caresfoot. He had, therefore, two hours at his disposal, and these he
determined to utilise by driving round to see Angela, who was still
lying at Mr. Fraser’s vicarage.
Mr. Fraser heard him coming, and met him in the little drive. He
briefly told him what he had just seen, and what, in his opinion, Lady
Bellamy’s fate must be—one of living death. The clergyman’s remark was
characteristic.
“And yet,” he said, “there are people in the world who say that there
is no God.”
“How is Mrs. Caresfoot?” asked the doctor.
“She had a dreadful fit of raving this morning, and we had to tie her
down in bed. She is quieter now, poor dear. There, listen!”
At that moment, through the open window of the bedroom, they heard a
sweet though untrained voice beginning to sing. It was Angela’s, and
she was singing snatches of an old-fashioned sailor-song, one of
several which Arthur had taught her:
“Fare ye well, and adieu to all you Spanish ladies,
Fare ye well, and adieu to ye, ladies of Spain,
For we’ve received orders to return to Old England,
But we hope in a short time to see you again.
* * *
“We hove our ship to with the wind at sou’west, my boys;
We hove our ship to for to strike soundings clear;
It was forty-five fathom and a grey sandy bottom;
Then we filled our main topsail, and up channel did steer.
* * *
“The signal was made for the grand fleet to anchor,
All in the Downs that night for to meet;
So cast off your shank-painter, let go your cat’s-topper,
Hawl up your clew-garnets, let fly tack and sheet.”
Without waiting to hear any more, they went up the stairs and entered
the bedroom. The first person they saw was Pigott, who had been sent
for to nurse Angela, standing by the side of the bed, and a trained
nurse at a little table at the foot mixing some medicine. On the bed
itself lay Angela, shorn of all her beautiful hair, her face flushed as
with fever, except where a blue weal bore witness to the blow from her
husband’s cruel whip, her head thrown back, and a strange light in her
wild eyes. She was tied down in the bed, with a broad horse-girth
stretched across her breast, but she had wrenched one arm free, and
with it was beating time to her song on the bed-clothes. She caught
sight of Mr. Fraser at once, and seemed to recognize him, for she
stopped her singing and laughed.
“That’s a pretty old song, isn’t it?” she said. “Somebody taught it me
—who was it? Somebody—a long while ago. But I know another—I know
another. You’ll like it; you are a clergyman, you know.” And she began
again:
“Says the parson one day as I cursed a Jew,
Now do you not know that that is a sin?
Of you sailors I fear there are but a few
That St. Peter to heaven will ever let in.
“Says I, Mr. Parson, to tell you my mind,
Few sailors to knock were ever yet seen;
Those who travel by land may steer against wind
But we shape a course for Fiddler’s Green.”
Suddenly she stopped, and her mind wandered off to the scene of two
days previous with Arthur by the lake, and she began to quote the words
wrung from the bitterness of his heart.
“‘You miserable woman, do you know what you are? Shame upon you! Were
you not married yesterday?’ It is quite true, Arthur—oh, yes, quite
true! Say what you like of me, Arthur—I deserve it all; but oh! Arthur,
I love you so. Don’t be hard upon me—I love you so, dear! Kill me if
you like, dear, but don’t talk to me so. I shall go mad—I shall go
mad!” and she broke into a flood of weeping.
“Poor dear, she has been going on like that, off and on, all night. It
clean broke my heart to see it, and that’s the holy truth,” and Pigott
looked very much as though she were going to cry herself.
By this time Angela had ceased weeping, and was brooding sullenly, with
her face buried in the pillow.
“There is absolutely nothing to be done,” said the doctor. “We can only
trust to her fine constitution and youth to pull her through. She has
received a series of dreadful mental shocks, and it is very doubtful if
she will ever get over them. It is a pity to think that such a splendid
creature may become permanently insane, is it not? You must be very
careful, Pigott, that she does not do herself an injury; she is just in
the state that she may throw herself out of the window or cut her
throat. And now I must be going; I will call in again to-night.”
Mr. Fraser accompanied him down to the gate, where he had left his
trap. Before they got out of the front door, Angela had roused herself
again, and they could hear her beginning to quote Homer, and then
breaking out into snatches of her sailor-songs.
“‘High aloft amongst the rigging
Sings the loud exulting gale.’
“That’s like me. I sing too,” and then followed peal upon peal of mad
laughter.
“A very sad case! She has a poor chance, I fear.”
Mr. Fraser was too much affected to answer him.