_A Few Minutes in a Madhouse_
_By_ MOLLIE FRANK ELLIS
Doctor Maynard paused midway of the long hospital corridor and waved an
inclusive hand toward its twin rows of iron-barred cells.
“This, Wayne,” he said, “is the Psychopathic Ward. We have some unusual
cases here. Take, for instance, Number Twenty-Seven. I’m sure you will be
interested in Number Twenty-Seven. Step this way.”
[Illustration]
I obeyed with reluctance. I was concerned with Maynard, not his
psychopathic cases. We had not seen each other since our college days,
twenty years before, and I had hoped for a return of our old intimacy
during these few hours together, which chance had thrown in my way.
I had knocked about the world, acquiring the kaleidoscopic knowledge of
life accorded the globe-trotter. Maynard had stayed at home, tinkering
with the mental workings of the human machinery until his name stood for
the accomplishment of amazing things in the realm of psychopathy. Each
had run true to form: Maynard’s passion was to make the wheels go round;
mine to wonder why they went.
“This is Number Twenty-Seven,” Maynard continued, as he stopped before
a cell door. “I’ll let her tell her own story.... Good morning, Mrs.
Howard. How are you this morning?”
At his words, a woman slowly rose from a bench against the far wall of
the cell. Then, abruptly, she made a sudden rush that ended in a frantic
shaking of the iron bars of the cell door where we stood.
“Doctor Maynard! You’re a-goin to let me out, ain’t you? You’re a-goin’
to let me go home an’ rub Jim’s head so’s he can sleep? Jim cain’t sleep
unless I rub his head for him. You know he cain’t, Doctor! I’ve told you
so, often.”
“Yes, yes. You’ve told me often, Mrs. Howard.” Maynard gave me a
significant glance. “But tell me again, please. Maybe I will understand
better this time and let you go.”
The woman strained her gaunt body against the cell door. She seemed in
a torture of anxiety, obsessed by a vital current of emotion in sharp
contrast to the pitiful meagerness of her personality.
She wore a cheap cotton dress; her hair was plain about her sharp face;
and there was written upon her countenance that look of repression, of
negation of all right to exist as an individual, which marks the poorer
type of rural woman.
It seemed for a moment as if she would break into a torrent of words;
then abruptly she fell back, silent, and the heartbreak in her eyes was
succeeded by a slow-growing horror. Yet her tragedy, whatever it might
be, brought with it a certain dignity which she had hitherto lacked. Her
attenuated homeliness forbade distinction, yet when she made pitiful
apology to Maynard, a certain nobility of soul shone from her eyes.
“I’d forgot for a minute, Doctor Maynard, that I’d killed Jim. I’d forgot
that I hated him. I was thinkin’ he was alive and that I loved him like I
used to before the children was killed. I’m a wicked woman—the wickedest
woman that ever lived; but I wouldn’t be in this penitentiary if Jim
could a-slept without havin’ to have his head rubbed.”
Maynard touched my foot at the word “penitentiary.”
“That’s all right, Mrs. Howard.” His voice seemed unnecessarily loud
and cheerful against the thin anguish of her tones. “Tell me about the
children. How were they killed?”
* * * * *
“They was run over, Doctor.”
No words can describe the deadness of her voice, as of a fierce pain
burnt out for lack of fuel for further endurance.
“It was the poultry truck that goes by the farm every morning. Milly was
too little to know not to git in the road, an’ Jacky run out to grab her
back an’ he fell, Jacky did. ’Twasn’t nobody’s fault, Doctor. The man
that drives the truck, he always waved at the children as he passed, and
he most went crazy when it happened. An’ Milly was too little to know
better; an’ Jackie done the best he could—only six years old.
“But afterwards me an’ Jim couldn’t sleep. At first we did, a night or
two, ’cause we was all wore out with the funeral and such; but after
the kinfolks was gone we couldn’t. We could see their faces—Milly’s and
Jacky’s.
“Then, after a while, Jim got so’s he didn’t see ’em so bad, an’ he said
he could ’a’ slept, only for me. He said I ought to be a-gittin’ over it
some; an’ I reckon I should ’a’ been. I tried to, but it didn’t do no
good. Mebby ’twas because they was just the two of ’em an’ both goin’ at
once.
“Jim got right fretful at me. He said a man couldn’t work on a farm an’
not sleep. He was right, too. Jim always was sensible.
“One night after I had worritted him considerable, a-cryin’, I found out
that I could put him to sleep by rubbin’ his forehead, slow an’ firm; an’
so I done it right along every night after that an’ he slept fine. I was
glad, ’cause Jim was a hard worker an’ a good provider; an’ a man can’t
work on a farm an’ not sleep.
“But somehow, after Jim had got to sleep of nights, things seemed a heap
lonesomer. Mebby if we’d lived nearer to the neighbors ’twould ’a’ helped
some. ’Twas so awful still, nights, out where we lived; an’ the moon come
in at the winder so white an’ all....
“Times, just before dawn, I’d git to wonderin’ if it would ’a’ happened
if I’d ’a’ been out in the front yard, a-watchin’ out for the childern,
instead of washin’ back in the kitchen. And I’d git to shakin’ all over
an’ couldn’t stop. Once I waked Jim up and begged him to talk to me; but
he said it wouldn’t help none for two of us to be losin’ our sleep, so I
never done it any more. Jim always was sensible.
“At last I got so the work ’round the house dragged on me until I was
afraid I couldn’t git things done. I told Jim about it and he was sorry.
But he said a woman’s work didn’t matter so much—it could be let go—but a
man had to make the livin’.
“Even with the work and all, I never wanted night to come. I’d git all
scared when it come on dusk. Jim didn’t like it. He said it wasn’t no
way to welcome a man home after a hard day’s work; an’ it wasn’t. I done
my best, but somehow I couldn’t laugh much or be lovin’; so Jim took to
drivin’ to town after supper was over. He hadn’t never done that before
the children was killed.
“Some times he’d stay real late. Me not bein’ used to bein’ left alone
made it worse, too. Sometimes I’d git so tired waitin’ up for him I’d
feel like I could go to sleep right then. But of course I couldn’t,
account of havin’ to rub his head. You see, he’d got to dependin’ on it,
an’, as he said, a man had to have his sleep or he couldn’t work.
“All this time, Doctor, I was lovin’ Jim an’ tryin’ to git along the best
I could. I knowed I’d been lucky to git Jim. He was a good man. He never
took tantrums like Pa. We’d never dared cross Pa at home ’cause he was
excitable-like; an’ finally he went crazy. They would a-took him to the
asylum, I reckon, only he died.
“Mebby I’d ’a’ got so’s I could a-slept after a while, only ’bout this
time it come on to October, when the fall winds begin to blow, an’ the
house would creak of nights—kind of little breakin’ noises like babies
whisperin’.... An’ the shadows of the leaves on our big tree outside
the winder kept twistin’ about on the walls like little hands a-pushin’
against coffin lids, a-tryin’ to git out an’ go back an’ find their
mammy’s breasts.”
* * * * *
She stopped abruptly and stood in tense stillness—as if she were back
in that hushed house of sorrow, with its sharp noises and its tiny,
mother-seeking shadow-hands upon the walls—listening to the silence, the
unendurable silence, of the waning hours.
Doctor Maynard made a restless movement. With a start, the woman came
back to realities and turned to us once more.
“I didn’t git to hatin’ Jim, Doctor, until after I took to usin’ them
pills they gave Ma when she was on her deathbed. She died, leavin’ a
bottle of ’em on the kitchen shelf—morphine, they call ’em. One night,
when I just couldn’t stand it no longer, I thought of them an’ I got one
an’ it helped a lot.”
She paused, apparently musing upon how much it had helped. Then she went
on:
“’Twas along about then that I got to hatin’ Jim, lookin’ at him sleepin’
so hard, his face all red an’ his mouth open. ’Twasn’t that so much,
though, Doctor, ’cause I always thought Jim was nice-lookin’ even though
he was coarse complected. But he got to havin’ restless spells, wakin’ up
along of cock-crowin’ time, ’bout when I’d got my pill an’ had kind of
quit shakin’ over the shadows an’ things. Then I’d have to rouse up to
’em again an’ rub him to sleep once more. I got to wonderin’ if he’d die
right off, without it’s hurtin’ him none, if I’d press down hard on them
soft spots in his temples. Seem like havin’ to do it any more would be
more’n I could bear—”
She stopped again as if re-living her torture; perhaps slipping once more
like a white wraith from bedroom to kitchen shelf and back again, to
stand looking down upon her husband’s sprawled figure, battling against
the up-surge of desire to crush out the life beneath her hands and be
forever free from her hideous task!
“... I didn’t kill Jim, though, Doctor, until them pills give out. I
reckon mebby I wouldn’t never have done it if they hadn’t give out. But
after that ... sometime after that I killed Jim. I pressed down—down....”
Maynard waited until he was sure she had finished; then he spoke in a
commanding tone.
“_Mrs. Howard!_”
Startled, she stared at us as if seeing us for the first time. She
grasped the cell door and shook it in a frenzy of anxiety.
“Doctor Maynard! You’re a-goin’ to let me out, ain’t you? You’re a-goin’
to let me go home an’ rub Jim’s head for him so’s he can sleep? Jim
cain’t sleep unless I rub his head! I’ve told you so often, Doctor....”
* * * * *
Maynard drew me away; but that pleading voice followed us down the length
of the corridor, thin, anguished—