A Mummer's Wife Part 51

At last the door was opened, and a man walked into the room, tripping in so doing over a piece of the broken mirror. It was the doctor, and accustomed as he was to betray surprise at nothing, he could not repress a look of horror on catching sight of the scene around him.

The apartment was almost dismantled; chairs lay backless about the floor amid china shepherdesses and toreadors; pictures were thrown over the sofa, and a huge pile of wax fruit--apples and purple grapes--was partially reflected in a large piece of mirror that had fallen across the hearthrug.

'Come, help me to hold her,' said d.i.c.k, raising his blood-stained face.

With a quick movement the doctor took possession of Kate's arms. 'Give me a sheet from the next room; I'll soon make her fast.'

The threat of being tied had its effect. Kate became quieter, and after some trouble they succeeded in carrying her into the next room and laying her on the bed. There she rolled convulsively, beating the pillows with her arms. The landlady stationed herself at the door to give notice of any further manifestation of fury, whilst d.i.c.k explained the circ.u.mstances of the case to the doctor.

After a short consultation, he agreed to sign an order declaring that in his opinion Mrs. Lennox was a dangerous lunatic.

'Will that be enough,' said d.i.c.k, 'to place her in an asylum?'

'No, you'll have to get the opinion of another doctor.'

The possibility of being able to rid himself of her was to him like the sudden dawning of a new life, and d.i.c.k rushed off, bleeding, haggard, wild-looking as he was, to seek for another doctor who would concur in the judgment of the first, asking himself if it were possible to see Kate in her present position, and say conscientiously that she was a person who could be safely trusted with her liberty? And to his great joy this view was taken by the second authority consulted, and having placed his wife under lock and key, d.i.c.k lay down to rest a happier man than he had been for many a day. The position in his mind was, of course, the means he should adopt to place her in the asylum. Force was not to be thought of; persuasion must be first tried. So far he was decided, but as to the arguments he should advance to induce her to give up her liberty he knew nothing, nor did he attempt to formulate any scheme, and when he entered the bedroom next morning he relied more on the hope of finding her repentant, and appealing to and working on her feelings of remorse than anything else. 'The whole thing,' as he put it, 'depended upon the humour he should find her in.'

And he found her with stains of blood still upon her face, amid the broken furniture, and she asked calmly but with intense emotion:

'd.i.c.k, did he say I was mad?'

'Well, dear, I don't know that he said you were mad except when you were the worse for drink, but he said--'

'That I might become mad,' she interposed, 'if I don't abstain from drink.

Did he say that?'

'Well, it was something like that, Kate. You know I only just escaped with my life.'

'Only just escaped with your life, d.i.c.k! Oh, if I'd killed you, if I'd killed you! If I'd seen you lying dead at my feet!' and unable to think further she fell on her knees and reached out her arms to him. But he did not take her to his bosom, and she sobbed till, touched to the heart, he strove to console her with kind words, never forgetting, however, to introduce a hint that she was not responsible for her actions.

'Then I'm really downright mad?' said Kate, raising her tear-stained face from her arms. 'Did the doctor say so?'

This was by far too direct a question for d.i.c.k to answer; it were better to equivocate.

'Well, my dear--mad? He didn't say that you were always mad, but he said you were liable to fits, and that if you didn't take care those fits would grow upon you, and you would become--'

Then he hesitated as he always did before a direct statement.

'But what did he say I must do to get well?'

'He advised that you should go to a home where you would not be able to get hold of any liquor and would be looked after'

'You mean a madhouse. You wouldn't put me in a madhouse, d.i.c.k?'

'I wouldn't put you anywhere where you didn't like to go; but he said nothing about a madhouse.'

'What did he say, then?'

'He spoke merely of one of those houses which are under medical supervision, and where anyone can go and live for a time; a kind of hospital, you know.'

The argument was continued for an hour or more. Kate wept and protested against being locked up as a mad woman; while he, conscious of the strong hold he had over her, reminded her in a thousand ways of the danger she ran of awakening one morning to find herself a murderess. Yet it is difficult to persuade anyone voluntarily to enter a lunatic asylum, no matter how irrefutable the reasons advanced may be, and it was not until d.i.c.k on one side skilfully threatened her with separation, and tempted her on the other with the hope of being cured of her vice and living with him happily ever afterwards, that she consented to enter Dr. ----'s private asylum, Craven Street, Bloomsbury. But even then the battle was not won, for when he suggested going off there at once, he very nearly brought another fit of pa.s.sion down on his head. It was only the extreme la.s.situde and debility produced from the excesses of last night that saved him.

'Oh, d.i.c.k, dear! if you only knew how I love you! I would give my last drop of blood to save you from harm.'

'I know you would, dear; it's the fault of that confounded drink,' he answered, his heart tense with the hope of being rid of her. Then the packing began. Kate sat disconsolate on the sofa, and watched d.i.c.k folding up her dresses and petticoats. It seemed to her that everything had ended, and wearily she collected the pearls which had been scattered in last night's skirmishing. Some had been trodden on, others were lost, and only about half the original number could be found, and shaken with nervousness and la.s.situde, Kate cried and wrung her hands. d.i.c.k sat next her, kind, huge, and indifferent, even as the world itself.

'But you'll come and see me? You promise me that you'll come--that you'll come very often.'

'Yes, dear, I'll come two or three times a week; but I hope that you'll be well soon--very soon.'

XXVIII

The hope d.i.c.k expressed that his wife would soon be well enough to return home was, of course, untrue, his hope being that she would never cross the doors of the house in Bloomsbury whither he was taking her. The empty bed awaiting him was so great a relief that he fell on his knees before it and prayed that the doctors might judge her to be insane, unsafe to be at large. To wake up in the morning alone in his bed, and to be free to go forth to his business without question seemed to him like Heaven. But the pleasures of Heaven last for eternity, and d.i.c.k's delight lasted but for two days. Two days after Kate had gone into the asylum a letter came from one of the doctors saying that Mrs. Lennox was not insane, and would have to be discharged.

d.i.c.k sank into a chair and lay there almost stunned, plunged in despair that was like a thick fog, and it did not lift until the door opened and Kate stood before him again.

He raised his head and looked at her stupidly, and interpreting his vacant face, she said:

'd.i.c.k, you're sorry to have me back again.'

'Sorry, Kate? Well, if things were different I shouldn't be sorry. But you see the blow you struck me with the poker very nearly did for me; I haven't been the same man since.'

'Well,' she said, 'I must go back to the asylum or the home, whatever you call it, and tell them that I am mad.'

'There's no use in doing that, Kate, they wouldn't believe you. Here is the letter I've just received; read it.'

'But, d.i.c.k, there must be some way out of this dreadful trouble, and yet there doesn't seem to be any. Try to think, dear, try to think. Can you think of anything, dear? I don't think I shall give way again. If I only had something to do; it's because I'm always alone; because I love you; because I'm jealous of that woman.'

'But, Kate, if I stop here with you all day we shall starve. I must go to business.'

'Ah, business! Business! If I could go to business too. The days when we used to rehea.r.s.e went merrily enough.'

'You were the best Clairette I ever saw,' d.i.c.k answered; 'better than Paola Mariee, and I ought to know, for I rehea.r.s.ed you both.'

'I shall never play Clairette again,' Kate said sadly. 'I've lost my figure and the part requires a waist.'

'You might get your waist again,' d.i.c.k said, and the words seemed to him extraordinarily silly, but he had to say something.

'If I could only get to work again,' she muttered to herself, and then turning to d.i.c.k--

'd.i.c.k, if I could get to work again; any part would do; it doesn't matter how small, just to give me something to think about, that's all, to keep my mind off it. If the baby had not died I should have had her to look after and that would have done just as well as a part. But I've disgraced you in company; I don't blame you, you couldn't have me in it, and I couldn't bring myself to sing in that opera.'

'Yes, you would only break out again, Kate. Those jealous fits are terrible. You think you could restrain yourself, but you couldn't; and all that would come of a row between you and Mrs. Forest would be that I should lose my job.'