Ultima Thule (36 page)

Her story was, of course, common property in Gymgurra by now; and it was just an example of people's kindness, when the very next day Mrs. Rucker brought the brooch back and, with her own hands, pinned it on again, saying things that made it impossible to take offence. Yes, Mary never ceased to marvel at the way in which friends sprang up round her in her need, and put themselves out to help her. These Ruckers, for instance -- they had no family of their own -- were constantly taking the children off her hands. Hence, when the week's leave of absence for which she had applied was granted, she could part from Cuffy and Lucie with an easy mind.

And one cold spring night towards two o'clock, she put on her warmest travelling clothes and climbed into the coach for Colac. She had bespoken a seat . . . and a good job, too! For an election had taken place in the district, and the coach was crammed with men, some coming from the polling, others on their way to a cattle market. She sat, the night through, jammed in among them, her arms pinned to her sides, half suffocated with smoke, and deafened by their talk. Not till daybreak was she joined by one of her own sex. Then, on stopping at a wayside public-house, they found a thinly clad, elderly woman waiting for the coach, a little bundle in her hand. But there was not room for a mouse in among them, let alone an old woman: one rude voice after another bawled the information. At which the poor thing began to cry, and so heartbrokenly that Mary was touched. Elbowing her way to the window, she leaned out and questioned the woman. At what she heard, and at the continued crude joking of her fellow-travellers, she lost her temper, and rounding on them cried: "Do you mean to say there isn't one of you who's man enough to give up his seat?" And as, though the laughter ceased, none offered, she said hotly: "Very well then, if you won't, I will! I'm on my way, too, to see a sick person, but I'll take my chance of getting a lift later in the day. -- I'm glad I'm not a man . . . that's all!"

"Now then, missis, keep your hair on." And a lanky young fellow, with hands like ploughshares and a face confusion-red at his own good deed, gawkily detached himself and stepped out. "Here y'are, ma, in you get! I'll toddle along on Shanks' p's."

The two women made the rest of the journey in company, Mary even treading underfoot the prejudice of a lifetime and going second-class in the train. (There was no Richard now, to cast up his eyes in horror.) The poor soul at her side told a sad story: one's own troubles shrank as one heard it. She was bound for the Melbourne Hospital, where her son, her only child, lay dying: he had got "the water" on his chest, and the doctors had telegraphed she must come at once if she wanted to see him alive. Her husband had been killed at tree-felling only a few months back; and, her son gone, she would be alone in the world. Mary, feeling rich in comparison, shared with her her travelling-rug, her packet of sandwiches, her bottle of cold tea; and at Spencer Street station, having saved considerably on her fare, was able to put the poor mother in a wagonette and pay for her to be driven straight to the hospital. For she could see the bush-dweller's alarm at the noise and bustle of the city.

On parting, the woman kissed her hand. "God bless you, ma'am . . . God bless and keep you, the kindest lady ever I met! -- and may He restore your poor gentleman to his right mind! I shan't never forget what you've done for me this day. And if ever there come a time when I c'ld do su'thing for you . . . but there! not likely -- only Bowman's my name -- Mrs. Bowman, at Sayer's Thack, near Mortlake."

For Mary the Devines' carriage and pair was in waiting. The old coachman smiled and touched his hat and said: "Very glad to see you again, ma'am!" tucked the black opossum-rug round her, and off they rolled, she lying back on the springy cushions. And all the time she was in Melbourne this conveyance stood freely at her disposal, Lady Devine being by now grown too comfortable even for "carriage exercise." "By the time I've buttoned me boots, dearie, and put on me plumes, I'm dead beat. An' there are the 'orses eatin' their 'eads off in the stable. You can't do Jake and me a greater kindness 'n to use 'em."

Without this mechanical aid: to expedite her hither and thither, to wait for her while she kept appointments, to carry her on anew, Mary could impossibly have got through what she did in the days that followed: looked back on, they resembled the whirligig horrors of a nightmare. She had come to Melbourne tired, sad, and anxious enough, in all conscience. But in the hard-faced, unscrupulous woman with which, at the end of the time, her glass presented her, she hardly recognised herself. Never in her life had she fought for anything as now for Richard's freedom.

The morning after her arrival, she drove out to the asylum. The way led through lovely Toorak, with its green lawns and white houses, up Richmond Hill, and down into the unattractive purlieus of Collingwood. The carriage came to a standstill on a stretch of waste land, a kind of vast, unfenced paddock, where hobbled horses grazed. It could go no farther, for, between them and the complex of houses, cottages, huts which formed the asylum, flowed the unbridged river. Rain had fallen during the night, and the reddish, muddy stream, which here turned and twisted like a serpent, ran so high that the weeping willows (Richard's favourite Salix babylonica) which lined the bank, dragged their branches deep in the flood. The houses, overhung by the ragged, melancholy gums, looked shabby and neglected; one and all in need of a coat of paint. Mary's heart fell.

Seating herself in the ferry, she was conveyed across the water.

She had not announced her visit. Her intention was to see for herself how Richard was lodged and cared for, at those times when the place was closed to the public. Had the authorities known beforehand that she was coming, they might have dressed and dolled him up for her. (Yes! she was fast turning into a thoroughly suspicious and distrustful woman.) For passport, she had armed herself with a letter to the head doctor from Sir Jake Devine.

And well that she had. Great its virtue was not, but, without it, she would hardly have got over the threshold. And once inside the front door she had to fight her way forward, step by step: it needed all her native obstinacy, her newly acquired aggressiveness, not to allow herself to be bowed out by the several assistants and attendants who blocked her path. But having vowed to herself that she would see some one in authority, see him she did; though in the end they fobbed her off with a youngish fellow, to whom -- he had cod's eyes and a domineering manner -- she took an instant and violent dislike.

By this time, too, her blood was up; and the incivility of her reception seemed the last straw. A good log-fire burnt in the fireplace -- the rest of the building struck her as very damp and chill -- a comfortable armchair was suitably placed, but he did not invite her to approach the fire or to take a seat. He stood while he spoke . . . and kept her standing. She had, he presumed, already been informed that this was not a visiting-day -- and certainly not an hour for visitors. But as he understood that she had made a special journey from up-country, they had stretched a point. What did she want?

"To know how my husband is."

His fish eyes bulged still more. Was that all? When the report would have been so shortly in her hands?

"I preferred to come myself. I wish to speak to my husband."

"For that, ma'am, you will need to present yourself at the proper time." (Then it was as she thought. They were not going to let her see Richard unprepared.)

As, however, she made no movement to withdraw, but stood her ground with, for all her shabby dress and black gloves showing white at the finger-tips, the air of a duchess, and an answer for everything (danged if he knew how to treat such a bold, bouncing woman!), he crossed the room, took a ledger from a rack, and asked in tones of exasperation: "Well, what in thunder is it then? . . . your husband's name?"

"Quite so . . . exactly!" he cut her reply short. "If you think, madam, with the dozens of patients we have on our hands . . . it is possible to remember . . . the details and antecedents of each individual case . . ." As he spoke he was running a fat finger down column after column. "Ha! here we have it." Transporting the book to the central table, he laid it flat and faced her over it. "Here it is; and I regret to inform you that the report we should presently have sent you would have been of a highly unsatisfactory nature."

"Why? Is he so much worse?" With difficulty her dry lips framed the words.

"I refer not to his state of health -- the disease is running a normal course -- but to his conduct. Ever since being admitted to the asylum, your husband has proved to the last degree obstreperous and unruly."

"Well, that I cannot understand!" gave back Mary hotly. "Where he was -- before he came here -- they had only good to say of him."

"No doubt, no doubt! A patient worth his eight or ten guineas a week -- "

"Five, if you please! He received special terms . . . as a medical man."

"All of which is beside the point. The fact remains that, to us, he is a constant source of trouble. We have been obliged more than once to place him in solitary confinement. His behaviour is such as to corrupt the other patients."

"Corrupt?"

"Corrupt."

"Well, all I can say is . . . there must be something very wrong in the way he's treated. He would never willingly give trouble. By nature he's one of the gentlest and politest of men."

"Perhaps you would like to hear his warder on the subject?" And going to the fireplace the young man rang a bell and instructed a servant: "Send 97 B's keeper here to me."

(97B? . . . why B? . . . why not A? Mary's mind seized on the trivial detail and held fast to it, so as not to have to face the . . . the degradation the numbering implied.)

The warder entered touching his forelock: a coarse, strongly built fellow, with a low forehead and the underjaw of a prize-fighter. Her heart seemed to shrivel at thought of Richard. . . Richard! . . . in the power of such a man.

She hung her head, holding tight as if for support to the clasp of her sealskin bag, while the warder told the tale of Richard's misdeeds. 97B was, he declared, not only disobedient and disorderly; he was extremely abusive, dirty in his habits (here the catch of the handbag snapped and broke), would neither sleep himself at night nor let other people sleep; also he refused to wash himself, or to eat his food. "It's always the same ol' story. No sooner I bring him his grub than he up and pitches the dishes at me head."

She thought she had the fellow there. "Do you mean to tell me he . . that you give him fresh crockery to break every day?"

"Crockery? Ho, no fear! The plates and cups is all of tin."

At this Mary laughed, but very bitterly. "Ah! now I see. That explains it. For I know my husband. Never would you get him. . . nothing would induce him . . . to eat off tin."

"Needs Svres no doubt!"

"No! All he needs is to be treated like a gentleman . . . by gentlemen."

But she had to keep a grip on her mind to hinder it from following the picture up: Richard, forced by this burly brute to grope on the floor for his spilt food, to scrape it together, and either eat it or have it thrust down his throat. So she shut her ears, made herself deaf to their further talk, stood as it were looking through the speakers and out beyond -- at her ripening purpose.

But when at the end of the interview she made a last, passionate appeal to be allowed to see her husband, she was not too absorbed to catch the glance, alive with significance, that passed between the men. Sorry, said the keeper, but the patient was in bed resting after a very bad night: he couldn't on any account have him woke up again. At which excuse, things (old things), that she had heard from Richard about the means used to quell and break the spirits of refractory lunatics, jumped into her mind. There was not only feeding by force, the straitjacket, the padded cell. There were drugs and injections, given to keep a patient quiet and ensure his warders their freedom: doses of castor oil so powerful that the unhappy wretch into whom they were poured was rendered bedridden, griped, thoroughly ill.

But she saw plainly, here was nothing to be done. Her fight to get him back would have to be carried on outside the walls of the asylum. Buttoning her gloves with shaky, fumbling fingers, she confronted her opponents in a last bout of defiance. "I find it hard to believe a word of what you've said. But I know this: my husband shall not stay here. I'll take him home and look after him myself. He shall never leave my side again."

They all but laughed in her face. The idea was a very woman's! No alienist would ever be got to revoke this particular patient's certificate . . . or advise his release. In his fits of mania 97B was dangerous, and not merely to those about him; he needed protection against himself, which could only be given him by men trained to the job. Impossible! . . . utterly impossible.

She left them at it, turned her back and marched out of the room and down the corridor, through innumerable doors, not one of which she could afterwards remember having opened or shut (they were as insubstantial as the people she met on her passage), made her way to the ferry and up the other side, where she was helped into the carriage. And even while she bowled forward again, she continued to sit rigid and insensible, her sole movement being to pull off her gloves they incommoded her -- that she might lock her fingers . . . in an iron grip. The skin of her face felt stretched: like a mask that was too tight for it. But she shed not a tear, either here or when, having reached home, she paced the floor of the room and told her story. Something stronger than herself had control of her: she was all one purpose, one flame. Her old friend it was who wept. "Oh, just to think of 'im being come to this! . . . 'im, the 'andsomest man I ever saw, and the best as well."

But she, too, said: "Impossible! Oh no, my dear, it couldn't be done," when she heard of Mary's determination. "Your children -- you 'ave your children to consider."

"Oh, I can take care of them. But should I ever again know a moment's peace, if I left him in that awful place? Richard? . . . my poor old husband? As it is he'll believe I've deserted him . . . forgotten him . . . left off caring. No: I mean to get him out, or die in the attempt."