Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844. Various
great thoroughfares, and in doing so had thus gone astray. As it was past ten o'clock I was necessarily hurried, and yet the heat and heaviness of the night – it was July – prevented me freeing myself as rapidly as I should otherwise have done from the squalid and disagreeable avenues in which I had got entangled. I was just pausing to enquire my way of a slatternly-looking woman, who stood considerably in front of the door of a dirty-looking house in one of the dirtiest lanes I had yet explored, and who, with an apron thrown round her shoulders, to supply, it seemed to me, the absence of their appropriate garments, appeared, from the direction of her looks, to be awaiting some one's arrival, when a lad hastened up the opposite side of the alley, and breathlessly announced to her, that "the docther wouldn't come 'thout he first got his fee."
"Holy Mary, mother of – ! Oh, wisha, what am I to do!" exclaimed the woman in a strong Irish accent, with that elision of apostrophe into complaint peculiar to her country.
"If she goes on this way till mornin', two men wouldn't hould her, let alone one colleen.1 Run, Micky, to the 'seer, an' let him get her to the hospiddle, or my heart 'll be broke from her."
"How dove I know where the 'seer lives at this hour o' the night?" expostulated the boy.
"There's a wake in Tim Reilly's second floor – can't you go there, and they'll tell you – can't you?"
The messenger disappeared, and I now, before putting the question for which I had stopped, asked the woman soothingly the cause of her perturbation.
"Is it what's the matther, sir? Matther enough thin – a poor crethur of a woman lodgin' with me is took very bad with the fever. She wasn't to say so bad entirely till this evenin', when she begin to rave, and 'sist upon gettin' up; an' goin' on with terrible talk, that it would frighten the heart o' you to hear her."
"How long," I said, "has she been ill?"
"Wisha, sir, she was never well since the day she darkened my dure; but I think 'tis the heat o' the weather, an' her never stirrin' out, an' the weakness entirely, an' the impression on her heart, that is killin' her now."
"And has she had no advice?"
"Sorrow the 'vice – you'd think she'd go into fits when I mentioned a docther to her; and as to a priest or a ministher – my dear life, I might as well mention a blunderbush."
Well accustomed to hear of, and witness, such suffering as the woman described, I was about to proceed in quest of a physician myself, if she had paused in the first part of the sentence just finished. The concluding remarks arrested me.
"I am a clergyman," I said; "will you let me see this poor person?"
"An' a thousand welcomes, sir. I know you're not the Revern' Misthur Falvey, that I goes to a' Christmas an' Easther – nor the ministher convenient here. Maybe you're" —
"I'm quite unknown here; but by allowing me to see your patient, I shall be able to judge if she is in a fit state to be removed to an hospital; or, if instantly necessary, I shall myself procure medical advice for her."
The woman entered the house and I followed her, waiting, as she requested me, in the dark entry, until she procured from the sick chamber the only light that I presume was burning in the dwelling. She then re-appeared at the head of the stairs, and requested me to ascend.
Lighting me up four ruinous flights of steps, leading to rooms that appeared to be tenanted by beings as miserable as herself, she ushered me into an apartment of such large dimensions that the weak rushlight she carried left its extremity in absolute darkness. It was wretchedly furnished. At the farthest end from the door was a bed, by the side of which stood a coarse-looking girl about fifteen, engaged in preventing – now by soothing, now by forcible restraint – the invalid who occupied it from attempting to rise.
"Not another moment – not one moment longer! I must get up – he is waiting for me! See! I am late already, for 'tis daybreak – though you cannot see the dawn through that dismal rain. Let me go – wretch, wretch! – let me go; he shall not stir one step that I won't be near him to remind him of" —
Leaving the candle near the door, my guide approached the bed, and beckoned me to follow. I advanced, and even through the misty shadows that enveloped the place, I recognised, in the emaciated Form struggling on the couch, her wild flashing eyes now wilder with fever and insanity, the well-remembered wanderer who had so often excited my interest in Walworth.
"Ha!" she continued, after stopping suddenly, as lunatics will do when a stranger unexpectedly appears, and intently observing me for some minutes. "Ha! I knew I was late – see there. He has come to seek me, for the first time, too, for seventeen – eighteen-oh! so many long years. Ha, ha! all in black, too – Barnard – and you've brought your wealthy bride" – and she glanced at the woman, who stood beside me; "but, faugh, how her limbs rattle – not a whole bone," she said, with a hysterical laugh, "in her beautiful body!"
In this way she continued to rave, during the short time I remained in the apartment. I attempted to ask her a few questions, to ascertain, if possible, how far the distraction of her mind was consequent upon her disorder; but her only replies were mad and incoherent allusions to past scenes and occurrences, that seemed entirely to engross her attention. Finding my presence of no avail, I quitted the place, and was about to deposit a small sum with the hostess for the sufferer's use, when she very ingenuously informed me it was not at the moment necessary, that person herself having always, in the payment of her weekly rent, entrusted to her hands money sufficient to supply the wants of several ensuing days.
"An' though we're sometimes bad enough off, sir, when the boys don't get the work at Mr Cubitt's, still, shure, if I was to wrong a poor sickly crethur like that of her thrifle of change, 'twould melt away the weight o' myself in goold if I had it."
I could not help smiling at this unwonted display of honesty in so unexpected a quarter, and promising her that such care and attention to her sick tenant should not go unrewarded, I departed, escorted by "Micky," who had returned to say that no intelligence of the 'seer was to be obtained at Tim Reilly's. On making our way into Holborn, I called at the nearest surgeon's, and, giving him my address, I dispatched him back with the boy, directing him, at the same time, not to allow the woman to be removed unless her disorder was a contagious one, (which, I was persuaded, it was not,) and requesting, should the aid of a physician be necessary, he would at once procure it, for which, with all other expenses, I would be answerable. Touching this latter point, the lad had informed me as we came along, that he did not think their lodger was at all at a loss for money, as she procured it about once a-month, he thought, (the only time she ever went abroad,) from some "gentleman's office in the coorts."
Although living at such a distance, I contrived to see the unfortunate invalid several times in the following week. I found I was right as to the nature of her disorder. An eminent physician had been called in once or twice during its most violent paroxysms, and stated, that it was likely her malady was not the cause, but the consequence, of some extraordinary mental excitement. Under the judicious treatment he pointed out, the fever gradually subsided, and for a short time there was an appearance in the patient of returning convalescence. But her physical energies were exhausted, and it was evident that a very short period would terminate her existence. Reason, too, never wholly resumed its functions, if indeed it had ever of late years exercised them in that wearied brain. Her ideas assumed a certain degree of coherency. She was able to converse occasionally with calmness, to recognise faces familiar to her, and appeared sensible of and even grateful for my visits, and the assiduity with which I sought to awaken her to some preparation for the great approaching change; but
"the delicate chain
Of thought, once tangled, never clear'd again:"
never wholly cleared. The lightning of insanity flashed continually from the heavy cloud that hung upon her soul. The allusions, too, she was in the habit of making to some transactions of bygone years, were of so startling a nature, that I was fully confirmed in my early impression she had been at one time of her life implicated in some wonderful, nay, heinous occurrence. Upon this point it was my intention, if possible, to win her gradually to confide to me the secret of her guilt or wrongs, hoping by this
Little girl – or girl, merely.