Alfred cried "Help! murder! If you are Englishmen, if you are Christians, help me."This soon drew a crowd round him, listening to his fiery tale of wrong, and crying "Shame, shame! Let him go." The keepers touched their heads, winked, and got out and showed the certificates; the crowd melted away like wax before those two suns of evidence (unsworn). The train moved on.
It was appalling. How could he ever get free? Between his mind and that of his fellows there lay a spiritual barrier more impassible than the walls of fortified cities.
Yet, at the very next station, with characteristic tenacity of purpose, he tried again; for he saw a woman standing near, a buxom country woman of forty. Then he remembered that the Naked Eye was not yet an extinct institution among her sex. He told her his tale, and implored her to use her own eyes. She seemed struck, and did eye him far more closely than the men had: and told the keepers they ought to be ashamed of themselves;he was no madman, for she had seen madmen. They showed her the certificates.
"Oh, I am no scholar!" said she contemptuously; "ye can't write my two eyes out of my head."The keeper whipped off Alfred's cap and showed his shaven crown.
"La! so he is," said she, lowering her tone; "dear heart, what a pity.
And such a pretty young gentleman." And after that all he could say only drew the dew of patient pity to her eyes.
The train went on, and left her standing there, a statue of negative clemency. Alfred lost heart. He felt how impotent he was. "I shall die in a madhouse," he said. He shivered in a corner, hating man, and doubting God.
They reached Dr. Wycherley's early in the morning. Alfred was shown into a nice clean bedroom, and asked whether he would like to bathe or sleep.
"Oh, a bath," he said; and was allowed to bathe himself. He had not been long in the water when Dr. Wycherley's medical assistant tapped at the door, and then entered without further ceremony--a young gentleman with a longish down on his chin, which, initiated early in the secrets of physiology, he was too knowing to shave off and so go to meet his trouble. He came in looking like a machine, with a note-book in his hand, and stood by the bath side dictating notes to himself and jotting them down.
"Six contusions: two on the thorax, one on the abdomen, two on the thighs, one near the patella; turn, please." Alfred turned in the water.
"A slight dorsal abrasion; also of the wrists; a severe excoriation of the ankle. Leg-lock, eh?""Yes.""Iron leg-lock. Head shaved. Large blister. Good! Any other injuries external or internal under old system?""Yes, sir, confined as a madman though sane, as _you,_ I am sure, have the sense to see.""Oh, never mind that; we are all sane here--except the governor and I."He whipped out, and entered the condition of the new patient's body with jealous minuteness in the case-book. As for his mind, he made no inquiry into that: indeed he was little qualified for researches of the kind.
