In Drayton House the keeperesses eclipsed the keepers in cruelty to the poorer patients. No men except Dr. Wolf and his assistant had a pass-key into their department, so there was nobody they could deceive, nobody they held worth the trouble. In the absence of male critics they showed their real selves, and how wise it is to trust that gentle sex in the dark with irresponsible power over females. With unflagging patience they applied the hourly torture of petty insolence, needless humiliation, unreasonable refusals to the poor madwomen; bored them with the poisoned gimlet, and made their hearts bleeding pin-cushions. But minute cruelty and wild caprice were not enough for them, though these never tired nor rested; they must vilify them too with degrading and savage names.
Billingsgate might have gone to school to Drayton House. _Inter alia,_they seemed in love with a term that Othello hit upon; only they used it not once, but fifty times a day, and struck decent women with it on the face, like a scorpion whip; and then the scalding tears were sure to run in torrents down their silly, honest, burning cheeks. But this was not all; they had got a large tank in a flagged room, nominally for cleanliness and cure, but really for bane and torture. For the least offence, or out of mere wantonness, they would drag a patient stark naked across the yard, and thrust her bodily under water again and again, keeping her down till almost gone with suffocation, and dismissing her more dead than alive with obscene and insulting comments ringing in her ears, to get warm again in the cold. This my ladies called "tanking."In the ordinary morning ablutions they tanked without suffocating. But the immersion of the whole body in cold water was of itself a severe trial to those numerous patients in whom the circulation was weak; and as medical treatment, hurtful and even dangerous. Finally, these keeperesses, with diabolical insolence and cruelty, would bathe twenty patients in this tank, and then make them drink that foul water for their meals.
"The dark places of the land are full of horrible cruelty."One day they tanked so savagely that Nurse Eliza, after months of sickly disapproval, came to the new redresser of grievances, and told.
What was he to do? He seized the only chance of redress; he ran panting with indignation to Mrs. Archbold, and blushing high, said imploringly, "Mrs. Archbold, you used to be kindhearted----" and could say no more for something rising in his throat.
Mrs. Archbold smiled encouragingly on him, and said softly, "I am the same I always was--to you Alfred.""Oh, thank you; then pray send for Nurse Eliza, and hear the cruelties that are being done to the patients within a yard of us.""You had better tell me yourself, if you want me to pay any attention.""I can't. I don't know how to speak to a lady of such things as are done here. The brutes! the cowardly she-devils! Oh, how I should like to kill them."Mrs. Archbold laughed a little at his enthusiasm (fancy caring so what was done to a pack of women), and sent for Nurse Eliza. She came and being questioned told Mrs. Archbold more than she had Alfred. "And, ma'am," said she, whimpering, "they have just been tanking one they had no business to touch; it is Mrs. Dale, her that is so close on her confinement. They tanked her cruel they did, and kept her under water till she was nigh gone. I came away; I couldn't stand it."Alfred was walking about in a fury, and Nurse Eliza, in making this last revolting communication, lowered her voice for him not to hear, but his senses were quick. I think he heard, for he turned and came quickly to them.
"Mrs. Archbold, you are strong and brave--for a woman; oh, do go in to them and take them by the throat and shake the life out of them, the merciless, cowardly beasts! Oh that I could be a woman for an hour, or they could be men, I'd soon have my foot on some of the wretches."Mrs. Archbold acted Ignition. "Come with me both of you," she said, and they were soon in the female department. Up came keeperesses directly, smirking and curtseying to her, and pretending not to look at Adonis.
"Which of you nurses tanked Mrs. Dale?" said she sternly.
"'Twasn't I, ma'am, 'twasn't I."
"Oh, fie!" said Eliza to one, "you know you were at the head of it."She pointed out two as the leaders. The Archbold instantly had them seized by the others--who, with treachery equal to their cowardice, turned eagerly against their fellow-culprits, to make friends with Power--and, inviting all the sensible maniacs who had been tanked, to assist or inspect, she bared her own statuesque arms, and, ably aided, soon plunged the offenders, screaming, crying, and whining, like spaniel bitches whipped, under the dirty water. They swallowed some, and appreciated their own acts. Then she forced them to walk twice round the yard with their wet clothes clinging to them, hooted by the late victims.
"There," said Alfred, "let that teach you men will not own hyaenas in petticoats for women."Poor Alfred took all the credit of this performance; but in fact, when the Archbold invited him to bear a hand, he showed the white feather.
_"I_ won't touch the blackguardesses," said he, haughtily turning it off on the score of contempt. _"You_ give it them! Again, again! Brava!"Mosaic retribution completed, Mrs. Archbold told the nurses if ever "tanking recurred she would bundle the whole female staff into the street, and then have them indicted by the Commissioners."These virtuous acts did Edith Archbold for love for a young man. Whether mad women or sane, women pregnant, or the reverse, were tanked or not, she cared at heart no more than whether sheep were washed or no in Ettrick's distant dale. She was retiring with a tender look at Alfred, and her pulse secretly unaccelerated by sheep-washing of she-wolves, when her grateful favourite appealed to her again:
"Dear Mrs. Archbold, shall we punish and not comfort? This poor Mrs.
Dale!"
