Poor wife, each visit to Drayton House opened her wound afresh. On reaching the stones, there was a turnpike This roused her up; she took out her purse and paid it. As she drew back to her seat, she saw out of the tail of her feminine eye the edge of something white under her parasol. She took up the parasol, and found a written paper pinned on to it: she detached this paper, and examined it all over with considerable curiosity. It consisted of a long slip about an inch and a quarter broad, rolled like tape, and tied with packthread. She could not see the inside, of course, but she read the superscription: it was firmly but clearly written, in red ink apparently.
Of the words I shall only say at present that they were strong and simple, and that their effect on the swift intelligence and tender heart of Mrs. Dodd was overpowering. They knocked at her heart; they drew from her an audible cry of pity more eloquent than a thousand speeches: and the next moment she felt a little faint; for she knew now the appeal was not in red ink, but in something very fit to pass between the heart of woe and the heart of pity. She smelt at her salts, and soon recovered that weakness: and next her womanly bosom swelled so with the milk of human kindness that her breath came short. After a little struggle she gushed out aloud, "Ah, that I will, poor soul; this very moment."Now, by this time she was close to her own house.
She stopped the cab at her door, and asked the driver if his horse was fresh enough to carry her to the Board of Lunacy: "It is at Whitehall, sir," said she. "Lord bless you, ma'am," said the cabman, "Whitehall?
Why, my mare would take you to Whitechapel and back in an hour, let alone Whitehall."Reassured on that point Mrs. Dodd went in just to give the servant an order: but as she stood in the passage, she heard her children's voices and also a friend's; the genial, angry tones of Alexander Sampson, M. D.
She thought, "Oh, I _must_ just show them all the paper, before I go with it;" and so after a little buzz about dinner and things with Sarah, mounted the stairs, and arrived among them singularly _apropos,_ as it happened.
Men like Sampson, who make many foes, do also make stauncher friends than ever the Hare does, and are faithful friends themselves. The boisterous doctor had stuck to the Dodds in all their distresses; and if they were ever short of money, it certainly was not his fault: for almost his first word, when he found them in a lodging, was, "Now, ye'll be wanting a Chick. Gimme pen and ink, and I'll just draw ye one; for a hundre." This being declined politely by Mrs. Dodd, he expostulated. "Mai--dear--Madam, how on airth can ye go on in such a place as London without a Chick?"He returned to the charge at his next visit and scolded her well for her pride. "Who iver hard of refusing a Chick? a small inoffensive chick, from an old friend like me? Come now, behave! Just a wee chick, I'll let y' off for fifty.""Give us your company and your friendship," said Mrs. Dodd; "we value them above gold: we will not rob your dear children, while we have as many fingers on our hands as other people."On the present occasion Dr. Sampson, whose affectionate respect for the leading London physicians has already displayed itself, was inveighing specially against certain specialists, whom, in the rapidity of his lusty eloquence, he called the Mad Ox. He favoured Julia and Edward with a full account of the maniform enormities he had detected them in during thirty years' practice; and so descended to his present grievance. A lady, an old friend of his, was being kept in a certain asylum month after month because she had got money and relations, and had once been delirious.
"And why was she delirious? because she had a brain fever, she got well in a fortnight." This lady had thrown a letter over the wall addressed to him; somebody had posted it: he had asked the Commissioners to let him visit her; they had declined for the present. "Yon Board always sides with the strong against the weak," said he. So now he had bribed the gardener, and made a midnight assignation with the patient; and was going to it with six stout fellows to carry her off by force. "That is my recipe for alleged Insanity," said he. "The business will be more like a mejaeval knight carrying off a namorous nun out of a convint, than a good physician saving a pashint from the Mad Ox. However, Mrs. Saampson's in the secret; I daunt say sh' approves it; for she doesn't. She says, 'Go quietly to the Board o' Commissioners.' Sis I, 'My dear, Boards are a sort of cattle that go too slow for Saampson, and no match at all for the Mad Ox.'"At this conjuncture, or soon after, Mrs. Dodd came in with her paper in her hand, a little flurried for once, and after a hasty curtsey, said--"Oh, Doctor Sampson, oh, my dears, what wickedness there is in the world!
I'm going to Whitehall this moment; only look at what was pinned on my parasol at Drayton House."The writing passed from hand to hand, and left the readers looking very gravely at one another. Julia was quite pale and horror-stricken. All were too deeply moved, and even shocked, to make any commonplace comment;for it looked and read like a cry from heart to hearts.
_"If you are a Christian, if you are human, pity a sane man here confined in, fraud, and take this to the Board of Lunacy at Whitehall. Torn by treachery from her I love, my letters all intercepted, pens and paper kept from me, Iwrite this with a toothpick and my blood on a rim of 'The Times.' Oh God, direct it to some one who has suf-fered, and can feel for an-other's agony._"
Dr. Sampson was the first to speak. "There," said he, under his breath:
"didn't I tell you? This man is sane. There's sanity in every line.""Well, but," said Edward, "do you mean to say that in the present day--""Mai--dearr--sirr. Mankind niver changes. Whativer the muscles of man _can_ do in the light, the mind and conscience of man will consent to do in the dark."Julia said never a word.
