Chapter LIV

“What is it on the gate? Spell it, mother,” said Katy, looking wistfully through the iron fence at the terraced banks, smoothly-rolled gravel walks, plats of flowers, and grape-trellised arbors; “what is it on the gate, mother?”

“‘Insane Hospital,’ dear; a place for crazy people.”

“Want to walk round, ma’am?” asked the gate-keeper, as Katy poked her little head in; “can, if you like.” Little Katy’s eyes pleaded eloquently; flowers were to her another name for happiness, and Ruth passed in.

“I should like to live here, mamma,” said Katy.

Ruth shuddered, and pointed to a pale face pressed close against the grated window. Fair rose the building in its architectural proportions; the well-kept lawn was beautiful to the eye; but, alas! there was helpless age, whose only disease was too long a lease of life for greedy heirs. There, too, was the fragile wife, to whom love was breath—being!—forgotten by the world and him in whose service her bloom had withered, insane—only in that her love had outlived his patience.

“Poor creatures!” exclaimed Ruth, as they peered out from one window after another. “Have you had many deaths here?” asked she of the gate-keeper.

“Some, ma’am. There is one corpse in the house now; a married lady, Mrs. Leon.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Ruth, “my friend Mary.”

“Died yesterday, ma’am; her husband left her here for her health, while he went to Europe.”

“Can I see the Superintendent,” asked Ruth; “I must speak to him.”

Ruth followed the gate-keeper up the ample steps into a wide hall, and from thence into a small parlor; after waiting what seemed to her an age of time, Mr. Tibbetts, the Superintendent, entered. He was a tall, handsome man, between forty and fifty, with a very imposing air and address.

“I am pained to learn,” said Ruth, “that a friend of mine, Mrs. Leon, lies dead here; can I see the body?”

“Are you a relative of that lady?” asked Mr. Tibbetts, with a keen glance at Ruth.

“No,” replied Ruth, “but she was very dear to me. The last time I saw her, not many months since, she was in tolerable health. Has she been long with you, Sir?”

“About two months,” replied Mr. Tibbetts; “she was hopelessly crazy, refused food entirely, so that we were obliged to force it. Her husband, who is an intimate friend of mine, left her under my care, and went to the Continent. A very fine man, Mr. Leon.”

Ruth did not feel inclined to respond to this remark, but repeated her request to see Mary.

“It is against the rules of our establishment to permit this to any but relatives,” said Mr. Tibbetts.

“I should esteem it a great favor if you would break through your rules in my case,” replied Ruth; “it will be a great consolation to me to have seen her once more;” and her voice faltered.

The appeal was made so gently, yet so firmly, that Mr. Tibbetts reluctantly yielded.

The matron of the establishment, Mrs. Bunce, (whose advent was heralded by the clinking of a huge bunch of keys at her waist,) soon after came in. Mrs. Bunce was gaunt, sallow and bony, with restless, yellowish, glaring black eyes, very much resembling those of a cat in the dark; her motions were quick, brisk, and angular; her voice loud, harsh, and wiry. Ruth felt an instantaneous aversion to her; which was not lessened by Mrs. Bunce asking, as they passed through the parlor-door:

“Fond of looking at corpses, ma’am? I’ve seen a great many in my day; I’ve laid out more’n twenty people, first and last, with my own hands. Relation of Mrs. Leon’s, perhaps?” said she, curiously peering under Ruth’s bonnet. “Ah, only a friend?”

“This way, if you please, ma’am;” and on they went, through one corridor, then another, the massive doors swinging heavily to on their hinges, and fastening behind them as they closed.

“Hark!” said Ruth, with a quick, terrified look, “what’s that?”

“Oh, nothing,” replied the matron, “only a crazy woman in that room yonder, screaming for her child. Her husband ran away from her and carried off her child with him, to spite her, and now she fancies every footstep she hears is his. Visitors always thinks she screams awful. She can’t harm you, ma’am,” said the matron, mistaking the cause of Ruth’s shudder, “for she is chained. She went to law about the child, and the law, you see, as it generally is, was on the man’s side; and it just upset her. She’s a sight of trouble to manage. If she was to catch sight of your little girl out there in the garden, she’d spring at her through them bars like a panther; but we don’t have to whip her very often.”

“Down here,” said the matron, taking the shuddering Ruth by the hand, and descending a flight of stone steps, into a dark passage-way. “Tired arn’t you?”

“Wait a bit, please,” said Ruth, leaning against the stone wall, for her limbs were trembling so violently that she could scarcely bear her weight.

“Now,” said she, (after a pause,) with a firmer voice and step.

“This way,” said Mrs. Bunce, advancing towards a rough deal box which stood on a table in a niche of the cellar, and setting a small lamp upon it; “she didn’t look no better than that, ma’am, for a long while before she died.”

Ruth gave one hurried glance at the corpse, and buried her face in her hands. Well might she fail to recognize in that emaciated form, those sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, the beautiful Mary Leon. Well might she shudder, as the gibbering screams of the maniacs over head echoed through the stillness of that cold, gloomy vault.

“Were you with her at the last?” asked Ruth of the matron, wiping away her tears.

“No,” replied she; “the afternoon she died she said, ‘I want to be alone,’ and, not thinking her near her end, I took my work and sat just outside the door. I looked in once, about half an hour after, but she lay quietly asleep, with her cheek in her hand,—so. By-and-bye I thought I would speak to her, so I went in, and saw her lying just as she did when I looked at her before. I spoke to her, but she did not answer me; she was dead, ma’am.”

O, how mournfully sounded in Ruth’s ears those plaintive words, “I want to be alone.” Poor Mary! aye, better even in death ‘alone,’ than gazed at by careless, hireling eyes, since he who should have closed those drooping lids, had wearied of their faded light.

“Did she speak of no one?” asked Ruth; “mention no one?”

“No—yes; I recollect now that she said something about calling Ruth; I didn’t pay any attention, for they don’t know what they are saying, you know. She scribbled something, too, on a bit of paper; I found it under her pillow, when I laid her out. I shouldn’t wonder if it was in my pocket now; I haven’t thought of it since. Ah! here it is,” said Mrs. Bunce, as she handed the slip of paper to Ruth.

It ran thus:—“I am not crazy, Ruth, no, no—but I shall be; the air of this place stifles me; I grow weaker—weaker. I cannot die here; for the love of heaven, dear Ruth, come and take me away.”

“Only three mourners,—a woman and two little girls,” exclaimed a by-stander, as Ruth followed Mary Leon to her long home.