by Argyle, Ray
All that week, Leonard fretted as he tried to concentrate on his work. One day, he went with Owen Staples to the Queen’s Hotel after the five o’clock edition had been put to bed. He went over everything he could remember about finding Molly Leppard and of his encounter with a girl called Kathleen.
“You have to go back,” Owen said. “You’ll never rest until you find out what happened to Rosannah. You’re still in love.”
Leonard became a weekly visitor to the Asylum that fall and winter. In good weather, he bicycled there. Bicycling was all the rage in Toronto, encouraged by the Ministerial Association in its fight to keep streetcars in their barns on Sundays. His paper had opposed Sunday streetcars, but in a referendum the citizens had voted by a margin of a few hundred to let them run on the Sabbath. On Sundays, he sometimes joined Owen and hundreds of others cyclists to ride out to High Park.
Leonard told himself that if he saw Molly often enough he would find out everything she remembered about how Rosannah had met her death. He was less willing to admit it was Kathleen who had become the lure that led him to the Asylum with such regularity.
On one visit, Leonard found Molly at dinner in the first floor dining room. She jumped up when she saw him. “You’ve come back,” she said. Leonard looked around for Kathleen. The room contained a half dozen tables, all filled by patients. He could see the remnants of their meal – crumbs of crackers and leftover corned beef and sauerkraut – scattered on the table and the floor. He was disappointed there was no sign of the girl.
“I’ve been feeling better this week,” Molly said. “But they won’t tell me why I’m here. Anyway, they gave me tobacco and I had a good smoke. Would you like some?” Leonard declined. They spoke of how Molly’s husband James, all alone now except for Billy, would be getting on. This seemed like a good time to discuss what had happened to Rosannah.
“I still miss Rosannah,” Leonard told her. “How much do you remember of the night she died? I wonder if we’ll ever know what took her life?”
Molly turned her head away and then snapped back. Leonard could see pain on her face.
“Rosannah? Rosannah was going to Hell. I pray she’s been spared.”
Suddenly, Molly burst into tears. The attendant rushed over. “You’ve upset her,” she said. “You’ll have to leave now.” She led Molly away.
The next time Leonard went to the Asylum he decided to look first for Kathleen. By now, the attendants were familiar with him and paid him little attention. He found Kathleen in the west veranda. There was no one nearby and she seemed to be moving about freely. Kathleen smiled and waved when she saw him. “I’m on an hour’s inside parole,” she said. “I can go wherever I wish as long as I’m back in the ward by two o’clock. But they won’t let me outside. Come sit with me.”
Kathleen pointed to two chairs by a window. Leonard told her of his last visit with Molly. He was sorry he’d asked a question that had upset her.
“Molly gets upset easily,” Kathleen said. “She’s my friend, but I worry that she’ll never get out of here. I hope I’ll have better luck.”
Kathleen peered at Leonard and smiled. She reminded him of Rosannah and for a minute it seemed as if he was back with her in Vandeleur.
“So, Mr. Babington, where did you get that name?”
“From my father, of course. Where else would I have gotten it?
“I mean, how did your family get it? Are you descended from Babington the Catholic? The one who plotted to assassinate Queen Elizabeth?”
Leonard was surprised Kathleen would know of this episode from British history. “Quite possibly,” he said. “I really don’t know. I’m not a Catholic.”
“Neither am I,” Kathleen answered. “My people were all Quakers, from Waterford, in Ireland. I was born in Toronto.”
Kathleen looked around the room as they talked. “I’m just keeping an eye out for old Meggity McLean,” she said. “She likes to keep watch on me but she’s wandered off again. I know a nicer place where we can talk. We might even be alone.”
Kathleen led Leonard to a small storeroom. Wooden crates held spare blankets and mattress ticking. “This is a good place to talk,” she whispered. “No one ever comes here. Do you have any tobacco?”
Leonard told her he never used the stuff and he didn’t think she should, either.
“I don’t understand why you’re here,” he told her. “You seem perfectly normal to me.”
“I’ll be honest with you,” Kathleen said. “They think they’re making me better but I’m no different than the day I got here.”
“What did they say was wrong with you?”
“It’s what my stepfather said. He told them I was running wild. Said I had committed acts of the most immoral kind. He signed a paper saying I had no control over my sexual desires.”
Leonard blushed on hearing this. “Why ever would he do such a thing?” Leonard wasn’t used to discussing sexual matters with young women. But there would be no more talk of such things that day. Instead, Kathleen told Leonard of an incident that had happened in the ward that morning. An old woman had come up to her and waved a finger under her nose. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” she’d shouted. “You and your gang of murderers. You’ve killed my husband. You’ll never get to heaven!”
“People like her are here for life,” Kathleen said. “They have all kinds of delusions. That woman’s incurable.”
On his next visit, Leonard went straight to Molly’s bedside. His reward was a frustrating hour spent trying to coax her into conversation. He had never seen Molly so dispirited and depressed. She shut up every time he tried to get her to talk about Rosannah. Relieved to be away from her, he looked forward to Kathleen’s usual cheerfulness. She smiled when she saw him and led him to the storeroom where they’d spent his last visit. Her lighthearted mood fell away when Leonard asked to know more about why she was in the Asylum.
“It’s a long story Leonard, and not a pretty one. Let’s not talk about it right now. Would you like to kiss me?”
Leonard had wanted to kiss Kathleen since he’d first set eyes on her. He leaned toward her and brushed his lips against her forehead. She raised her face and gave him a small smile before she closed her eyes. He kissed her on the mouth and pressed himself against her. Kathleen made no effort to move away and he put his palms on her breasts and began to caress her. With one knee, he gently nudged her legs apart. She unfastened his pants and took him in her hands. In a moment, he was inside her. She moaned and clung to him. It was over quickly. After, they talked about the unfairness of Kathleen’s detention. Leonard thought he had never been with a girl as exciting and willing as Kathleen. It was unfair for her to be locked away with a lot of crazy people. There’s nothing wrong with her, I’m sure of it, he told himself. He had to admit he’d heard only her side of the story. He pushed aside the thought he might have taken advantage of a sick woman.
That night, Leonard dreamt of Kathleen and Rosannah, but he was unable to separate the two visions that haunted his sleep. He awoke troubled, disturbed by the apparition of a woman dead a dozen years. Rosannah was the reminder of a promise not yet fulfilled, a failure that crowned all the other failures of his life.
Leonard was careful to seek out both Molly and Kathleen on his later visits. One time, he went with Molly to the Asylum chapel. It was in a garret under the great dome of the tower. “The different faiths take turns,” the attendant said. “The Catholic Mass is at eleven o’clock.”
Leonard had expected something resembling an ordinary church. Instead, they entered an oval room with a deep pit that held four rows of seats. He thought it no more cheerful than the foulest ward. A Catholic priest was readying his vestments. He stood in a pulpit built high into the wall, well out of reach of the half dozen patients who sat below. A faint light filtered through windows near the top of the dome.
Molly went to the bottom row, knelt and made the Sign of the Cross, and waited for the start of the mass. Leonard thought how stran
ge we Christians are to celebrate the Cross, the symbol of Christ’s agony. If Jesus had been hanged like Cook Teets, would nooses of silver and gold adorn women’s necks? Would a rope dangle from each church steeple? He stood with the attendant as the priest droned on in Latin. Molly was as religious as ever, he realized. That’s the only thing she has to hold on to.
As spring approached and Leonard continued to visit the Asylum, he found himself becoming more entranced with Kathleen. Their trysts took up most of his visits. He marvelled that they hadn’t been found out. He wondered if the attendants knew what they were doing. It was information that could be used against Kathleen, an excuse to keep her confined. One time, as they clung together on the packing cases, Leonard asked Kathleen to tell him more of the events that had brought her to this place.
“It was my stepfather’s fault, the rotten bastard. Any time a girl gets into difficulty with her family, she can be put away. All that’s needed is a complaint from the family, signed by two doctors. If they think you’re immoral, they say you’re mentally deficient.”
Kathleen told Leonard that her stepfather “had his way with me” ever since she was fifteen. When he found her kissing a delivery boy, he ordered her out of the house. Kathleen took work as a servant to a doctor’s wife. When Kathleen rebuked the doctor for his sexual advances, he made his wife dismiss her. She stole the family’s silver but was arrested when she tried to pawn it. She was given six months in the Industrial Refuge for Girls.
“My stepfather came for me. I wouldn’t go home so he complained to the police. He had me charged with sexual promiscuity. They said I showed all the symptoms of erotomania. What bunk! I’ve been here nearly two years. They put me in a straitjacket and spoon-fed me. Then they put me in a bath for hours at a time. First hot water, then cold. They were going to fix me so I could never have children. The matron said a woman’s mental problems start in her womb. But Dr. Clark wouldn’t allow them to operate.”
It amazed Leonard that Kathleen could unfold a story of such rejection and despair and yet still smile and laugh, like a girl without a care in the world. He told her about Rosannah and what had happened to her. He confessed she’d had a child by him. It seemed to Leonard that Kathleen’s life had been as difficult as Rosannah’s, if on a different path. Talking about Rosannah still troubled him, and he wondered if he would ever be free of remorse. He looked at Kathleen and for a moment, he thought he saw redemption in her eyes.
Chapter 33
LEONARD IN LOVE
September 15, 1898
Leonard Babington shuffled absent-mindedly through the stack of fresh stories that had collected on his desk. They were about Toronto’s new City Hall at Queen and Bay Streets, nearly finished after almost ten years of construction. He picked up a batch of copy and began to read. The story boasted that the hall, built at a cost of two and a half million dollars, was the largest municipal building in North America. Leonard corrected some errors of grammar, changed the lead in one piece, and thrust the five pages onto his copy spike. His mind was not on his work. He’d been seeing Kathleen Fitzgerald for nearly a year and his thoughts were on her, not the tasks he faced. He had to admit it: he was in love.
Leonard left his desk and went to the corner of the newsroom where Owen Staples sat at his drawing board. He was inking in the smug face of Mayor John Shaw for tomorrow’s cartoon. “A nice bit of work, but I’m having trouble concentrating today,” Leonard said. He told Owen he’d finally made up his mind. “I’m going to marry Kathleen.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Owen asked. “Having a wife in the insane asylum might not be a good thing for the city editor of the Evening Telegram. Anyway, I don’t think they allow weddings there.”
Leonard studied the face of his best friend. Was he joking or was he serious?
“You’ve been working too hard,” Owen said. “And I suspect there’s more to your wanting to marry Kathleen than her pretty face. I think you see her as a substitute for Rosannah. Maybe it’s Rosannah you’re really in love with, not Kathleen.”
Leonard bristled at Owen’s honesty. He had to concede he’d sometimes thought of Rosannah as he held Kathleen in his arms. But it was Kathleen who was alive, not Rosannah. Vowing to keep such thoughts from his mind, Leonard assured himself he was in love with the girl from the Asylum.
“Rosannah’s dead, it’s Kathleen I love,” he said.
Owen said he was not so sure about that.
“Maybe I should take you down to Philadelphia and introduce you to my old artist friends.”
If Owen thought some fresh acquaintances would make Leonard forget Kathleen, he was badly mistaken.
“I mean it,” Leonard said. “There’s nothing wrong with Kathleen. I’m going to find some way to get her out of that place and marry her. We love each other. I’m going to have a doctor from outside the Asylum look at her. Someone who will give her a fair examination.”
“Why don’t you see a lawyer?”
Leonard had seen lawyers at work in the courtroom, and he had no desire to put Kathleen’s future in the hands of some man whose interest would run more to money than to justice.
“No, I’d sooner rely on a doctor.”
“And if you find someone who says she’s sane, will they ever let her go?”
“That’s what I’ve got to settle with Dr. Clark. I’m going to see him after work.”
Leonard finished marking up the last of the city hall stories about three o’clock. He knew all the Toronto papers were making a big fuss. The Globe would have a page or two but Leonard was more concerned about competition from the new evening paper, the Star. It was gaining readers among the trade unions and the working class where the Evening Telegram had always been strong. He walked up to Queen Street and spent ten minutes watching workmen clear away the last of the City Hall construction debris. He boarded the first streetcar that came in sight.
When Leonard reached the Asylum he rang the new electric doorbell. No one answered. He rang again, this time pressing the buzzer three times. The door finally opened. Leonard recognized the guard, a man he’d always chatted with when he’d come to see Kathleen or Molly. But today, the guard blocked him from entering.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Babington, I can’t let you in. Orders of Dr. Clark.”
“What do you mean? I’ve never had trouble before. You’d better let me see the Superintendent.”
“I can’t do that. I have the note right here. ‘Mr. Babington is not to be admitted under any circumstances.’”
“That’s nonsense. I insist on seeing Dr. Clark.”
The door banged shut.
Leonard stood at the bottom of the stairway, puzzled and upset. Whatever could be going on? Nothing out of the ordinary had happened on his last visit. He’d spent most of his time with Molly. He decided to wait. Perhaps he’d see someone who could tell him why he was being kept out.
A few people came and went as the afternoon dragged into evening. He recognized some as attendants but none spoke to him. Finally, he saw Meggity McLean who gathered her cloak about her ample frame as she puffed up the stone stairway. Leonard called to her when she cleared the last step.
“Oh, Mr. Babington. I’m not sure I can speak to you.”
“Why ever not? They’ve barred me from the Asylum. I can’t understand why.”
Meggity pursed her lips and frowned.
“You should know why, Mr. Babington.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“You and that girl. You know what I mean. The place is full of talk. You were found out having improper relations. That sort of thing can’t be permitted.”
Leonard’s stomach churned and his heart began to thump.
“I’m not sure what you mean, Mrs. McLean. But Kathleen and I love each other. I want to marry her.”
“You should have thought of that before you started carrying on. Wainwright was suspicious all along. He heard the two of you in there, and saw how you looked when you came out of
the storeroom.”
“Wainwright? Dr. Clark’s man? He always was a sour type. Why’d he want to get me into trouble?”
“I have no idea, Mr. Babington. It seems to me you’ve gotten yourself into trouble. To say nothing of poor Kathleen. They’ve put her in isolation. For moral rehabilitation, Dr. Clark says.”
Leonard was outraged. Kathleen could teach the lot of them about morals, he thought. A sweet girl, never been given a chance, always been taken advantage of. It was horrible to know they’d been found out. It was what he’d feared all along, but nothing could have dissuaded him from falling in love with Kathleen. He could only stare at Meggity. She turned and hurried into the darkness.
Leonard stumbled home, uncertain what to do. He poured himself three fingers of whisky and sat on the edge of his bed. He thought of how he had lost Rosannah, and he berated himself for having taken stupid risks with Kathleen. After an hour, Leonard began to compose a letter to Dr. Clark. He considered denying everything, but decided that might not be wise. He was certainly not ready to admit what he’d done. Instead, he wrote of his love for Kathleen and of his hope to marry her. Finished, he copied the letter to a fresh sheet, folded it in an envelope and put it on the dresser beside his bed. The next morning he spoke to Tom Cornell, his favourite among the copy boys at the Telegram. He sent him to the Asylum with urgent instructions to deliver the envelope to Dr. Clark.
A week later – a week of nerves, sleepless nights and worry – Leonard received his answer.
“I cannot meet with you in the foreseeable future,” Dr. Clark had written. “I leave this week for a medical conference in London, after which Mrs. Clark and I will spend three months touring Europe and the Holy Land. You may contact me on my return. However, I must inform you that your transgression represents a serious breach of trust. It is only out of concern for your professional future that I have refrained from advising your employer. I suggest you give careful thought to this indiscretion and learn to accept the consequences of your actions.”