“It may be that she even goes around the house. I cannot find it in my heart to lock any doors; I would hate, in her position, to be trammelled or feel myself watched.”
In her position? How deeply he had tried to understand her suffering, to imagine himself there, trapped. “Is she frustrated, do you think?”
“I think she has been, at times.” He rubbed at his cheeks, looking down at her in concern. “At first, I wondered if she was doing it on purpose. To punish herself. To punish me, for all the blasted doctors I paraded her before, hoping to save…”
He broke off. He never spoke of the fifth child. That was when he decided they had had enough of doctors. He took me through the stages of their theories about her malady. That she was perfectly compos mentis but purposely cutting herself off from the world.
“This may not be wilful, I have discovered, or conscious. There is a series of disorders in the penumbra of hysteria, from elective mutism, through unexplained aphasia, disturbance of Broca’s area and other brain disorders. They can be ignited by childbirth, or by fits, which are a thunderstorm of the mind, you see. All the way to something known as akinetic mutism, ataractic palsy.”
“Does it matter what it is? If we can bring her back.”
“That, young lady, is it. If we could but bring her back.”
* * *
When she was calmed, they would bring her the fruits of the garden. She had the apple juice and plum cider, pumpkin soup and lamb hotpot, spiced with cloves and cinnamon. Things from their own garden, water fresh from the Burnfoot Stream. All this seemed to revive her.
And they would wash and clean her, and tell her stories (though she did not reply), of the world she was missing, though they preferred not to speak of the family, as often it brought on the fit. Finally, she would be calm, but the light shone in her eyes, full of the griefs that were passing her by in this strange half-life she was living.
Gradually, the fit would steal upon her again, a trembling absence that started deep within her limbs and emanated outward, washing up and through her like a great wave washing away all their efforts to revive her and retrieve her. She would begin to shake, and they would hold her down (better than let her hurt herself) and press on her tender zones until the fit abated and she was again still, back in that fearful deathlike sleep from which none could predict when she would awake.
Skirtle and Birtle worked together, in a harmony I would not have believed, for they were always at odds over everything else in the house.
* * *
Roxy made his confessions to me at her bedside, and I believe it lightened his soul.
“When she became ill, I was downcast. I was angry, I suppose. She had suffered; but so had I. I could not believe she would abandon me. Was she punishing me? I should have fought her corner: demanded that we hold our child instead of letting the useless doctors spoil even those precious moments. But I am a man of science. I could see no better way to save him. He could not be saved.”
He made these admissions brightly, steadily, with an undercurrent of feeling that made sense of his long melancholy.
“Maybe one day soon they will have the medical wherewithal to do it. Not today. I knew it. She could not believe—understandably, after the sufferings she endured. Ah! Why?” He sighed. “Her illness, I could not credit its severity. How could our lives together end thus? She had promised me her life, and I her mine: in sickness and in health. What could I do but devote myself to her rescue?” He closed his eyes, picturing a wretched regime of neglect. “Third, I must gather physicians and experimenters, to discover treatments, test their efficacy, and deliver them, before her suffering and assiduous efforts at self-nullification might end this fragile existence—which I would never accept. Soon it was clear she would not fight off our efforts to keep her hale and nourished.”
We sat there, looking at her placid features. Beautiful. It was hard to believe she was not there listening to us peacefully. If we could but buy her soul a moment’s peace, perhaps her imagination might take flight again.
* * *
“See?” I laid my hand on his arm. “You have tried.”
“I have tried. You cannot imagine how I have tried. Cannot imagine.” His lips quivered. He covered his face with his hand. “Oh, Molly, excuse my agitation. Many have lost their partners. I should be as resilient as they.”
“Roxy, my friend, that is different. They aren’t tortured by hope.”
* * *
We sat, without a word. I had grown up imagining that those with money had no troubles. But money brings its own problems. And money cannot buy everything. It cannot buy health; it cannot buy you redemption.
I contemplated my lady’s face, which seemed to me, though pale and drawn, unutterably beautiful; and, stupid as it sounds, I felt for the first time the completeness of the family Roxbury. I watched her, her breathing so shallow it seemed she might fade any moment. “Should you not have doctors attending her daily?”
An anguished look passed across his face. “Doctors brought her here. Doubly so: first, by taking her baby; again, by prodding and poking her.” He glanced between Lady Elodie and me. “But we have made progress.”
He enumerated these late breakthroughs with a zealous fervour:
—batteries that hold charge longer, release it more steadily, regulated by capacitors with accurate gauges.
—at West Riding Asylum, hysterics with comparable pathologies: epileptic, mute, comatose, ataractic. Dr Jackson has tested electro-therapies, under Roxy’s direction, and is on the point of achieving the successes they have hoped for.
—in the menagerie, they have tested the impulses on animals from tiny to large, starting with avians, but lately succeeding with mammals too, viz the lethargic orang-utan.
“We have also had failures; though the orang-utan’s recovery has brought Jem joy. Jackson says it must be soon. I have waited as long as I can. No engineer risks lives unnecessarily on untested equipment. But I can wait no longer. If we cannot save her, she is not long for this world.” He looked away a moment. “Patience has noted the days of her disturbance. The coincidence of the fits with the moon’s phases is striking. The full moon falls on 13th November. I should dearly like to have your friends, Villiers and Lawless, with us. I regard them as lucky mascots. All will be arranged. One of us must monitor the Pump House, checking the Burnfoot flow through the sluice, the turbine reaching full power. That is the moment—that is when I must finesse the fateful dark spark.”
I stared at him. This was wild talk. “You sound like an alchemical crank, Roxy.”
“This one doctor I credit, Molly, and I should like you to meet him.” He stood up, and rubbed his eyes. “Would you care to accompany me on a trip? I have an appointment in the West Riding of Yorkshire.”
ASYLUM [MOLLY]
To the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum we travelled. There we were met by an energetic doctor, Hughlings Jackson. Though employed by one of the London universities, Jackson oversaw the programme here: it promised great change. Jackson gave us tea. He was delighted to see the earl so animated.
We lost little time in visiting the doctor’s coterie of patients. One had epilepsy, another lethargy, a third chronic ataraxy. Some were peaceful, some were twitching; some had nurses attending them, stretching them, massaging them, feeding them, treating them with machines and implements. The doctor led us through a corridor to a newer section of the asylum.
ROXBURY WING
I stared at the nameplate. As Roxy went to inspect the rows of batteries aligned there, the electrical equipment, and experimental tubes and phials, the doctor whispered the story to me.
Roxbury’s mother had ended her days here. The old sciences were not able to save her, and Roxbury lamented her living out her last days among lunatics, shut up not just with inoffensive madmen, but with dangerous maniacs, chained and terrible to behold.
He had therefore been a staunch supporter, not just of the treatments that exist, but of the
treatments that will exist, and that ought to.
* * *
Jackson wanted us to see Wide-Eyed Lou. Her real name nobody knew. She had been in the old asylum back before government reforms required records. Abandoned and adrift, she had floated in and out of consciousness for years, barely living.
“Slower and slower she became. We don’t know why. We may never know. We’ve tried this same treatment on two patients with post-partum depression. One is so cheered, she has gone home.”
“And the other?” said Roxy.
Jackson’s face darkened. “But look at this.” He opened the door of Lou’s room. A bright-eyed granny was sitting up in bed, an eye mask pushed up to her forehead, and Les Misérables in her lap.
She put aside her book, and inspected us. “Oh ho, who have we?”
“My dear old girl.” Roxy strode over to her, thunderstruck. “You’re back with us.”
“So they tell me, young Edward.”
As they chattered, Jackson prepared the apparatus. He muttered the names to himself, as a priest might intone his psalmody, or a surgeon his instruments. “Voltaic pile, Cruickshank’s Trough, Stohrer’s battery, Parelle’s battery. Sulphate of mercury, sulphate of lead battery. Galvanic chains, Goldberger and Pulvermacher. Rheophore choices: static electricity, electrise the skin; dynamic electricity, cutaneous galvanisation; induced current, for muscular faradisation.”
The earl stood by. “I’ll have the portable batteries delivered, but I have high hopes for the ribbon battery’s efficacy. I am trying to prevent the jars getting too powerfully charged. Using Lane’s electrometer, one can avert very strong contractions, painful sensations, and exactly the general excitement contra-indicated in these cases.”
“Appreciated, sir.” The doctor glanced my way. “One day, you know, they will call Roxbury’s place the house of electricity. Lou, are you ready?”
“As ever, Doctor,” said the game old bird. “As ever.”
“I shall excite the motricity of your nerves.”
“That’s fine, dear.”
“Then the contractility of the neck muscles.”
“That’s not so nice, is it?”
“That’s right, Lou.” Jackson smiled. “Ready?”
The old lady pulled down her eye mask, the doctor started up the electrostatic influence machine I had seen in Roxy’s lair, and picked up the galvanic chains.
DUCHENNE’S MAGNETO-ELECTRIC APPARATUS
Localized electrisation, and its applications to pathology and therapeutics, by Dr GB Duchenne (third edition).
The intensity of the shocks is regulated by the button and screw, C & D, which serve to bring the magnets and the armature, E & F, nearer to or more distant from each other; but a more effectual regulator is supplied by two copper cylinders, G & G, which envelop the bobbins, and, by means of the graduated rod H, can be drawn off or on to any desired extent.
However favourable the conditions under which muscular electrisation is attempted, it is imprudent to expose the patient to many discharges. Moreover, the operation is always painful, since the cutaneous excitation inseparable from the use of static electricity increases in proportion to the increase of tension.
The therapeutic effects of these apparatus are reputed, among French medical practitioners, to be beneficial in several classes of maladies, especially cases of paralysis.
SHOWDOWN [LAWLESS]
The rain was an affront. Shivers seized me, as we emerged on to the platform. No sign of Jem, with the phaeton and his favourite horses to speed us to Roxbury. Lodestar was fuming.
The stationmaster called us over. Jem had left the phaeton for us, and gone off. Something to do with the rain, he said.
Lodestar tugged me roughly out to the phaeton. The horses were restive, huddling against the station walls.
I tugged my coat around me. My head was swirling. “Are we going up to the house?”
“Didn’t you say,” he said with his suavest smile, “you’d like to see the Pump House? I can show you what I’ve been working on.”
He was right, that was what I had wanted. But I couldn’t get my thoughts clear: it was a risk, going alone with him, and I felt my powers of resistance at their lowest ebb. I tumbled into the vehicle, as if it were a longed-for bed.
I felt I would never be warm.
* * *
“Don’t move.” Lodestar stopped at the glasshouse. The horses were sweating and the wheels muddy. The last thing I remember was the road from the station, all but blocked by the rains, as if to cut the house off from civilisation. I must have fallen asleep, as Lodestar drove wildly into the storm.
What was wrong with me? My eyes stung, and my head hung heavy. I should be thinking, planning, ready for the hour ahead, but the rain battering down seemed to pierce right through me. Poor Jem, walking home in this.
Lodestar threw something on to the luggage plate and leapt back in. He swept us onward up the hill. He stopped the horses halfway up the road between house and glasshouses. I recognised the place: where you crossed to the Pump House.
I felt sick in the stomach. I’d vowed to stay close by him, to keep my discoveries to myself, and to keep him from the house, but I have misjudged my powers. We neared the gorge, to cross to the Pump House, where Ruth and Molly and Roxbury had passed an afternoon of such friendship; such bright days seemed a long time gone in this downpour. I had to gather my wits.
I stumbled. Lodestar grabbed me with one arm; the other held an animal cage. I thanked him for his help, without understanding why I needed help. I glanced back, from house to glasshouse, from me to Lodestar.
“You and I,” I muttered, “are like the house and the scientific quarter, locked in a balance of magnetism and power.”
He laughed at my incoherent philosophising. He dragged me onward toward the river.
* * *
I woke again. I was sick. I couldn’t stand. We were in a shed. Levers at the door, affixed wires along the rough stone walls, equipment on tables and an old bureau. I could hear water rushing past. The Pump House? Yes, I had made good on my appointment. The air was musty: I wanted to go outside, into the fresh rain, but I couldn’t even wipe my face.
“I don’t understand.” I was groggy, struggling to form my words, wretched to the pit of my stomach. It was pouring outside and I was soaked to the skin. “What’s happened?”
Lodestar’s silhouette appeared in the doorway, against the lights of the house, behind him, across the gorge. He walked in, peered at me, examining my face as if I were a fungus.
I shook myself, trying to wake my addled senses. My hands wouldn’t move. My feet the same. “What the devil?”
A bucket, emptied of its water, rolled back and forth on the concrete floor. He had thrown it over me to wake me. A strange animal, like an outsized hare, rocked back and forth in its cage, panting disquieted. He had tied it, trussed its limbs like a Sunday joint. Only then did I realise, he had done the same to me. My hands were bound behind my back.
“What’s happened?” I kicked and kicked again. I only made the chair teeter.
My feet were tied together. I looked up at him, dark against the doorway, and only now realised I was lost. How could my memory play such games with me? “What have you done to me? Please, I don’t understand.”
“No, my friend. I don’t understand.” He leaned in the doorway, still exuding the suavity that first won me over to him. “What I don’t understand is why you’re here. You could have run off with Bertie. You could have escaped with your life. Why ever did you come?”
My heart sank. What had I revealed on the train? I’d been off guard, dismayed to find I’d been wrong all along. In trying to be vigilant, I have been complicit with murderers and terrorists. Complicit with Lodestar. My only hope was to delay, and delay long enough for help to come. I must strike at his arrogance. “To arrest you.”
“Please.” He laughed. “Why not arrest me in London, where a thousand idiot coppers would help you?”
&nbs
p; “The proof of your crimes is here.”
A derisive snort exploded from him. “That’s what I love about this job. You never know what the evening will bring. This morning, I woke up. I ate, I shat, I fornicated. I caught a train. Just another meeting, I thought. Some fool to dominate. Then up you spring: a policeman, in place of an engineer. Oho, I thought, something is astir. You looked so sick on the boat. What a disappointment. Was there no worthy adversary they could send? If this was to be it, must it be you? Such a pushover?”
“I haven’t proved a pushover.”
He let the situation speak for itself.
I wriggled miserably at my bonds. “I knew more than you realised.”
“True. This morning, I didn’t know I’d have to kill you.” He took an apple from his pocket and bit into it. “If that gives you comfort.”
I felt I would vomit. He must have poisoned me. I felt so far on the way to death, I almost wished it was over. He had played his tricks and played me false; he let me think I fooled him, when my bluffing was plain as day. I had no stomach for his game. No sleeves to hide my cards up. I could only play my hand. I would tell him all I knew: how clever he has been to hoodwink us all. He will like that: how brilliantly he has outwitted us.
I breathed deep. “This morning, when I knew your secret, it was as if you noticed me for the first time. You had talked to me, sure, at your coffee house. Charmed me, flattered me; but you hoodwink fools daily. Today, when I knew you were not Lodestar, not the real Lodestar, you took note.”
He looked at me without pity.
“You can’t kill me. You won’t kill me, with Bertie coming.”
He considered this. “Doesn’t matter two hoots. You’re expendable. Bertie knows it. Why did he let you come on with me?”
“Why kill me here? You could have stabbed me on the train, or thrown me in the river.”
“And been discovered. A touch obvious.”
Lawless and the House of Electricity Page 34