by Mike Ashley
‘But did the attendant say nothing of her?’ was my next question. ‘Someone must have left the poor child there. Was no one with her?’
‘A man and woman brought her there sometime earlier, miss, so the attendant said, and they put her on the seat, and the man said to the attendant that they were going to look after their luggage and come back for her soon. She was conscious, then, looking about her sort of strange, the attendant thought, and then presently she seemed to drop asleep, and the attendant being busy forgot all about her till three hours had gone by. Then she found the child had fainted or something, and she called to mind that the people had never come back for her, so she fetched me in.’
‘You looked for these people, I suppose?’
‘High and low, miss, and couldn’t find a trace of them. Case of desertion maybe. The attendant said the man was a queer-looking chap and spoke with a curious sort of accent. She thought maybe they were foreigners. But whether or no, that is so that they had disappeared, and the child seemed so ill that I brought her here.’
That was all that we could learn of the poor little thing, and, as without a doubt she was very ill, nothing remained but to keep her in the hospital and do our utmost for her.
There were no marks of identification upon her clothing, which was of a coarse and rough make, the garments oddly shaped and unusual in appearance. In her pocket was a shabby little purse, but it was empty, and nothing could be discovered anywhere about her that would give the faintest clue as to who she was or where she came from.
Our little patient lay day after day in that strange torpor of utter unconsciousness from which only one thing seemed to stir her. If anyone attempted to take from her the great doll she clasped in her arms she would rouse up into a kind of temporary wakefulness and an excitement that was very bad for her, only to sink back immediately into her former state of unconsciousness. Strict injunctions were issued to the nurses never to touch the waxen beauty, and so the strange couple remained silently in the corner bed – the white-faced unconscious child with the halo of dusky hair and the rosy, fair-haired doll, whose staring blue eyes were forever wide open, gazing vacantly into space.
‘Acute brain disturbance following upon severe shock or strain’ was the only diagnosis at which any of us were able to arrive, and beyond feeding the lonely little being thus cast into our midst, and keeping her as quiet and comfortable as possible, nothing more could be done for her. The people who had left her in the waiting-room at King’s Cross had neither been seen nor heard of again. The child might have been dropped from the clouds for all connection she appeared to have with anybody.
A week went by, and, though my interest in the child was quite unabated, the coming hospital meeting, with its attendant festivities, absorbed a good deal of my time and thoughts – more especially as we were very anxious that our wards should show themselves at their best to the distinguished foreigner who was coming with the treasurer, Mr Darcy. Rumour had it that the visitor was a certain Russian lady of very high lineage and very great importance who was living in London for a time and was particularly desirous of learning all that she could of the methods and management of English hospitals with a view to improving those in her own land.
On the day before the meeting, when I went my morning rounds, the little patient who so much interested me was, as before, quite unconscious, but when I entered the ward in the evening for my second visit, Sister approached me with an odd look of excitement on her face.
‘She is conscious,’ was her eager exclamation – and it was not necessary for her to explain who was meant by ‘she’.
‘Conscious!’ I answered with equal eagerness. ‘Has she spoken? Has she said anything to give us a clue as to her identity?’
‘She has spoken several times – in fact, she has said a good deal and seems to want to tell us something, but none of us can understand a word she says.’
I made no response, for by this time I was beside the child’s bed, noting intently the change that had taken place in her since the morning. Her face had lost some of its deadly whiteness, there was a touch of colour in it now, and her eyes were wide open, great dark eyes that looked up into mine with a wistful, almost agonized expression, most pitiful in so young a child.
‘What is it, dear?’ I said, gently smoothing back her soft dark curls. ‘Tell me what you feel – and what I can do for you.’
A still more distressing look shot into her eyes, her brows drew together, she shook her head vehemently and poured out a torrent of words in a language of which I could not understand a single syllable.
I shook my head and replied slowly that I could not understand her, repeating the same statement in French and German, but these languages were evidently as unintelligible to her as was English, and the trouble in her eyes deepened. I did my best to soothe her and spoke in reassuring accents, hoping that the very tones of my voice might have a calming effect, and I think they did quiet her, for her face grew less troubled, and, when I smiled at her, she smiled faintly in return.
Thinking I would try to establish a more friendly relation between us I laid my hand on the flaxen head of the doll that was still cuddled in her arms, and smiled encouragingly. But my action brought such an extraordinary change to the child’s face that I was positively alarmed. She turned literally livid with what seemed like the most deadly fear. Her lips quivered, her eyes grew round and horror-stricken and she snatched the doll from my hand as if my touch were a defiling one, drawing her big waxen baby under the bedclothes and glaring at me with a glance in which defiance and fear were strangely mingled.
I spoke reassuringly again and smiled, but I saw a little shiver run through the small frame, and I thought I had better leave my little patient to sleep off her excitement, though I was puzzled to account for its cause.
I was puzzled also to imagine what language she had spoken, and I determined that as soon as possible I would ask a friend, who was an excellent linguist, to come and visit the ward and discover the nationality of our strange patient. But my friend’s intervention was, after all, unnecessary, for the dénouement of the whole episode was not the least extraordinary part of it.
The day of our Annual Meeting was warm, clear and delicious – as perfect a June day as heart could desire – and even our scrubby patch of ground, dignified by the name of garden, looked bright and festive. Before three o’clock we were all ready to receive our grand company. The wards were gay with flowers, the patients lay smiling and happy under superlatively clean quilts, prepared to enjoy themselves to the full and to revel in criticizing the gowns of our lady visitors.
It so happened that an anxious case in one of our wards kept me away from the meeting, but as I was preparing to go downstairs to its conclusion and find some guests to escort over the building Sister Clara hurried up to me.
‘Miss Deane,’ she said quickly, ‘please come and see poor little Twenty.’ (This was our young patient who, being nameless, we were obliged to designate by the number of her bed.) ‘She has been quiet all the morning, but now she is so restless and apparently delirious that we can do nothing with her.’
This was a confession seldom heard from the lips of so experienced and capable a nurse as our senior sister, and I instantly went with her into her ward. When I reached Twenty I saw at once that my patient was suffering, either from some fresh brain disturbance or from some severe recrudescence of the old one. She was sitting up in bed, her dark hair tossed wildly over her shoulders, her face flushed deeply, her eyes startlingly big and bright.
With one arm she clutched her big doll in a sort of feverish, desperate fashion; with the other she was gesticulating eagerly, almost, I should have said, despairingly, and all the time she talked, on and on and on, in a high clear voice perfectly audible all over the ward. Her words poured out with fearful rapidity, but they were, as before, perfectly unintelligible, and every moment her accents grew more emphatic, more excited and, if one could say so of so young a child, more full
of some terrible despair. She looked at each of us in turn with a perfectly heart-rending appeal in her face.
No efforts of mine to calm the poor little girl had the slightest effect and, fearful lest actual and acute mania should be the result of her overwhelming excitement, I turned quickly from the bed to write a prescription for a soothing draught to be given her at once.
‘All the extra stir and movement in the ward today will be very bad for her,’ I said to Sister Clara. ‘I think we must try to move her into a private ward, if –’
I had been going to say ‘if there is time’ when my sentence was interrupted by the opening of the ward door and the entrance of Mr Darcy, the treasurer, and his most distinguished guests.
‘We rather pride ourselves on this ward, madam,’ he was saying. ‘There is nothing quite like it in London.’
A soft and singularly pleasant voice answered him, and, looking up, I saw by his side a tall and very beautiful woman whose stately height and graceful movements made one think of princesses in fiction. Behind her was a short dark lady whose face struck me as vaguely familiar and whose eyes held a wistful anguished look that reminded me of someone – someone – who was it they reminded me of? I wondered, while I listened to the treasurer’s well-turned sentences.
‘We shall hope to persuade Your Serene Highness,’ he was saying suavely when, all at once, across the gracefully rounded periods of his sentence, there struck a torrent of words in a high, clear childish voice.
For a few seconds since the entrance of the visitors our little patient had been silent. Now, suddenly, that strange outpouring of words began again – the piteous, despairing sounds which, incomprehensible as they were to me, yet wrung my heart. The treasurer glanced around with a frown, but the distinguished stranger made a quick step forward and uttered a low exclamation.
‘What is that?’ she said in her pretty broken English. ‘Who speaks? Why do they speak Russian?’
Russian! It was Russian the child was speaking, and this great lady was her fellow countrywoman. If only she would condescend to speak to the child, perhaps, I reflected, she would succeed in calming her, perhaps …
But while the thought had still barely flashed across my brain, the lady of whom I was thinking swept across the ward, her face alight and eager.
‘May I see this patient?’ she asked. ‘It is so strange to hear my own tongue here in your English hospital. May I see her?’
Sister Clara drew back the screen, and the great lady passed through, followed by the other lady, who was evidently a lady-in-waiting or someone of that description. The child, as before, was sitting bolt upright in bed, gesticulating wildly and talking, talking, talking – and I saw a look of intense bewilderment flash over the great lady’s face.
‘She says strange things,’ I heard her murmur, and then, as the other lady moved behind the screen and came into full view of the child, a most extraordinary thing happened. With a gasping, passionate cry she pressed past her mistress and flung herself on her knees beside the bed, her face aflame with indescribable emotion. She caught the child’s hands and covered them with kisses, speaking to her in the low caressing accents of intense love.
The bewilderment of the great lady’s face deepened. She put a hand on her companion’s shoulder.
‘Matushka,’ she said almost sternly and in French, ‘what is this? Is the little one your child?’
‘My child – mine – mine,’ the other cried in the same language. ‘They sent her to me, and she never came. I lost her, my treasure, my heart’s delight, my little Vera, whom I have not seen for two long years.’
And then she turned back to the child and drew her into her arms, kissing her and talking to her in soft cooing accents that seemed to soothe the poor little mite into a strange peace. But I noticed that the great lady’s face was still curiously set and stern and that her eyes looked sadly down at the woman and the child, and presently she asked if she might hear all the story of the little one’s submission to the hospital.
‘We may go to your room, perhaps, Miss Deane?’ the treasurer said courteously, his usual talkativeness and pomposity quite quelled by the odd events taking place about him.
‘But I … I must stay here,’ said the kneeling woman by the bed.
And her mistress answered quickly, ‘Yes, you must stay there.’ And her eyes flashed so strangely that I was startled.
She and the treasurer and I were soon in my room, and when the door was shut the Russian lady turned to me and said slowly, ‘You do not know what the child said in her delirium?’
‘No, madam,’ I answered. ‘Until today I did not even know what language she spoke.’
‘And the doll she carries, you have noticed nothing remarkable about that?’
‘Nothing, except that she is so devoted to it she will never let anyone touch it or take it from her.’
‘Poor little child! Poor little child!’ the lady said, her severity softening. ‘To think that men and women should give their difficult tasks to the children. That little girl’s brain is turned because of her doll.’
‘Because of her doll?’ I stammered.
‘Yes. Do you know what she cried out in her delirium? She cried out that no one must touch the doll; no one must look at it; that the custom-house officers must let it pass; that the police must not open its head!’
‘Open its head!’ I exclaimed, feeling more mystified every moment.
‘Ah, it is hard for you to understand such things in your free country, your happy country of freedom,’ she said with a great sigh. ‘In her doll’s head that little girl carries important, all-important Nihilist papers. I know not yet to whom she was taking them nor with whom she travelled nor who left her here. This is yet to learn. But, I have learned,’ her face grew very stern again, ‘that Matushka, my own dame de compagnie, is the mother of a child who is employed to carry these documents. And I … I trusted her!’
The ending was so pathetic, the beautiful face grew suddenly so sorrowful, that I longed to say something comforting, but she drew herself up quickly and added, ‘We must set to work now to learn the truth. My trust has been misplaced.’
Indeed, it had been greatly misplaced. Subsequent investigation brought strange facts to light – but though it took many weeks to unravel the whole of the strange story it all became clear at last. The parents of little Vera were Nihilists of a most advanced and dangerous type, and the poor little child had been used by them as a tool. Her father, having been involved in a most dastardly and terrible plot against the Tsar had, two years before this story opens, been sent to Siberia. Her mother fled precipitately from Russia and, being unable to take with her both her children, left Vera with friends in St Petersburg and took only her baby boy to Paris. There she contrived to pass as a friend and upholder of the Russian government and actually insinuated herself not only into the service but into the affection of the beautiful and distinguished lady who had visited the hospital.
Two years passed. She was now in England when tidings came to her that her little girl was being sent over from Russia bearing with her papers of the most supreme importance which she should take to the house of some Nihilists living in London.
Vera left Russia with a party of emigrants, the papers safely hidden in her doll’s head, and what agonies of apprehension were endured by the child over the custom house and the police, her terrible illness showed only too plainly. She arrived at King’s Cross with her conductors in safety, and they left her in the waiting-room while claiming their luggage.
And then the unexpected happened. They were arrested by the police on information given by Russian secret-service agents and, fearing for the safety of the papers little Vera carried, they abstained from mentioning the child at all, and by this means she came into our hands at the hospital. Her mother was found to be associated with the anarchical party in various more-or-less serious plots and was handed over to the police of her own country.
But little Vera has become one
of the household of that distinguished and beautiful lady, who is goodness and tenderness itself to the plucky little soul.
Only one sign remains of the strain the child underwent: she has never been known to look at or touch a doll again.
Carolyn Wells
A POINT OF TESTIMONY
We end with Carolyn Wells (1862–1942), an American poet, anthologist and writer who, though an almost exact contemporary of Anna Katharine Green (whose work inspired Wells to turn from children’s books to mysteries), has been almost completely forgotten. Some have attributed this to the fact that she was probably too prolific for her own good, having produced around 170 books, eighty-two of which were mysteries. The consequence of this output is that, though many of the novels contain ingenious plots and ideas, they suffer from being hastily written. Yet Wells knew her subject, and she was the first to write a ‘how to’ volume, The Technique of the Mystery Story (1913). Her forte was really the short story, of which she didn’t write enough. Though she had been almost totally deaf from the age of six after a bout of scarlet fever, she nevertheless developed a good rhythm in her work and a feel for language. She also had a sharp wit, which works better in her stories than novels. Most of her novels feature the bibliophilic detective Fleming Stone, but the story presented here (from the October 1911 edition of Adventure) features the shrewd and inspiring mind of socialite Bert Bayliss.
A Point of Testimony
I
BERT BAYLISS WAS the funniest detective you ever saw. He wasn’t the least like Vidocq, Lecoq or Sherlock either in personality or mentality. And perhaps the chief difference lay in the fact that he possessed a sense of humour, and that not merely an appreciative sense either. He had an original wit and a spontaneous repartee that made it well nigh impossible for him to be serious.