Sevenoaks Part 7

"You see, we can't give 'em much furnitur'," said Mrs. Buffum. "They break it, and they tear their beds to pieces, and all we can do is to jest keep them alive. As for keepin' their bodies and souls together, I don't s'pose they've got any souls. They are nothin' but animils, as you say, and I don't see why any body should treat an animil like a human bein.' They hav'n't no sense of what you do for 'em."

"Oh, ye needn't be afraid o' my blowin'. I never blowed about old Tilden, as you call 'im, an' I never expect to," said Jim.

"That's right," wheezed Mr. Buffum. "It's just as well."

"Well, I s'pose the Doctor'll be up in the mornin'," said Mrs. Buffum, "and we shall clean up a little, and put in new straw, and p'r'aps you can go round with him?"

Mr. Buffum nodded his a.s.sent, and after an evening spent in story-telling and chaffing, Jim went to bed upon the shakedown in an upper room to which he was conducted.

Long before he was on his feet in the morning, the paupers of the establishment had been fed, and things had been put in order for the medical inspector. Soon after breakfast, the Doctor's crazy little gig was seen ascending the hill, and Mr. Buffum and Jim were at the door when he drove up. Buffum took the Doctor aside, and told him of Jim's desire to make the rounds with him. Nothing could have delighted the little man more than a proposition of this kind, because it gave him an opportunity to talk. Jim had measured his man when he heard him speak the previous day, and as they crossed the road together, he said: "Doctor, they didn't treat ye very well down there yesterday. I said to myself; 'Jim Fenton, what would ye done if ye had knowed as much as that doctor, an' had worked as hard as he had, and then be'n jest as good as stomped on by a set o' fellows that didn't know a hole in the ground when they seen it?' and, says I, answerin' myself, 'ye'd 'a' made the fur fly, and spilt blood.'"

"Ah," responded the Doctor, "Violence resteth in the bosom of fools."

"Well, it wouldn't 'a' rested in my bosom long. I'd 'a' made a young 'arthquake there in two minutes."

The Doctor smiled, and said with a sigh:

"The vulgar mind does not comprehend science."

"Now, jest tell me what science is," said Jim. "I hearn a great deal about science, but I live up in the woods, and I can't read very much, and ye see I ain't edicated, and I made up my mind if I ever found a man as knowed what science was, I'd ask him."

"Science, sir, is the sum of organized and systematized knowledge,"

replied the Doctor.

"Now, that seems reasomble," said Jim, "but what is it like? What do they do with it? Can a feller get a livin' by it?"

"Not in Sevenoaks," replied the Doctor, with a bitter smile.

"Then, what's the use of it?"

"Pardon me, Mr. Fenton," replied the Doctor. "You'll excuse me, when I veil you that you have not arrived at that mental alt.i.tude--that intellectual plane--"

"No," said Jim, "I live on a sort of a medder."

The case being hopeless, the Doctor went on and opened the door into what he was pleased to call "the insane ward." As Jim put his head into the door, he uttered a "phew!" and then said:

"This is worser nor the town meetin'."

The moment Jim's eyes beheld the misery that groaned out its days and nights within the stingy cells, his great heart melted with pity. For the first moments, his disposition to jest pa.s.sed away, and all his soul rose up in indignation. If profane words came to his lips, they came from genuine commiseration, and a sense of the outrage that had been committed upon those who had been stamped with the image of the Almighty.

"This is a case of Shakspearean madness," said Dr. Radcliffe, pausing before the barred and grated cell that held a half-nude woman. It was a little box of a place, with a rude bedstead in one corner, filthy beyond the power of water to cleanse. The occupant sat on a little bench in another corner, with her eyes rolled up to Jim's in a tragic expression, which would make the fortune of an actress. He felt of his hair, impulsively.

"How are ye now? How do ye feel?" inquired Jim, tenderly.

She gave him no answer, but glared at him as if she would search the very depths of his heart.

"If ye'll look t'other way, ye'll obleege me," said Jim.

But the woman gazed on, speechless, as if all the soul that had left her brain had taken up its residence in her large, black eyes.

"Is she tryin' to look me out o' countenance, Doctor?" Inquired Jim, "'cause, if she is, I'll stand here and let 'er try it on; but if she ain't I'll take the next one."

"Oh, she doesn't know what she's about, but it's a very curious form of insanity, and has almost a romantic interest attached to it from the fact that it did not escape the notice of the great bard."

"I notice, myself," said Jim, "that she's grated and barred."

The Doctor looked at his visitor inquisitively, but the woodman's face was as innocent as that of a child. Then they pa.s.sed on to the next cell, and there they found another Woman sitting quietly in the corner, among the straw.

"How fare ye, this mornin'?" inquired Jim, with a voice full of kindness.

"I'm just on the verge of eternity," replied the woman.

"Don't ye be so sure o' that, now," responded Jim. "Ye're good for ten year yit."

"No," said the woman, "I shall die in a minute."

"Does she mean that?" inquired Jim, turning to the Doctor.

"Yes, and she has been just on the verge of eternity for fifteen years,"

replied the Doctor, coolly. "That's rather an interesting case, too.

I've given it a good deal of study. It's hopeless, of course, but it's a marked case, and full of suggestion to a scientific man."

"Isn't it a pity," responded Jim, "that she isn't a scientific man herself? It might amuse her, you know."

The Doctor laughed, and led him on to the next cell, and here he found the most wretched creature he had ever seen. He greeted her as he had greeted the others, and she looked up to him with surprise, raised herself from the straw, and said:

"You speak like a Christian."

The tears came into Jim's eyes, for he saw in that little sentence, the cruelty of the treatment she had received.

"Well, I ain't no Christian, as I knows on," he responded, "an' I don't think they're very plenty in these parts; but I'm right sorry for ye.

You look as if you might be a good sort of a woman."

"I should have been if it hadn't been for the pigeons," said the woman.

"They flew over a whole day, in flocks, and flocks, and cursed the world. All the people have got the plague, and they don't know it. My children all died of it, and went to h.e.l.l. Everybody is going to h.e.l.l, and nothing can save them. Old Buffum'll go first. Robert Belcher'll go next. Dr. Radcliffe will go next."

"Look here, old woman, ye jest leave me out of that calkerlation," said Jim.

"Will you have the kindness to kill me, sir?" said the woman.

"I really can't, this mornin'," he replied, "for I've got a good ways to tramp to-day; but if I ever want to kill anybody I'll come round, p'r'aps, and 'commodate ye."

"Thank you," she responded heartily.

The Doctor turned to Jim, and said:

"Do you see that hole in the wall, beyond her head? Well, that hole was made by Mr. Buffum. She had begged him to kill her so often that he thought he would put her to the test, and he agreed he would do so. So he set her up by that wall, and took a heavy stick from the wood-pile, raised it as high as the room would permit, and then brought it down with great violence, burying the end of the bludgeon in the plastering.

I suppose he came within three inches of her head, and she never winked.

It was a very interesting experiment, as it ill.u.s.trated the genuineness of her desire for death Otherwise the case is much like many others."