But the mistress's bedridden father is a fiction. The rooms in reality are occupied by the son of the house—a son whom, owing to his terrible disfigurement, it would have been more merciful to have strangled at his birth, but who has been loved and reared and tended to live apart from his fellow-men.
The unhappy young man's sisters have never seen him. It would not be right that they should be allowed to look upon a terrible affliction which, in common parlance, is called "a freak of nature." Only the father and mother, the two attendants, and the family doctor know how terrible the affliction is, or how shocking is the tragedy the unhappy parents are guarding in the "secret chambers" of their home.
All the "freaks," all the strange deformities, are not the offspring of poor parents, who permit them to be seen or exhibited. The joined twins, the side-show phenomena of nature, are born in all ranks of society.
Only now and again does the world know of the tragedy—for tragedy it is—in the family circle of the well-to-do.
The "misfortune" is concealed. Every precaution is taken against publicity.
Sometimes the "afflicted" member of the family is sent away to be guarded and cared for in a medically-superintended home specially arranged for the reception of such "patients."
There is a London doctor who has a home of this sort. If you were conducted over it, and saw its inmates, you would think that he must have nerves of iron to pass his life in such weird companionship. Young, middle-aged, and old, the patients are every one of them so marred by nature that ordinary life among their fellow-creatures is impossible.
Once in my life, trespassing in a private wood in search of primroses, I came suddenly upon a group of human beings so strange in their appearance, so awful, that for a moment I believed that I was the victim of an hallucination.
It was only when a gentleman came hurriedly up to me, demanding to know what I wanted, and I had explained that I had only trespassed in search of wild flowers, that I learnt the wood formed part of the grounds of a private asylum in which the "afflicted" members of wealthy families were received. I understood then what the terrible scene I had witnessed meant, and I hastened to apologize for my unintentional intrusion.
But a mother's love is not for beauty of form or soundness of mind, and so it frequently happens that the suffering one is dearer to her than all, and is never allowed to be taken from her fostering care.