Maid Marian, and Other Stories

by Molly Elliot Seawell

"Yes. Go and tell Sam to come here at once, and then go home yourself. You'll have another touch of rheumatism if you go out in this weather. I shall speak to Thorburn about it."

The doctor was a man of authority; so Priscilla, after sending Sam over, and returning only to be sharply ordered about her business, went home. Mr. Thorburn was later than usual that night. A strike was threatened among the brick makers, and they had said they would treat with him and with no one else. He was troubled and harassed—and, contrary to the custom of some women in like circumstances, Priscilla did not choose grewsome stories, like strange women fainting in the street, to entertain him—so nothing was said of the somewhat tragic occurrence of the afternoon. Next morning he was off bright and early, Priscilla making no mention of her aching joints. Before night the doctor's promised touch of rheumatism had set in. Priscilla made light of it, but agreed to send for Dr. Forman, and insisted that Thorburn should attend to the business of averting the strike. Instead of coming himself, young Dr. Curtis, Dr. Forman's assistant, came. Dr. Forman had a very ill patient. Mrs. Thorburn inquired eagerly about the woman who had dropped in the street. Dr. Curtis had heard Dr. Forman say something about it, but supposed it was all right, as he had heard nothing further on the subject. Mrs. Thorburn would be all right too if she would stay in the house in bad weather, and take care of herself.

The incident made no very particular impression on Priscilla. But on the night after it had happened, Dr. Sunbury got a very pressing message from Dr. Forman. He went at once to the doctor's house, picking his way through the dark November night; and Dr. Forman opened the door himself, and led the way into his little back office, where he told his visitor of the patient he had found in the street, and who at that moment lay up-stairs in the doctor's spare bedroom, with the doctor's housekeeper in attendance on her.

"And—she—is—" Dr. Forman hesitated. A strange pallor was upon his homely, good-natured face, and his voice was tremulous. He took a moment or two to recover himself, and then burst out: "She is—the first wife of Mr. Thorburn."

Dr. Sunbury rose from his chair and fell back in it again. He raised his hand as if in denunciation. "May God—"

"Wait. He is as guiltless as you are." Dr. Forman paused a minute or two, and then took up the thread of his discourse where he had left off describing his sending Priscilla Thorburn home. "I brought her, with my man's help, into the house, and had her put in bed. It was plainly nothing but a faint; but she went from one fainting spell into another, and when I had finally brought her round, the fainting spell changed into convulsions. For hours I worked with her. At last I stopped them, and got her under the influence of an opiate. I was tired myself, and went to bed to get a few hours' sleep, leaving word for Curtis to be called. In the middle of the night I was waked by Jane standing by my bedside, looking frightened out of her wits. 'Do, pray, Dr. Forman, come to the strange lady.' When I got to the room she was lying in the bed, weak, but perfectly conscious. She intimated to me that she wished to say something to me privately. Of course I tried to induce her to put it off, but she was determined.

"I saw that she was no ordinary woman—she had been beautiful—and she was still comely. And she had that air of melancholy command that those who are in the crisis of tremendous misfortunes only have. So I sent Jane out of the room. Then she said, in the calmest possible way, 'Doctor, I am the first wife of Edmund Thorburn.' I was incredulous, and thought her crazy, the more so that the next thing she told was that she had been for the last six years in a lunatic asylum. But when she told me her story I saw that she was at that moment as sane as I was. And such a story!" Dr. Forman, a stolid man usually, took out his handkerchief and buried his face in it, and an occasional sob escaped from him. Dr. Sunbury put his hand to his eyes, as the doctor gasped out at intervals. "They were so happy! She had given up everything to marry him, and wanted him to give up his parish because it did not suit him, and to take some such charge as East Harrowby, and to share his poverty with him—she, delicately nurtured and finely bred. And then came the terrible illness, and a still more terrible blank; and then, after years which are as nothing in her mind, a return, an awakening, a resurrection to life and the most perfect felicity, so she thought—poor thing, poor thing!—and when she got here, to East Harrowby, she was so overcome with the happiness in store for them, that she felt her heart would burst if she saw him too suddenly—she wandered about, waiting until dusk to go to his house, and to throw herself in her husband's arms—"

Dr. Forman paused for a long time. Then presently recovering himself, he suddenly fell into his calm, professional tone.

"No family taint—violent fever, followed by more violent insanity, and likely to result in a cure." After a moment he continued: "She, of course, remembered nothing of her first attack. She called it insanity; nothing insane in her way of speaking of it, using just the same terms you or I would, without evasion, and supposes now that from certain faint recollections her cure had begun about the time of the asylum fire. She remembers something of the scene, and the next thing finding herself shivering and half clad in a railway train. She remembers nothing more until she became an inmate of the Central Lunatic Asylum. There were no means of identifying her for a long time. She had been supplied with clothes by charitable people on the train. No inquiries were made about her, which she could not understand until I told her of her supposed death. She was called Mrs. March, because it was in the month of March that she was brought to the asylum. Her recovery was gradual, but it is a common experience with such persons that their own names and individuality is the last for the restored mind to grasp. About six months ago she became perfectly herself. She felt an entirely sane and rational doubt of herself, until time had tested it; but about a month ago she gave such information of herself as led to a letter being written to Brightwood, where Thorburn had a church at the time of her illness. Thorburn was not there, but an answer was received saying he was at East Harrowby. They wrote again. That letter could never have been delivered, and, after waiting four weeks for an answer, Mrs. Thorburn persuaded the superintendent to allow her to come here with an attendant to find her friends. The attendant found some acquaintances, and began to gossip with them. Mrs. Thorburn tells me that she felt shame and horror at returning to her husband's house accompanied by a keeper; so she slipped off, and met Priscilla. You know the rest."

Dr. Sunbury sat looking like a man paralyzed. "Well?"