St. Martin's Eve: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"What first gave rise to the suspicion in my mind?" repeated Frederick. "Why, I don't suppose I ever should have thought of it but for--but I forgot to tell you that," he broke off, suddenly remembering that he had omitted to mention what Rose Darling had told him at Belport.

He related it now. The assertions of the nurse Brayford that Mrs. Carleton was mad; her terror at the sight of the lighted lanterns in the Flemish town on St. Martin's Eve. Still Mr. Pym said nothing: he only took out a note-book and entered something in it.

"Can you not help us, Mr. Pym? Do you not think she must be insane?"

"I cannot say that. But I may tell you that I have always feared it for her."

"Her father died mad, you wrote word to the dean."

"He died raving mad. You have confided in me, and I see no reason why I should not tell you all I know--premising, of course, that it must not be repeated. His madness, as I gathered at the time, was hereditary; but he had been (unlike his daughter) perfectly well all his life, betraying no symptoms of it. I was sent for in haste one night to Norris Court. I was only a young man then--thirty, perhaps; I'm turned sixty now. My predecessor and late partner, Mr. Jevons, had been the usual attendant there, but he had retired from business, and was very infirm. I thought I was wanted for Mrs. Norris, whom I was to attend in her approaching confinement; but when I reached the Court, I found what it was. Mr. Norris had suddenly become mad; utterly, unmistakably mad; and Mrs. Norris, poor thing, was nearly as much so with terror. He had always been of a remarkably jealous disposition; some slight incident had caused him to become that day jealous of his wife, without, I am certain, the least foundation, and after an awful scene, he attempted her life with his razor. In her endeavour to escape from him, she dashed her hand through a mirror, whether accidentally or purposely she could not afterwards remember. Never shall I forget her dismay and terror when I reached the Court. Her husband was tolerably quiet then; exhausted, no doubt, from violence; and his own man, James, was keeping guard over him. That night we had to put him into a strait-waistcoat. Mrs. Norris, poor young lady--and she was not twenty then--cried most bitterly as she told me the tale of her husband's jealousy. She could not imagine what had given rise to it. She had only received some gentleman, a friend of theirs who had often called, and had sat and talked with him in the drawing-room, as she would with any other visitor; but the jealousy, as I explained to her, preceded the attack of madness. In three or four days the child Charlotte was born. I took the baby in to Mr. Norris, thinking it might possibly have a soothing effect upon him. It had just the contrary--though it is unnecessary to recall minor particulars now. He had seemed better that day, quite collected, and his servant had removed the strait-waistcoat. An accession of violence came on at sight of the child; he sprang out of bed and attempted to seize it; I put the baby down under the bed, while I helped James to overpower his master; but it was the hardest struggle I had ever been engaged in. Mr. Norris never was calm afterwards, and died in a few days, raving mad."

"But," interrupted the dean, "how was it possible to keep this state of things from transpiring in the house? The domestics understood, I believe, that their master died of fever."

"True, Dr. Beauclerc. Fortunately the room to which Mr. Norris was taken was shut in by other surrounding apartments, and no sound penetrated beyond it. The servants were kept away by a hint of infection; a confidential man from an asylum was had in to assist James and take turn in watching--the servants supposing him to be merely a sick-nurse. Poor Mrs. Norris entreated for her child's sake that the nature of its father's malady might be suppressed, if possible; and the secret was kept. Whether it was well in the long-run that it should be so kept, I have often asked myself."

Mr. Pym paused in thought. Frederick St. John interrupted it.

"You say this madness was hereditary?"