Next day it snowed. It was by now mid-November and Morgan and I sat at breakfast watching through the window as the heavy flakes began to carpet the lawns in front of the house, and he said, ‘That’s all you’re going to see for the next few months. Take my word for it, it’ll be like this until February now. It’s the same every year.’
I could have told him how little it bothered me, how anything that increased our isolation here was welcome to me, even though I had no coat. I realised Shepherd must have had one with him, because the day of the accident had not been warm. But he had obviously taken it off for the train ride, the wagons being well heated, and he must have stowed it in the rack above his seat. I didn’t blame myself for missing it when I took his valise. I’d had hardly enough time to exchange clothes with him before people arrived on the scene; I was lucky to have gotten away as I had.
Later that morning I visited Jane and found her kneeling upon her armchair at the window watching the snowflakes falling. She heard the sound of the door and turned toward me excitedly. ‘Oh look, sir, look. It’s snowing!’ It was said with all the delight of a child.
‘Yes, I know,’ I said, smiling back. She resumed gazing out the window.
‘The lake will be frozen. We’ll be able to skate.’
‘But, Jane,’ I said, tentatively, because I did not want it to be too much of a shock, ‘don’t you remember? There is no lake here.’
‘No lake …?’ She sank back on her haunches, her brow corrugated into a frown. ‘No lake? But how will we be able to skate?’
There was an awful silence, somehow made worse by that eerie quiet that always seems to descend with snow. She began to cry. I strode over to her and put an arm around her shoulders. She buried her face in my chest. Her frail frame was racked by great sobs. We were like that some few minutes. I could feel her heart beating against mine. She was as warm as a freshly killed hen, and almost as limp and lifeless.
When the sobbing at last began to subside I said, ‘What lake were you thinking of, Jane?’ There was no answer. ‘Try to picture the place, Jane,’ I said. ‘Tell me what you see in your mind’s eye.’
‘It’s the lake I told you about before, sir. In the trees, in the woods.’ Suddenly she let out a little cry and pulled away from me, the knuckles of her right hand in her open mouth. Her eyes were wide open and wild, staring at something far beyond this room.
‘What, Jane, what is it? Tell me what troubles you.’
‘Something bad, sir, something bad happened.’
‘At the lake?’
‘Yes, but it was not my fault, I swear it, sir. It was not my fault.’
‘Did someone fall through the ice? Is that it, did the ice break and someone skating upon it fall through and drown?’
She chewed her knuckle furiously, eyes still off someplace else, and then all at once her head collapsed onto her chest and she whispered, ‘I – I do not know. I can’t see, sir. I can’t see anybody falling through the ice.’
I wanted to push her further, to urge her to keep looking into her mind, but I held back. I sensed her sanity was close to breaking point here, whether with the sheer effort of trying to remember or because deep down she feared to do so, I didn’t know. So I said nothing, but put my hand on her shoulder, and stroked it gently, my fingers touching the downy hair on the back of her neck.
‘It’s all right, Jane,’ I said softly. ‘Nobody blames you for anything. You are not there now. You are here with me and I will keep you safe and warm.’ At which she threw her arms about me and buried her head in my chest once again. Even through my clothes, I could feel her sharp little nails digging into the flesh of my back. I wanted for her never to let me go, but after what must have been at least a couple of minutes I forced myself to break away, gentle as I could. I had to. The old feelings were flooding back.
At this separation she grew more distressed again and I almost did not know what to do to calm her. My great fear was that she might go into some kind of fit, start screaming perhaps, drawing the attention of any attendants who happened to be near. I was particularly worried about O’Reilly. In such a case I had no doubt that Morgan would be only too delighted to pronounce my trial of Moral Treatment a dismal failure and bring it to an immediate halt. I did not think I could bear to see poor Jane Dove returned to the ranks of living dead, condemned to sit in silence every morning, staring mindlessly into the endless night her future would become. And to be honest, nor did I think I could stand it myself, to lose her lively company; she was the only friend I had in this godforsaken place, the only thing that made it possible to endure here.
‘Come now, quiet yourself,’ I said in as cheery a voice as I could manage, for I was trembling on the brink of the precipice here. ‘Let’s have a little of the bard, what do you say?’
She managed a weak smile and wiped away her tears with the sleeve of her gown. I had lately begun reciting parts of Shakespeare to her, acting out bits of plays, taking upon myself all the characters and distinguishing them one from another by assuming different voices. It had proved a great success, much more so than I had expected, for although Jane was only young, she had taken to the great man’s works immediately, and made no difficulty of understanding the language. For me it brought back all the pleasure of my profession, even though I knew that part of my life was gone for ever; I relished the joy of performing and, if I’m honest, the thrill of showing off.
At first I did this only in the early evenings before dinner, when I had time to return to my room and collect The Complete Works, but then Jane suggested I leave the book in her room. At first I resisted because it meant I did not have it myself to read at night, and it was of no use to her when I wasn’t there because the book had no illustrations, but she pointed out that leaving it there would mean that even if I popped in on her for a few minutes between duties I would be able to act out a scene or two for her delight, and so in the end I acquiesced.
Now I took up Hamlet, already her favourite, and acted out the wonderful scene with the prince and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the witticisms and wordplay of which I was confident would banish her unhappy mood. Sure enough, the great man did not let me down now and soon her tears were dry, her face began to lose the blotchy redness that comes from crying and she was laughing away in spite of herself. I had just finished the scene and she was clapping and pleading ‘Encore, encore’ (which I had taught her was the actor’s reward for a good performance) when I remembered I had meant to be there only a few minutes, having just dropped in on my way between tasks. With no timepiece, I had no idea how long I had been with her, except that I knew it had been too long. Seeing she was now more or less all right, I told her I would have to go and rushed from the room.
I was supposed to be helping Morgan assess the new arrivals and went quickly to the examination room, where I found him in the middle of examining a patient. He was making his own notes, which was normally my task, standing over a desk to write down his observations instead of calling them out to me. He looked up angrily when he saw me and tossed the pen down on the desk. ‘At last!’ he snapped. ‘Take over the notes, if you please.’
We finished the examination of the three new patients in a silence as frosty as the weather outdoors. As soon as the women had been taken away and we were alone, he said to me, ‘What explanation do you have for being so late, sir?’
‘I’m most terribly sorry, Dr Morgan. I quite lost track of the time.’
‘You were with your special patient, I presume?’
I paused. I did not want to admit it but I had no choice, since it was obviously so. I nodded.
He stood up and put his hands behind his back and began to pace around the room. Once again I had the feeling that he was trying to get control of himself, that he feared his anger taking him over. I could not help wonder what experience had led him to suppress that side of himself so. Was it the madness he witnessed daily that made him resist any primitive wild impulse in his own nature? I felt a certain sympathy with him in this. I of all people knew only too well how hard it was to contain the beast within.
At last he stopped his perambulations right in front of me, lifted his head and looked me straight in the eye. ‘I said we would continue this experiment only as long as it didn’t interfere in your proper duties.’
‘I know, sir. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.’
‘You’re right about that, because I am calling a halt to it now.’
‘But, sir,’ I said, ‘I think I’m making progress and it would be unfair to stop the thing out of hand without assessing it.’
‘Unfair?’ His eyes bulged. ‘You think it would be unfair? I call it damned unfair to let another man do the work you’re paid for, don’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’ I hung my head meekly. Experience had taught me it was better to humble myself when he was in such a mood than to argue with him, which only made him more irate.
He recommenced his pacing. Eventually he stopped and stood staring out the window at the snow, which was still falling fast, his back to me. ‘All right, you have a point. It’s no use stopping it in a moment of annoyance. I will inspect your progress first. I will expect to notice measurable improvements, though. For one thing, the girl must not be talking gibberish. And for another –’ here he turned and looked me in the eye again, ‘for another, I expect that she will – at least a little – be able to read.’
There was a hint of a smirk as he said this. I could feel his eyes laughing at me. My heart sank inside me. There was a chance I might help Jane Dove to moderate her speech before him, but it would impossible me to persuade her to attempt to learn to read, and, even if I could, to accomplish it within the very short time that would be all I would be allowed before he examined her. He was hardly going to let me extend the trial another month.
‘Very well, sir,’ I replied. ‘And when would you like to see the girl?’
‘I don’t want it to take up any more working time than it already has, and certainly I can’t waste mine on what I know to be such a … such a … lost cause. Let’s say Sunday, shall we?’
I tried not to look too crestfallen as I nodded agreement. It was already Tuesday.