CHAPTER XXXI.
LOST! LOST! LOST!
"Stop! stranger; may I speak with you?-- Ah, yes, you needn't fear-- While I whisper through the grating, I wouldn't have them hear. These jailers, if a body But chance to speak her name, They roll their eyes so savage, As if they meant to tame Some wild beast, and they scare me. Come nearer, nearer yet; Come near me till I whisper, 'Have you seen her?--seen Annette?'
"What did they bring me here for? I say, I want to go! How shall I ever find her When I am locked in so? They lied to me-- 'Twas once there in the street, Where I sat on a doorstep To rest my aching feet. They say, 'We'll lead you to her,' And many times said, 'Come,' At last I followed, eager To find my little one. But when I bid them bring her. They answer, 'By and by.' Just turn the key, please, won't you, And let me slip out sly?"
One of the most troublesome patients at the Virginia Asylum for theInsane in Staunton was a pretty, pale little woman named Mrs. Chase.
To look at her sitting very quiet--sometimes with her fair little handsmeekly folded, and a brooding sorrow in her tearful, deep blue eyes--youwould have said she was a most interesting patient, and could not surelygive any one trouble.
But the women attendants in her ward could have told you quite adifferent story.
Mrs. Chase had a suicidal mania, and had to be watched closely all thetime to keep her from taking her own life.
These attendants would have explained to you that all insane people havesome hobby that they ride industriously all the time.
There was the man who believed himself to be Napoleon reincarnated, andamused everybody with his military toggery and braggadocio.
There was the lady who called herself Queen Victoria, and was never seenwithout a huge pasteboard crown.
There were the two men who each claimed to be the Christ, and frowneddisapproval on the claims of each other.
There was the youth who imagined himself a violin virtuoso, and fiddledall day long, varying his performance by pausing to pass around the hatfor pennies, of which he had accumulated, it was said, more than agallon already.
There was the forsaken bride who was waiting every day for the falselover to return and bear her away on a blissful wedding-tour.
There was the man who believed himself already dead, and solemnlyrecounted to you the particulars of the horrible death he had died,adding that he was detained from his grave by the delay of the cruelundertakers in taking his measure for the coffin. He had actually beenknown to slip into the dead-house one day, and lie down in a casketintended for a real corpse, having to have force employed to eject himfrom his narrow abode.
Again, there was the man who imagined himself to be a grain of corn, andfled with screams of alarm from the approach of a chicken. These, andscores of others with hobbies, tragic or ridiculous, as the case mightbe; but not one of them all, said the attendants, needed such care andwatching as pale, pretty, meek little Mrs. Chase.
Her hobby was a lost or stolen child.
No one knew whether or not there was any truth in her claim. She hadbeen brought there from Richmond, a friendless stranger, who had beenfound wandering homeless in the street, raving of a lost child.
Her story was just as likely to be false as true, they said, forlunatics imagined many things. It might be her child had died; for shewas always praying for death, that she might find her lost darlingagain.
It was melancholy madness. The hardest to cure of all, said the doctors,and she had been frustrated in several frantic attempts to end her life.She was so clever and so cunning that they had to watch her constantly;but even the most impatient of the attendants could not give her a crossword, her grief was so pathetic, and she seemed so sorrowfully helplessin her frail, gentle prettiness.
"Have you seen my daughter, my darling little Dainty? She is lost;stolen away from me while I slept," she would say to every strangeperson she saw, and her pale face would glow as she added, proudly:"She was the prettiest girl in the world. I have often heard people sayso. She was as beautiful as a budding rose, with hair like the sunshine,and eyes as blue as the sky. Her little hands were white as lilies, andher feet so tiny and graceful, every one turned to watch her as shepassed; and was it any wonder she caught such a grand, rich lover? Shewould have married him if she had not been lost that night. Oh, let meout! let me go and find my darling! You have no right to lock me inhere!"
Then she would fly into paroxysms of anger, trying to batter down thewalls and escape from what she called her stony prison; and at othertimes she would pray for death, crying:
"Oh, God! send me death; for surely my darling must be dead, or shewould have come back to me long before they locked me up here! Theystole her away and killed her, my sweet Dainty, the cruel enemies whohated and envied her so much for her angelic beauty and her noble lover!Oh, who would keep me back from death, when only through its dark gatescan I find my child again?"
But they watched her carefully; they allowed her no means of ending thelife of which she was so weary; and so the months flew by from Septemberto spring, and it was almost a year since Dainty had left her home sogladly for the country visit that had ended so disastrously, and withsuch a veil of mystery over her strange fate.
"Where is Annette? Where is she? Does anybody know?"