Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 3/The bee in the bonnet
THE BEE IN THE BONNET.
Of course when I received a letter from little Ned Ward, announcing that at last he was going to be happy, I ought to have felt sympathetically joyful. When the letter went on to state that I must, under extraordinary penalties, present myself that evening at his chambers in Crown Office Row, to partake of a gorgeous banquet in honour of the occasion, and to drink her health in a great number of bumpers, I ought to have accepted the invitation with a rapt alacrity, and have conducted myself generally in a light-hearted and genial manner. No doubt that would have been the right sort of tone to have taken. I accepted the invitation, certainly. I wrote a short letter of congratulation even. I hoped he might be happy—no end of happy—with her, whoever she might be: and yet I did not feel very warmly or very cheerfully in the business. It seemed to me as though I were coming in second in a race.
He had always been little Ned Ward to me. He was my junior: he had been my fag at school. He had been a little pale-faced boy, very thin and weakly, with dry, fair hair, and a blue jacket and bright buttons, when I had been an ultra-grown youth suffering acutely in stick-ups, and perplexedly grand in a tail-coat. But now things were changed. Professionally he was a barrister in the Temple. I was simply an attorney in Essex Street. He had been decidedly successful. I had been decidedly less fortunate. Socially, I think I may be permitted to say, that he was a swell. He was the neatest hand at tying a white neckcloth I ever saw; he wore exquisite gloves, and boots of exceeding varnish; he could sing light tenor songs (his F was a comfortable and melodious note, his G certainly more hazardous and less harmonic); he could play (a little) on the flageolet; his hair curled naturally, and his amber whiskers were so luxuriously pendent, that I sometimes wondered he was not rebuked by the Bench for excess of hirsuteness on their account. Of myself it behoves me to speak with reserve; but I will admit that I don’t count myself a great drawing-room triumph. I never could tie a white neckerchief. I am uneasy in lacquered boots. I have no ear for music; my hair does not curl, and my whiskers are of rather a common-place pattern. Of old, I used to patronise him, and considered I had done rather a generous thing when I admitted a junior boy to terms of equal friendship. Now, however, I had begun to fancy that he had lately been rather patting me on the head. He had gone past me in a number of ways; and now he was going to be married before me. Ned Ward had beaten me, in fact. I did not like owning it; yet I felt it to be true, and, somehow, the feeling grated a little on my self-conceit.
It was a dull November afternoon, and though the clock of St. Clement Danes had only just struck three, it was so dark and foggy that the office candles—massive dips, with a tendency to gutter, and otherwise conduct themselves disagreeably—were already lighted. I had as yet no staff of clerks, to be partitioned out into Chancery, Conveyancing, and Common Law sections. The office boy, Mason, who bore the courtesy title of “Mr.” Mason—and whose supposed occupation it was to be “generally useful,” a mission which he construed into getting into complicated dilemmas with the ink-bottles, and being a perpetual obstruction in all business matters with which he was entrusted—had been sent round to Crown Office Row with my letter to little Ned Ward. I was just considering whether there was really any more work to be done that required me to adhere to routine office hours, or whether I might not just as well walk down the Strand to St. James’s Park and back, by way of getting myself into a better humour and improving my appetite for my friend’s dinner, when entered my room my other clerk, Mr. Beale, and presented me with a card, informing me that the gentleman whose name it bore desired very much to see me. “Captain Brigham, R.N.” Could he be a new client! But I had no time for reflection. I raised the shades of my candlesticks, to distribute the light more generally about the room, and became conscious of the presence of a tall, stout, elderly gentleman, with a flaxen wig and gold spectacles. I begged him to be seated. He bowed politely, placed an ebony walking-stick heavily mounted with silver and decked with copious black silk tassels on the table beside him, and a very shiny hat with a vivid white lining on the floor, and then calmly seated himself facing me at my desk. Without speaking, he drew off his black kid gloves and dropped each into his hat. He produced a heavy gold snuff-box, and solaced himself with no stinted pinch. He waved away all stray grains of snuff with a large red and green silk handkerchief, and then addressed me.
“My name is Brigham, as you see by my card,—Captain Brigham, Royal Navy. I have come to you on a matter of business. Do you take snuff? No? Quite right—bad habit—wish I could leave it off. I have been recommended to come to you, and place myself entirely in your hands. No matter who gave me that advice. I intend to follow it. You will give me your assistance?”
I assured him that I should be happy to aid him, as far as lay in my power.
“You’re very kind. Quite the answer I expected: I may say quite. Are you alone here? May I speak to you in confidence—in perfect confidence?”
For his satisfaction, I rose to see that the door leading into the clerk’s office was securely closed.
He resumed.
“I am placed, sir, at this present moment, in a position of extreme pain.”
He drew himself nearer to the fire.
“Few men, sir, can venture to say that they are suffering as I am.”
He put his feet on the fender, and rubbed his plump white hands blandly together.
“I can assure you, sir, I have not brought myself to open this business to you without the most intense deliberation.”
He arranged his flaxen wig in a calm, careful way, pulling it down tightly over his ears.
He made five distinct Gothic arches by joining his hands, very careful that the crowns of the arches, represented by the tops of his fingers, should meet and fit in a thoroughly workmanlike manner; and through the vista thus established contemplated steadily his feet on the fender. He appeared to me quite an ideal old gentleman, dined, and at peace with all the world. He resumed:
“It is a very common saying, sir, that there is a skeleton in every house. The saying may be utterly false in regard to many houses; it is enough to say that I feel it to be true in regard to mine. I have a skeleton in my house.”
I could only look attentive and curious: I could only bow acquiescently, and motion him to proceed.
“My daughter, sir, is my skeleton.”
He said it abruptly, with a snap of his snuff-box lid by way of an effective accompaniment.
“Indeed!”
“True, sir, true, painfully true. Here it is, sir, here”—and he touched his forehead two or three times with a fat forefinger, still holding his gold snuff-box in his hand. “I believe a ‘loose slate’ is the vulgar title of the malady she suffers under. Her mother was a poor creature, very weak and frail. Dead, sir, dead, many years. Still I could hardly assert that the ‘loose slate’ was fully developed in her case. But the state of my poor child admits of no doubt. Others may be duped; the cunning of lunacy may impose upon many; but a parent’s eye, sir, a parent’s eye! Do you think, sir, that you can take in a parent’s eye?”
He removed his spectacles, and rubbed his eyes violently with his red-and-green silk handkerchief, as though he were polishing them up for exhibition.
“And is her present state such as to require control?”
“Upon some such points as these, and generally as to the measures that may be legally taken respecting her, I desire to ask your opinion. Is she dangerous? you would say. Well, perhaps I should be disinclined to apply so painful a term. Lunacy, as I have before hinted, is gifted with great cunning. Upon many points those in the habit of seeing her constantly and intimately would very probably pronounce her sane.”
“She suffers then, I conclude, from some kind of monomania.”
“Precisely. It is a dreadful thing to say, sir, but I am positively persecuted by my own child.” He warmed his hands, and rubbed them comfortably together.
“I am her victim, sir. The vials of her lunacy, if I may be allowed to say so, are turned upon me—her father, sir, her poor old father! She is a dear good girl, sir, a good dear girl, though I say it, but she renders my life completely unendurable. I am subjected, sir, to a persecution that is killing me.”
To see that smooth, bland, rotund old gentleman, calmly warming his silk handkerchief by the fire, one would have thought that his dying of persecution was quite the last fate he was undergoing, or likely to undergo. He was one of those old gentlemen who have a sort of picturesque daintiness about them. His linen was perfectly got up—his frill seemed to have been pleated by machinery, it was so even; his black satin waistcoat was singularly glossy; and his tight grey trousers were strapped over the most resplendently polished Wellingtons I ever saw.
“What particular form does this persecution assume?”
He paused for a minute, as though reflecting, turning about the while the massive seals which, suspended from a thick curb chain, acted as buoys, and demonstrated where his watch was sunk.
“It is one of the well-known characteristics of lunacy, and thoroughly understood by those who have studied its economy, when the sufferer is thoroughly convinced of his sanity, and strenuous in accusing those around him—even those who should be dearest to him—of his own malady. Thus my poor child, in the most alarming paroxysms of her attacks, does not hesitate to charge even me with lightheadedness! This is not much, you will say. But when with the subtlety of her complaint she proceeds to induce others to believe her accusation—when I find there is a deep-laid plan to pursue me everywhere with this strange idea, and to surround me with a system of surveillance that is positively terrible in its perfectness—then, sir, I begin to take alarm, and I complain of persecution; not unnaturally, I think.”
“A very singular case.”
“I believe entirely without precedent.”
“Are you prepared with any medical evidence?”
“Not at present. But—I see—it is necessary. I will at once proceed with this, and then see you again. Will not that be the better course?”
“Certainly. I would only suggest great caution and secresy in all that you do, and your at once seeing your medical man with a view to some examination of the sufferer.”
“Sir, I cannot thank you too much for your admirable counsel. Just what I could have expected of you. I will be prepared to lay before you certain ascertained facts touching the case, and then see you again. When? Will Monday suit? Let us say, then, Monday, at three o’clock. Again let me thank you. Oh, this is the way out, is it? Thank you. Good-day—Good-day.”
I sat for some time considering the matter over. I took down from the book-shelves certain of the authorities on lunacy. I began to study the practice in regard to lunatics, and especially as to what it was necessary to do in the office of the Masters in Lunacy in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields. Then it occurred to me, what little information I was possessed of after all, and how foolishly I had abstained from making inquiries. How old was Miss Brigham? Was she a minor? Was she an heiress? Would it be necessary to place her under the benign protection of the Court of Chancery? To appoint a Committee, and take the accounts of her estate in the usual manner? He was a gentlemanly old man: was he rich? would he pay my bill? He was very courteous and polite; but little affected, though, at his daughter’s sad state. He had nothing of the naval officer about him—nothing whatever; in fact, he looked much more like a wholesale wine merchant with a villa residence at Tooting or Muswell Hill.
Mr. Mason entered precipitately: very inky as to his fingers, and with a piece of red tape tied round his head to prevent his hair falling over his eyes, which imparted to him an acrobatic rather than a legal aspect.
“I have no more letters, Mr. Mason.”
A grin broke up the sallow monotony of his face.
“Please, sir, here’s a lady wants to see you; don’t give her name.”
“Show her in, sir, directly.”
And a little lady presently entered. I had only just time to notice that she was dressed in black silk, with puce velvet trimmings, and an ample black velvet cloak. Her bonnet and gloves were also puce colour, and she wore her black veil half down, which, being sprinkled with embroidery, gave a pleasant variegation to the upper part of her face; while the pretty little red-lipped mouth and daintily pointed chin, nibbed, as it were, by a dimple, made the lower half look very winning indeed. She carried a handsome mother-of-pearl card-case, but had evidently forgotten to make use of her cards. At any rate, she made no attempt in the first instance to put me in possession of her name.
“Oh pray excuse me,”—such a light, soft, silvery voice. “I am sure I owe you a hundred apologies for intruding upon you in this way. So unceremoniously too, and your time, of course, so valuable; but really I—. You—“
But the poor little bird became so fluttered, that she could not continue. I hastened to assure her that my time was all hers; that 1 was quite at her service; that I should be only too happy to assist her in any way. I begged her to be seated,—to compose herself,—and not to trouble herself with any conversation until she felt quite equal to it. I fidgeted about with my papers; I opened and shut my table drawers; I wrote my name on my blotting-paper:—all so many devices to give the little lady time to overcome her embarrassment.
“What disagreeable weather,” I observed.
“Very, indeed, especially for walking.”
“Especially. Have you been walking?”
And so on. We threw out skirmishing remarks, under cover of which she might bring up the heavy division of her discourse. She was gradually improving, and in a minute raised her half veil and permitted me to see a very pretty, small-featured, delicately-fair face, with smoothly-braided light-brown hair, brightly twinkling blue eyes, and, oh! such long lashes, that seemed always on the quiver, and gave a wonderfully witching vividness to her glances.
“I am afraid you will really think me very tiresome—very troublesome. I am sure you will say so when I’m gone. You’re very kind: but really I am quite ashamed of my intrusion. Only I have been so anxious—so very anxious. I had better, perhaps, proceed to ask you at once directly what I want to know. Pray tell me. Has papa been here?”
“Papa?”
“Yes; papa. Oh, perhaps—Oh dear me, how very thoughtless of me. You don’t know. No, of course not. What could I have been thinking about? My name is Brigham—Miss Brigham. I am the daughter of—”
“Captain Brigham, Royal Navy”
“Oh, then he has been here? Oh, I see he has. Oh, I was afraid he had.”
“And you are his daughter—his only daughter?”
“Yes. I am his only child indeed.”
Poor girl! She was, then, the unhappy sufferer—the melancholy subject of our late conversation. Was it possible? Was there a loose slate under those charming light-brown braids? Was she the persecutor of that poor benign old gentleman? And the delicious sparkle of those blue eyes, was it not then wholly attributable to the light of reason?
“Please excuse him, sir,” she went on; “he really should not: but he can’t help it. The fact is, he is not quite himself.”
Poor thing: the ruling idea was firmly fixed in her mind.
“I do all I can to stop him. I never, if I can help it, trust him out of my sight. He is sure to get into mischief, if I do.”
What could I say? The fit was evidently very strongly upon her.
“I assure you I do all I can to watch him, and have others expressly engaged to keep him always in view.”
Just so, I thought. This is the persecution!
“But I see there has been great remissness. I must have more precautions taken. He must be more rigidly watched: he must never be left alone.”
Poor old victim! But the Masters in Lunacy will give you relief. Yes, I could see it now. There was a hectic brilliancy about those glances; there was a restlessness about that manner; there was even now and then a hurry and want of harmony about that silver-toned voice, which betrayed the terrible calamity under which the little lady unconsciously suffered. Yes, there was an undoubted bee in that puce bonnet. It seemed to me that I was falling deeply in love with her, nevertheless. I was even loving her more on account of her misfortune. It was love, strengthened by the addition of pity.
“It is, perhaps, the best way to adopt the course you have no doubt followed. To hear all he has to say. He mentioned me, perhaps? He is always talking curiously about me. It is one of the strange fancies that have possessed him.”
Such a sharp, inquiring bird’s glance out of the corner of the blue eyes.
“He did refer to his daughter,” I confessed.
“Poor dear! he is always doing that,” she said, with a small, soft sigh. “I traced him to this neighbourhood, and, unseen, I saw him come out of this house. From my inquiries. I soon ascertained that he had been to see you, and I guessed his mission. Pray forgive him, sir. Forgive me too, for troubling you: and forget all that he has told you.”
Forget all my client’s instructions! How cunning these lightheaded folks are, I thought.
She thanked me over and over again for my attention to her. She lowered the half veil with its freckle of embroidery, leaving still one red lip and the pointed little chin uncovered. She curtsied very politely as she drew towards the door, and then, as though thinking better of it, with a very winning smile gave me a small, puce-kidded hand to shake. It was so small, it was more like the toy hand fixed on to an ornamental pen-wiper, than an ordinary human hand. I conducted her through the office, and showed her the way down the stairs.
Mr. Mason chose to see some profound cause for mirth in all this, becoming at length so violently convulsed with suppressed laughter, that it became necessary for him to conceal his head in his desk.
With a feeling of bereavement, yet of deep interest, I went to my lonely room. Without that puce bonnet it seemed especially lonely. I looked at my watch: it was half-past six o’clock. And how about Ned Ward’s banquet at half-past five?
II.
“Hullo! here you are at last. Why, I’d quite given you up. Gilkes and Jeffries, both of whom you know. Mrs. Brisket, bring back some of those things; this gentleman has not dined. My dear boy, what have you been doing with yourself? How could you make any mistake about the time? I wrote half-past five, as plainly as any man could. Have a glass of sherry; you look quite pale.”
Little Ned was busy pressing kind hospitalities upon me, in his old, bright, chirping way.
“Make a good dinner, old fellow. Don’t hurry yourself; there’s loads of time. We’d given you up. I thought something had occurred to prevent your coming altogether, or else we would have waited for you. I’m so sorry the things should be half cold, as I’m afraid they are. Now let’s have a glass of wine all round.”
“And the disclosure,” said Jeffries.
“No, no. That’s to come afterwards.”
I had finished dinner, and the cloth had been removed. Mrs. Brisket bore an expression of intense thanksgiving that hitherto the banquet—the responsibilities of which evidently weighed heavily upon her—had passed off with a success that amounted almost to éclat. I found, however, that she looked grimly at me, as one who had threatened to become a sort of incarnate hitch in the business.
“Now then, gentlemen, try the port—the peculiar, old, crusted, many years in bottle: the port of extraordinary vintage, of the light green seal.”
“Are we to come now to the event of the evening?” asked Gilkes.
“Are you going to make a speech?” inquired Jeffries.
“No; this is a private meeting; speeches are for the public: besides, I don’t think I can conscientiously make one without a fee: and I know that none of you fellows have got any money. I’ll simply give you her health. I’m going to be married. I give you her health!”
“Her health!” we all echoed, solemnly, draining glasses of ‘the peculiar.’
“Are we to know no more?”
“Name! name!”
“Hear! hear!”
Little Ned rose. He was as near blushing as could be expected of a barrister—certainly he stammered a little.
“The lady’s name is Brigham.”
“What!” I cried.
“Brigham—Fanny Brigham.”
“The daughter of—”
“Captain Brigham—Royal Navy.”
I sank back in my chair.
“You’re ill I think, old man, ain’t you. Have some brandy—have some soda-water—have a cigar.”
“No, thank you. All right, pass the bottle.”
“Gilkes, the wine’s with you.”
It was evident I could say nothing in the presence of those two men, Gilkes and Jeffries. I must refrain from alluding further to the subject until they had taken their departure. They seemed to divine that I had some such object: and “the peculiar” that Gilkes got through! the cigars that Jeffries smoked! They moved at last, certainly with difficulty.
“Goo’-night! Goo’-night, old feller!”
And I was alone with Ned Ward. He doubled himself upon the sofa. Something seemed to have affected him to tears. It must have been the excitement of the occasion, or could it have been “the peculiar?”
“My dear Ned!”
“All right! Fire away—help yourself.”
“You must not marry Fanny Brigham!”
“Not marry Fanny Brigham? Who says I mustn’t marry Fanny Brigham? Who wants his head punched?”
“Now do be calm! Certain circumstances have come to my knowledge—”
“Oh, certain circumstances have come to your knowledge (very incoherently spoken); have they indeed?”
“Now, pray listen!”
“All right, old fellow!”
“She has a bee in her bonnet!”
I spoke as distinctly as possible. He opened his eyes as wide as he could, and seemed to be trying to stare through the wall, in a strange, vague, senseless way.
“Bee in her bonnet!” he staggeringly repeated; “bee in her bonnet! Go along—get out. She wears lilies of the valley and puce velvet ribbons. Soon, sir, the orange blossom, the orange blossom! Hip—hip! Charge your glasses! I give you Fanny Brigham—Fanny Brigham! Hurrah! For she’s a jolly good—”
He collapsed altogether on to the hearth-rug. It was useless to attempt to discuss the matter further. I lifted him on to his bed, and went out into the dismal early morning November air.
III.
About noon the next day I received a visit from Ward. He looked rather pale and fatigued; but, in answer to inquiries, said that he had never felt better in his life. He called, as he stated, to inquire after my health, as he was persuaded, from my sudden departure on the previous evening, that I had been exceedingly unwell.
“And about this Brigham business?” I said.
“Ah—yes. Was there not some discussion about it last night? Was it not Gilkes who said that the marriage should not take place?”
“No; I said so.”
“You! What extraordinary port wine that must have been! Why, my dear fellow, I was coming to you to ask you to act as my solicitor in the matter—to peruse the settlements, you know, and that sort of thing: it’s more delicate than doing it myself. More than that, I was going to ask you to be best man at the wedding.”
“But, my dear Ward, you don’t know all. Captain Brigham—”
“Ah, poor old fellow! Yes—I know. It’s sad, but it can’t be helped.”
“What do you mean? I’ve seen him!”
“What! poor old Brigham!”
“He came down here to consult me.”
“About the settlement?”
“No: his unhappy daughter’s state of mind.”
“Oh! he’s imposed upon you, has he? Went over all that old story.”
“And I’ve seen his daughter.”
“You have?”
“She also came here.”
“Well?”
“And I regret to say, that her manner confirmed her father’s statement. She’s light-headed, my dear Ward! I know she’s an angel—a darling! But, my dear Ward, a wife with a loose slate! a mother, perhaps, with a bee in her bonnet! and the infant family taking after her!”
Ward was moved—but only to laughter. He would not listen to my advice. We parted. It was arranged that I was to act as his solicitor in the matter of the marriage settlement, but my assisting at the wedding was to remain an open question.
I had an appointment in the city at three, and hurried away to keep it. Cheapside was more than normally crowded. Near Bow Church there was great obstruction: a throng of persons nearly blocked up the footway altogether. An elderly gentleman was quarrelling with a cabman. I thought I recognised a shiny hat and a flaxen wig. I forced my way through the crowd, and found Captain Brigham, bright and glossy as usual in apparel, but palpably excited in manner.
“Where’s the use?” cried the cabman. “Don’t talk of pulling a fellow up: you know that ain’t the question at all. Tell me where to go, and I’ll drive you fast enough—fast as you like.”
“No. I object to be driven by you—I object to be driven by a man not in his right mind!”
“O, gammon!” said the cabman: “jump in.”
“No, cabman, you’re mad!” replied Captain Brigham. “I pity you: you ought not to be trusted out with a cab.”
“Why, I’ve druv a cab for fourteen year—leastwise a omnibus.”
“I’ll not be driven by you. Legally, I’m not bound to pay you: but I’ll give you sixpence. Mind, it’s not your right, but I give it you.”
“Brayvo, old ’un!” from the crowd.
“Here, my man, take your sixpence.”
“Sha’n’t! why the fare’s eighteenpence.”
City Policeman, No. 123, cut his way through.
“What’s this here about? Cabby, why don’t you take what the gent offers?”
“Oh! ah! Here I’ve druv the old beggar all the way from the Burlington Arcade; and he shoving me in the back till I’m sore with his walking-stick, and crying out that I’m mad: ain’t it enough to aggrawate a feller? and then he offers sixpence! He oughtn’t to ride in cabs—he oughtn’t.”
“The fare’s eighteenpence, sir,” said No. 123.
“Policeman, I won’t be driven by a cabman who is a raging maniac. I tell you I will not. What! Now I look again, policeman, you’d better go home; you’re mad, sir, quite mad. I can see it in your eyes, sir; aye, and in your whiskers.”
“Three cheers for the old ’un!” proposed by an Electric Telegraph boy, seconded by a Blacking Brigade ditto, carried unanimously, and given by the crowd.
I paid the cabman his fare; and, aided by the policeman, carried off Captain Brigham. A crowd followed us for a short distance, but gradually fell away.
“You’re not in your right mind,” said Captain Brigham to me, when I had brought him as far as St. Paul’s Churchyard, “but your interference was kindly meant, and for a confirmed lunatic, as of course you are, was really a sensible thing. I thank you for it. Don’t you find your insanity interfere rather with your professional pursuits?”
I began to think I had been mistaken about Fanny Brigham’s malady.
At my office I found a letter:
My Dear Sir,—I have sent you a client. He is one of my most difficult customers—a rational lunatic—too lunatic to be at large, too rational to be confined. What can we do? He wants to take law proceedings to lock up his daughter; I believe, to indict me for conspiracy; all sorts of things. Listen to him—talk to him—humour him—and do just nothing. His name is Brigham. He has been in the Navy. He was wounded on the head in some slave squadron fight off the coast of Guinea, and has never been quite right since. He is not at all dangerous, only a little difficult to manage. When are you coming to see me? I dine every day at six, &c. &c.
Yours faithfully,
George Johnston, M.D.
On a subsequent day Captain Brigham called on me.
“I find,” he said, “that I shall be relieved from all difficulty in my daughter’s case. I am pleased that it is so. A man of the name of Ward has proposed to marry her. Of course I could not contemplate such a thing for one moment without his being fully apprised of her melancholy state. I laid bare to him the whole matter. But he is mad, sir—stark mad; he would go on in spite of me. He takes her with all her imperfections on her head, and she him. It is hard to say which has the worst of it.”
In due time little Ned Ward was made happy, I should say supremely happy. I owned that he had beaten me utterly. Fanny Brigham looked almost as exquisite in her veil and orange blossoms as in her puce bonnet on the occasion of her one visit to my office in Essex Street. Ned Ward was very great in his superfine, double extra, blue Saxony frock coat. He looked so kindly and lovingly on his dear little bride, that I almost fancied at last that he deserved his good fortune, though a moment before I thought I should have fainted when I heard that deliciously touching answer, “I will,” steal from those rosy lips. People said that they formed a charming couple. They seemed to me a sort of statuette group of a happy pair. For myself, I signed the church books: I proposed healths: I made speeches: I drank champagne at unwholesome hours: I threw the old shoe. I made myself hopelessly and conspicuously ridiculous; went through a wonderfully exhilarating course of events, and then home, utterly wretched and desponding. The delighted couple repaired to Baden. I secluded myself for a fortnight in Essex Street, and was seen by no mortal eye.
Some time afterwards I paid a visit to my old friend Dr. Johnston, at Isleworth.
“Here’s a gentleman I think you know,” he said. It was Captain Brigham. He recognised me at once.
“Ah! my dear friend, my mad lawyer!” he cried out, shaking me cordially by the hand. “I’m delighted to see you. Yes, thank you, I am extremely comfortable here. A number of gentlemen, who, like myself, are of opinion that the world is mad, sir, quite mad, have established this snug retreat. We felt that such a poor handful of sane men as we composed, could not individually combat fairly with the insane multitude outside these walls, so we clubbed and collected together for mutual support and protection. With all your confirmed lunacy, you have occasionally very decided bursts of what I may almost call reason, or lucidity; and I’m very proud to see you here. Not but what,” and he sank his voice to a low whisper, “I cannot refrain from mentioning to you, that there are some who have got into this institution who have clearly very little title to be in it. Look here, now,” and he pointed through an open doorway to a little wizen old man in a velvet cap, busily occupied in writing letters; “he’s not altogether sound: he’s not free, entirely, from the ‘bee in the bonnet.’ This is one of his bad days. Quite forgotten himself—quite oblivious of everything. He is the rightful heir to the throne of Siam, and is unjustly deprived of his inheritance by the Hudson’s Bay Company. His usual uniform consists of three peacock’s feathers in his cap, worn very much in the style of our Prince of Wales, you know. Curious similarity, is it not? He’s a wonderful hand at cribbage. But to-day, you see, he’s quite quiet, and has forgotten all about his lawful claims. He’s writing home to his grandson, who manages his affairs for him. He’s clearly not sound. I am indeed glad to have seen you. Many, many thanks for this visit, my dear friend. I only wish you were properly qualified, and I could propose you as a member of this delightful institution. But, alas! alas! you know that cannot be. Good-bye, good-bye.”
“Curious case, isn’t it?” said Dr. Johnston, as we moved away. “He’ll probably get quite round again in time, though he may be liable to a return of the attack. He’s intensely happy. I’m not sure that he wants our pity much. I think the dinner must be ready—come along.”
I went home with rather entangled views about the sanity question. As to who had, and who hadn’t, “a bee in his bonnet?” I wondered whether I had. Really I thought I must consider before I answer: and I went to sleep without giving one.