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But Mrs. Archbold was now carried away by two passions instead of one, and they were together too much for prudence. She took a handful of glossy locks out of her bosom and shook them in Cooper's face.
"You monster!" said she; "you should go, for _that,_ if you were my own brother."The two young nurses assented loudly, and turned and cackled at Cooper for cutting off such lovely hair.
He shrugged his shoulders at them, and said sulkily to Mrs. Archbold, "Oh, I didn't know. Of course, if you have fallen in love with him, my cake is burnt. 'Tisn't the first lunatic you have taken a fancy to."At this brutal speech, all the more intolerable for not being quite false, Mrs. Archbold turned ashy pale, and looked round for a weapon to strike him dead; but found none so handy and so deadly as her tongue.
"It's not the first you have tried to MURDER," said she. "I know all about that death in Calton Retreat: you kept it dark before the coroner;but it is not too late, I'll open the world's eyes. I was only going to dismiss you, sir: but you have insulted me. I'll hang you in reply."Cooper turned very pale and was silent; his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.
But a feeble, unexpected voice issued from the bed and murmured cheerfully, though with some difficulty, a single word--"Justice!"At an expression so out of place they all started with surprise.
Alfred went on: "You are putting the saddle on the wrong horse. The fault lies with those villains Baker and Bailey. Cooper is only a servant, you know, and obeys orders.""What business had the wretch to cut your hair off?" said Mrs. Archbold, turning on Alfred with flashing eyes. Her blood once up, she was ready to quarrel even with him for taking part against himself.
"Because he was ordered to put on a blister, and hair must come off before a blister can go on," replied Alfred soberly.
"That is no excuse for him beating you and trying to break your front teeth."She didn't mind so much about his side ribs.
"No," replied Alfred. "But I hit him first: look at the bloke's face.
Dear Mrs. Archbold, you are my best friend in this horrid place, and you have beautiful eyes; and, talk of teeth, look at yours! But you haven't much sense of justice, forgive me for saying so. Put the proposition into signs; there is nothing like that for clearing away prejudice. B. and C.
have a scrimmage: B begins it, C. gets the worst of it; in comes A. and turns away--C. Is that justice? It is me you ought to turn away; and Iwish to Heaven you would: dear Mrs. Archbold, do pray turn me away, and keep the other blackguard."At this extraordinary and, if I may be allowed the expression, Alfredian speech, the men first stared, and then laughed; the women smiled, and then were nearer crying than laughing.
And so it was, that justice handcuffed, straitjacketed, blistered, and impartial, sent from its bed of torture a beam through Cooper's tough hide to his inner heart. He hung his head and stepped towards Alfred:
"You're what I call a man," he said. "I don't care a curse whether I stay or go, after what she has said to me. But, come what may, you're a gentleman, and one as can put hisself in a poor man's place. Why, sir, Iwasn't always so rough; but I have been twenty years at it; and mad folk they'd wear the patience out of Jove, and the milk of human kindness out of saints and opossums. However, if I was to stay here all my life, instead of going to-morrow, I'd never lift hand to trouble you again, for you taking my part again yourself like that.""I'll put that to the test," said Mrs. Archbold sharply. "Stay--on your probation. Hannah!"And Baby-face biceps at a look took off his handcuffs; which she had been prominent in putting on.
This extraordinary scene ended in the men being dismissed, and the women remaining and going to work after their kind.
"The bed is too short for one thing," said Hannah. "Look at his poor feet sticking out and cold as a stone: just feel of them, Jane.""No, no; murder!" cried Alfred; "that tickles."Hannah ran for a chair, Jane for another pillow. Mrs. Archbold took off his handcuffs, and, passing her hand softly and caressingly over his head, lamented the loss of his poor hair. Amongst them they relieved him of his straitjacket, set up his head, covered his feet, and he slept like a top for want of drastics and opiates, and in spite of some brilliant charges by the Lilliputian cavalry.
After this the attendants never molested Alfred again; nor did the doctor; for Mrs. Archbold got his boluses, and sent them up to a famous analysing chemist in London, and told him she had; and said, "I'll thank you not to prescribe at random for _that_ patient any more." He took the lady's prescription, coming as it did in a voice quietly grim, and with a momentary but wicked glance shot from under her black brows.
Alfred was all the more miserable at his confinement: his melancholy deepened now there was no fighting to excite him. A handsome bright young face clouded with sadness is very pitiable, and I need not say that both the women who had fallen in love with him had their eyes, or at least the tails of their eyes, for ever on his face. The result varied with the characters of the watchers. That young face, ever sad, made Mrs. Archbold sigh, and long to make him happy under her wing. How it wrought on the purer and more womanly Hannah will be revealed by the incident I have to relate. Alfred was sitting on a bench in the corridor bowed down by grief, and the Archbold lurking in a room hard by, feasting her eyes on him through an aperture in the door caused by the inspection plate being under repair--when an erotic maniac was driven past. She had obtained access--with marvellous cunning--to the men's side; but was now coming back with a flea in her ear, and faster than she went; being handcuffed and propelled by Baby-face biceps. On passing the disconsolate Alfred the latter eyed him coyly, gave her stray sheep a coarse push--as one pushes a _thing_--and laid a timid hand, gentle as falling down, upon the rougher sex. Contrast sudden and funny.