Tuke

“ He found the girl prostrate on her knees beside the dead body—sobbing—appealing to it—murmuring broken words of penitence and love. She had moved the napkin from the face, and Tuke saw the cunning still engraved finely about the sightless eyes, and the little close leer of covetousness at the corners of the mouth, which showed a grotesque, clownish distortion of shape in the sooty border that suffocation had painted round it. Knowing what he did, he could not bear to see her thus wasting her heart of affection on the dead, unworthy thing. ”

“ Sir David grinned, mentally scoring a little spiteful victory, and Mr. Tuke looked very much bewildered and abashed.
Indeed, this sprightly lady suffered from a very common infirmity of poor humanity—an incapacity for graciously accepting such knocks as she dealt to others. One might unconsciously check her flow of spirits with the veriest straw of chaff, and only discover the enormity haphazard. ”

“ Tuke, who was tailing in the rear, called to Dennis and fell somewhat behind with him.
“Is this necessary?” he said.
“Indeed, yes, sir.”
“She lives remote on these wild downs?”
“For nigh a year, sir, now.”
“With none to neighbour or assist her?”
“None. Deep in these wastes she bides, secret and alone, and not a soul within miles, did she need succour. It is her whim—her craze, sir, if you will. She hath led a strange, solitary life—for years apart from her fellows—for years hating the world so, that she would deign to draw but the meagrest sustenance from it.” ”

“ Tuke was very embarrassed and a little shocked. He took no resentment over the girl’s spirit, though he still firmly believed she lied about the skull. But after all, it was patently unjust to hold the man responsible for the cantrips of so unmanageable a charge. ”

“ Tuke, like a dying man, saw him nod to him darkly—a grotesque phantasm as of a last delirium; saw him turn and, in company with his chief, stalk from the room; knew himself committed to such a further ordeal of torture as he feared his weakened body would be powerless to sustain; and, as the last echo of retreating footsteps came to his ears, his head dropped upon his breast and he despaired.
CHAPTER XLVI.
An apology is submitted for here retailing some commonplaces of a very evil duet of rascals. ”

“ Every stone and crevice of the little room he examined—the broken tunnel explored, candle in hand—even re-issued into the thicket and beat wildly about with hand and foot. At length it became evident, even to him, that his search must prove vain. He desisted, with a dead-white face set to his companions, and: “Come,” he said, in a hollow voice, “and conduct me back to the hell I had a little escaped from.”
Could it be possible that a passion so uncleanly could rise to the least nobility of despair? For a moment Tuke’s heart swerved in a rush of pity for anything so forlorn. ”

“ Tuke? If a woman is a lady the house shows it. Look at these flowers how beautifully arranged they are," and Madeline bent down her head and sniffed at them.
"Some people never notice such things," Mrs. Tuke said, in an aggrieved tone.
"Oh, Mrs. Tuke! how can they help it; I am sure you would recognise taste and beauty anywhere."
"So many of the women hereabouts have no taste," Mrs. Tuke replied. "They keep their houses any fashion. I always say you can tell what a house is like by the window curtains. You need not put your head inside the door." ”

“ You have Cutwater’s iron shutters—which you have closed, of course—and a quite inadequate company to hold them; and of this, one already, as you know, is but now placed hors de combat by a shot from an over-eager young member of my band.”
“True, true,” murmured Tuke—“the man.”
“A man, sir, undoubtedly; and a fool to thus expose himself. What could you do with such material, Mr. Tuke, even had you remained there to captain it?”
“Oh! thank you, Mr. Fern. You have comforted my heart amazingly. That Whimple is a sterling soul, and his precautions that I have laughed at justify themselves. ”

“ Tuke, called him an unbeliever, and he accepted the description without demur; but a negative implies a positive. Unbelief in one direction means belief in the opposite. He certainly did not believe the dogmas his grandfather insisted upon with so much passion and vehemence. He had laughed to scorn the thunderings of the little Bethel to which he had been compelled to listen as a lad. He had torn the swaddling clothes of orthodoxy into tatters, and cast them from him as though they were unclean. ”

“ Tuke scanned the fellow in silence for a moment.
“And a barrow from a rakehell, I suppose?” said he quietly. “You are too accomplished for me. Whimple, show this person off the premises.”
“Meaning I’m to go?” said the man, in a sort of genial surprise.
“Certainly. Whimple!”
“Look’ee here, master,” said the intruder, hesitating and apparently embarrassed, “I’ll ventur’ to speak Gawd’s truth, with your honour’s kind indulgence. I’m a Jack-o’-trades, I am—a handy man, ye might call me, and tough as a dawg in bout or brawl. You live lonely, says I to myself—the gent lives lonely ”

“ In 1815 he accordingly produced a smaller work, entitled ‘Practical Hints on the Construction and Economy of Pauper Lunatic Asylums.’ These works, together with Tuke's introduction to the English edition of Jacobi's work on the ‘Constitution and Management of Hospitals for the Insane’ (1841) , epitomise the best methods of the treatment of the insane known at the period. Until the end of his life Tuke maintained his interest in whatever was wisely designed to ameliorate the condition of the insane. ”

“ He could hardly tell if it were his own reawakened suspicions they saw themselves reflected in the man’s face; but—so it seemed to him—the latter was full of a covert significance of guilt and trepidation that was expressed in a certain watchfulness most difficult to ignore.
He was sitting, having finished his dinner, deep in thought; when this very fellow entered to say that a man without craved the indulgence of a word with his honour.
“A man?—What man?” said Tuke.
“He is a stranger to me, sir.” ”

“ Tuke smiled and put his arm again about the girl. She showed no sign of resentment—even allowed herself to be pulled a trifle closer to him.
“Betty, my little wench—what is it all? What is the to-do?”
“Oh!” she looked up at him through blinking lashes—“there are evil men about.”
“Why, so I know, my dear. And what then?”
She clasped her fingers convulsively over the basket-handle.
“I fear for your honour. There is something dark afoot; and you live lone and the times is troublous.” ”

“ Luke and Bedlam, long rows of the insane were chained to the walls of the corridor. But Gardner at Lincoln, Donnelly at Hanwell, and a new school of practitioners in mental disease, took up the work of Tuke, and the victory in England was gained in practice as it had been previously gained in theory.
There need be no controversy regarding the comparative merits of these two benefactors of our race, Pinel and Tuke. They clearly did their thinking and their work independently of each other, and thereby each strengthened the other and benefited mankind. ”

“ It is well, I see, to go to school to misfortune, and better to pull mugs of ale to country louts. I can congratulate Lady Linne, at least, upon a very knowing taste in liquors.”
Mr. Tuke stared in amazement. Here, he could have thought, spoke the bitterness and scorn of jealousy. What if, at his last meeting with her, she had thought fit to stultify her previous insolence by a show of condescension to him that for the moment conveyed its calculated charm? He had looked upon this, on reflection, as a mere move in her game of coquetry—a bait to the sulky lord who “drizzled.” ”

“ The deep apathy of grief was in her veins like a drug.
“How many?” said Tuke.
“Six, if there was vun, sir. Six cursed ruffians to dance agen the sky and serve the crows for black pudden, so be there’s any vally in the fellowship of the road.”
He shook his pillow of an arm aloft—finely, for all the heavy oddity of his appearance.
“Aye,” he murmured, in response to a gesture—“the man’s wife and his youngster.”
At the word a woman—one from the huddled group of robbed and terrified passengers—came out into the glow, and snatching up the child, forced it whimpering into its mother’s arms. ”

“ He looked strange, and his master as strangely on him.
“What did she want with it?” repeated the latter.
“Sir, sir—how can I say? Perhaps for memory of a great criminal, God forgive him! I implore you not to force me to an answer.”
Tuke scarcely seemed to heed him, or his obvious distress. His vision was lost in pre-occupation.
“Wait!” he said, as if talking to himself. “We must take Luvaine into our confidence before we go further. It is his right to know all; and he must judge me fairly. ”

“ They drove him back, and took their stand by the prostrate body.
“The search here has been thorough,” said Tuke. “I watched and I marked. Anywhere else in the chamber you like, sir; but these poor remains rest sacred from further abuse.” (He felt Whimple’s lips upon his hand as he spoke.) “Hunt, sir, hunt while we wait a little longer; yet I fear the stone may have dropped anywhere on her passage hither, and may lie now sunk for ever in the grass of the downs. Hurry, man, if you would look further, and would not have us snowed up to perish beside her that lies here.” ”

“ Mr. Tuke. I don’t say I would have withheld my men from their just resentment; but that I took no active part in it is the truth.”
“What sucking infants, to be sure, are you and your schoolmaster! I shall believe just this—that Cutwater stabbed himself in twenty places and then jumped his neck into the chains. But—to be candid again, Mr. Fern—what an unperspicacious rascal you must have been to kill your goose with the golden eggs.”
“Sir, there is one crime that, to my mind, cries to heaven above all others for vengeance, and that is treachery on the part of a confederate. ”

“ Tuke had arranged the furniture and antimacassars to her satisfaction, she advanced to the side of the bed.
"A lady has called to see you," she said, in an awed whisper.
"A lady?" Rufus questioned, with a slight lifting of the eyebrows.
Mrs. Tuke nodded.
"To see me or simply to inquire?"
"To see you."
"Do I know the lady?" and a faint tinge of colour came into his cheek.
"I suppose so. You ought to do at any rate. It's that scare-away American as is staying at the Hall." And Mrs. Tuke turned and looked apprehensively toward the door. ”

“ Here she dealt a little arbitrarily with justice; for the master was perhaps less a fool than the servant was an athlete. But the sentiment served her mood, and showed her the way to many small condescensions towards the poor fellow who had suffered such misjudgment.
Mr. Tuke could not but be conscious of this saucy subordination of his claims as a man of position. It entertained or aggravated him, according to his humour, to watch this variable maid playing off his servant against himself in the innocuous subtilties of coquetry. ”

“ His master did what he could for him in the pitchy darkness, building him a pillow of dead leaves and drawing the skirts of his own surtout about the icy feet.
Towards dawn, however, a little comfort of warmth triumphed in the cabined hole. This was because the snow had then completely enwrapped their place of refuge. One by one, weak and exhausted, they dropped into a shallow abyss of sleep.
Tuke was the first to come to himself again. He started up with a jerk, and felt the rat of hunger gnawing at his ribs. ”

“ You have made a man of me.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
“Blythewood,” said Mr. Tuke, “’twould be a rare thing could we light on this bogle-gem—succeed where a whole troop of cut-throats had failed—and bribe Luvaine to sanity thereby. But, I confess, it strikes me hard that I am to serve meanwhile as whipping-boy to his rueful worship; to know him warm in his blankets, while the vermin overrun my estate o’ cold nights for a treasure he hath lost.”
“’Tis the fortune of battle, Tuke, and like cryin’ ‘God bless his Majesty!’ for the favour of a bayonet-thrust under king’s button.” ”

“ The landlord sucked his lips together, in an absurd affectation of perplexity.
“Oh, him!” he cried suddenly and jovially. “That’s Mr. Fern, that is—a traveller, from abroad, come on a tower through the old country.”
Then, in the same breath, he went on deprecatingly, with a ludicrous decline of spirit:
“It’s all force the favour and take the blame with us, sir. I’m a peaceable soul that loves a pot, and circumstances conspire to upset me.”
Mr. Tuke looked at the man keenly. ”

“ DR. DANIEL HACK TUKE, the distinguished English alienist and editor of the Journal of Mental Science, who died early in March, 1895, was a grandson of William Tuke, the founder of the York Retreat, and one of the earliest English workers in the humane treatment of the insane, and was born in York, April 19, 1827. ”

“ He caught his stirrup and mounted, and was gone with a smiling nod to the girl. At the entrance to the drive, the old man saluted him respectfully. He pulled up, and was about to exchange a word with the gaffer, when he remembered his deafness, and made as if to proceed on his way. But Grandfather Pollack leaned out of his cart and beckoned him.
“That’s a full-blooded girl,” he said, in a hoarse whisper. “A sweet, neat filly, I calls her.”
Mr. Tuke, feeling the uselessness of speech, nodded after a reserved manner. ”