Almost three years ago he had told me he was going to Russia. I had thought him still there. I’d had no reason to believe otherwise.
What was happening to him, and why?
I saw a door at the back of the room open. Through it stepped a man whose narrow figure wore a dark coat and trousers of a distinctly foreign cut. He had Germanic features-pale, hooded eyes behind gold-rimmed spectacles, a long nose, a cruel mouth. His hair was close-cropped and silvery, his bearing imperious.
Reader, you will recognize him as the Prussian who conspired with the Tsar against England. At that time I had no knowledge of the man.
He strode toward Slade. An object glittered in his hand. It was a glass cylinder with a plunger, attached to a long, sharp needle. While the nurses struggled to hold Slade still, the man jabbed the needle into Slade’s arm. He worked the plunger. Slade jerked as the liquid contents of the cylinder ran into his body. His struggles weakened. His eyes closed. The nurses adjusted the clamps around his head. The doctor gathered up the wires connected to the strange apparatus. Each had a small metal disc at its end. He affixed these discs to Slade’s temples and forehead. He turned a crank on the machine.
Lights on its surface blinked. I heard a crackling sound. Slade stiffened as if from a convulsion. The foreigner moved to his side, whispered in his ear. I did not know what these men were doing to Slade, but it could not be good. I tried to open the door; it was locked. I beat my fists against it and cried, “Stop!”
The doctor, the nurses, and the foreigner looked in my direction. At the same instant I heard someone call my name. Dr. Forbes hurried toward me, saying, “There you are, thank heaven.” He seized my arm and propelled me away from the door, out of the dungeon. Soon we were in the ward where I’d left him, amid the staff, the visitors, and blessed normalcy.
“That was the criminal lunatics’ ward,” Dr. Forbes said. “I shouldn’t have let you wander in there.”
“In there-I saw-they-” With an effort, I composed myself. I stammered a description of what I’d seen.
“It’s a treatment called galvanism,” Dr. Forbes explained. “An electrical charge is administered to the patient’s head. It cures melancholia, hypochondria, mania, and dementia. It’s perfectly safe. Don’t be upset.”
“The patient. I know him. He-”
Dr. Forbes frowned. He led me down the staircase, toward the main door. “You should go home. Your experience has distressed you so much that you’re confused. You couldn’t possibly know that patient. He’s a lunatic who was arrested and brought to Bedlam by the police. He’s the suspect in a crime.”
I was sure a mistake had been made. John Slade a lunatic and a criminal? It was impossible!
He was a graduate of Cambridge, a former clergyman. He spoke at least four languages besides English. He’d been a soldier in the army of the East India Company, had served in the Middle East, and later joined the British intelligence service. Moreover, he was a hero who’d risked his life in the line of duty.
Now I told Dr. Forbes that I must save Slade; I begged him to stop the torture. Perhaps if I had behaved calmly and rationally he would have complied, but I was so agitated that I raved as if I were mad myself.
“Miss Bronte, you must leave at once,” Dr. Forbes said. “People are staring.”
That brought me to my senses. If the gossips should hear about this episode, what hay they would make of it! Famous authoress Currer Bell goes insane in Bedlam, the newspaper headlines would read. I had to let Dr. Forbes escort me out.
“This is my fault. I shouldn’t have let you come,” he said regretfully as he put me into a carriage. “I must apologize.” He added, “I am leaving in two days for a holiday in Ambleside in the Lake District, but if you should need my assistance, please let me know.”
Alone in my carriage on my way back to Gloucester Terrace, I conjectured that Slade must have gotten himself into trouble which had led to his arrest and incarceration. But what kind of trouble? I wondered if Dr. Forbes had sent me away from Bedlam because he was a party to Slade’s persecution and he didn’t want me to see it. But I could not persuade myself of that. He must truly believe Slade was a criminal lunatic and I had mistaken his identity.
When I arrived at the Smiths’ house, I would have liked to sit alone in my room and decide what to do, but George greeted me at the door and said, “I’m glad you’re back early. We’re going to the Great Exhibition.”
The Great Exhibition was a huge museum, opened just this month, that contained some one hundred thousand mechanical devices and works of art from many different countries. It had been conceived by Prince Albert, with the mission of advancing humanity and celebrating the progress achieved in the modern age. Although the Great Exhibition was the talk of England, I didn’t want to go because I was so distressed. Still, I could not refuse George. After a quick luncheon I found myself riding in a carriage with him, his mother, and his two younger sisters. They talked excitedly about the things we would see. Nobody noticed that I sat brooding in silence.
Why had Slade returned to England? Why hadn’t he let me know? I thought of the three lonely years I’d spent without him. I alternated between hurt feelings, fear for Slade, and the first pangs of doubt about what I’d seen at Bedlam. Was that inmate really Slade? How could Slade have become a criminal lunatic? My mind refused to believe he had, for I thought him to be a thoroughly sane, honorable man. But what else could explain his incarceration in the asylum, if indeed the man I’d seen was Slade?
The popularity of the Great Exhibition became evident long before we got there. Our progress slowed behind a crush of carriages and omnibuses. Pedestrians crowded the sidewalks. Eventually we reached a long avenue that led through Hyde Park, where merrymakers lounged on grass shaded by trees. It was such a bright, gay scene that my experience at Bedlam seemed unreal. Perhaps Dr. Forbes was right, and the man I’d seen wasn’t Slade. I’d mistaken Julia Garrs for my sister Anne; why might I not have made another mistake?
“Look!” Mrs. Smith pointed out the carriage window. “There is the Crystal Palace!”
The “Crystal Palace,” the popular name for the building that housed the Great Exhibition, was an enormous glass shell supported by a skeleton of iron, like a gigantic conservatory, more than a hundred feet high. The newspapers had proclaimed it “The Tenth Wonder of the World.” We disembarked from the carriage and joined the queue at the entrance. What a varied company we were in! Clergymen from the countryside shepherded flocks of parishioners; teachers presided over groups of barefoot schoolchildren; rich ladies and gentlemen waited amid soldiers in uniform. I heard foreign languages spoken by visitors from abroad.
As his mother and sisters chattered, George Smith leaned close to me and said, “You’re awfully quiet. Is something wrong?”
“No, I’m fine.” I couldn’t talk about what had happened at Bedlam; I didn’t want to worry him, especially if it had been a case of mistaken identity. Perhaps I’d wanted so much to see Slade that I had superimposed his face upon a stranger.
We entered the Crystal Palace. Its interior resembled a vast cathedral. Awestruck, carried by the tide of the crowd, the Smiths and I moved down a long transept roofed with a glass barrel vault. Iron posts, wrought to resemble classical columns, supported upper galleries on either side of a wide main thoroughfare.
“It’s over eighteen hundred feet long and four hundred fifty feet wide,” George said. “It covers nineteen square acres.”
“There are trees indoors,” his sister Eliza marveled.
I, too, was amazed by the live, full-sized elms that rose within the transept.
“The transept was offset to accommodate the trees that were on the site,” George explained. “The building isn’t completely symmetrical.”
I was so impressed by the Crystal Palace that I almost forgot about Slade. Sunshine poured through the glass ceiling and walls onto potted shrubs, flowering plants, and palmettos set along the main thoroughfare. White marble statuary gleamed. The voices of the spectators and their footsteps on the wooden floor blended into a deep hum, like the sound of the sea. Above it I heard the tinkle of falling water. We joined a crowd that was gathered around a huge crystal fountain.