Speaker 1: The blood Stained Parasol by James Ravenscroft. Within the room
were sounds that were unpleasant to hear. They were dreadful,
maniacal shouts of command, shrill cries of terror, and more awful,
because constantly broken by hoarseness and moaning of infinite tenderness
and sadness. He is in one of his spells. The
intendant said, perhaps it would be just as well not
to see him now. It is not a picture that
you want to carry with you. The attendant's voice was
one of gentle solitude and pathos. Doubtless long service in
the place had made it so. It was a private
sanitarium in the national capital for the hopelessly insane, to
which my profession as specialist and alienist gained me admittance.
The sound hypnotized me. I could not turn away. The
small iron grating at the top part of the window
drew me like a magnet, and I went and looked
into the room. A pale faced, emaciated, wild looking man
standing in the middle of a bare mattress on a
heavy iron bedstead, was yelling and gesticulating madly at some
imaginary object at the bottom of the door. Get away.
Curse you, get away, he cried, frantically. Be gone, you brute,
out of my sight. Would to God I had burned
you as fine as ashes. Oh. Oh. The groans which
ended the fury cannot be described. They were those of
a soul and agony. His whole appearance was that of
one convulsed with a terror as of death. At first
he did not see me as I peered through the grating.
His eyes, bright with the glitter of madness, were fixed
in a fearful stare at the bottom of the door.
It is over now for a while, said the intendant.
The words roused the man, and he raised his eyes
to the grating. A wan smile of relief broke the
expression of horror on his face, and he at once
stepped off the bed and came to the door. A
heady sweat, not the kind caused by heat, though the
day was sultry, was on his brow and upper lip,
and his body, relaxed from the tension of the spell,
as shaking with a nervous palsy. He was clad in
pajamas of some coarse white material, and his feet were bare.
Pardon me, He spoke in low tones and with an
accent of breeding, but that infernal dog distracted my attention
and I didn't see you. I am glad you came.
I remember you quite well. Indeed, you were doing intern
work here, were you not. I yielded to his humor,
grateful that I could help to ease his tormented spirit,
and nodded affirmatively. The glitter in his eyes seemed to
be intensified, and putting his face almost against the grating,
as though he meant his speech to be confidential, he said,
perhaps you saw her. His voice was almost a whisper.
She came in when I was dissecting. I was always dissecting, then,
always dissecting. Understand, I cut things up, alive and dead,
dead and alive. That was the beginning of the hell.
He said it, so sanely, so remorsefully, that I startled.
Looked close at him. Reason appeared to be reinstated on
her throne. Then he broke out again. I cut them
to pieces, but I didn't burn the pieces, and they
escaped out the windows through the keyhole. They even hid
in the pockets of my clothes until I was on
the street, and then they would leap out and dart away.
He moistened his thick, dry lips with his tongue and
took hold of the bars in the grating and went on, No,
I didn't burn the pieces. They escaped. That dog follows
me in pieces at night. Its feet scratched at the
bottom of the door, and its eyes look in between
the bars of this window. Its red, dripping tongue lies
on the bed beside me, and its hot, horrible breath
smothers me. Its footsteps trod up and down the floor,
and its hellish moans and wines drive me crazy. Listen,
it was alive. That's why she struck me. A soft
white thing. It was, and I threw up my hands
and caught it. She dropped it, and I took it
and kept it. That's it. Standing in the corner over there, involuntarily,
I shuddered and looked toward the corner designated by his gesture.
There was nothing in any of the corners. And after
the dog is gone, she comes. She comes, slipping, slipping.
I can't hear, I can't see her. She comes to
get her parasol, but when she sees the bloodstains on it,
she turns to a ghost. I tried to wash the
stains out, but I can't. Every time I put water
on them, they spread. He leaned closer to the bars,
and with one eye cautiously on the attendant, he whispered,
I'm working on a solution that will entirely remove the bloodstains,
so she will take the parasol, for when she does,
the dog will leave, and then I can get a long,
quiet rest. He paused and looked furtively around the room,
and then began his awful babblings again. He called piteously
after me, as the intendant took my arm and drew
me away. I remembered little else that I saw in
the sanitarium. Tell me about him, I implored, as soon
as we got out of hearing of his cries. Who
is he? How did he come to be here? The
intendant hesitated. Not everyone should hear that story, he remarked thoughtfully,
as if half talking to himself. But of course, with
you a specialist, it's different. He took me to a
chair on the porch. From them, I could see into
a section of the grounds of the inmates, where benighted
beings were engaged in assuming their various and fantastic roles
of madness. His name I shall not tell you he began,
for that is a secret and very properly. So I
shall only relate briefly what happened to him as it
came to me from his mother. His people are prominent
and wealthy. It wrecked his mother's life, but the only
thing that could be done was to give him up
into this place. When they come here to see him,
they wait until he is comparatively free from symptoms of
an attack, and then they go look in the grating
as you did. Strange to tell he recognizes only one
of them, a sister, but he believes her to be
a sister who died some two or three years before
he became insane. Every possible care is given him, and
every famous specialist in the country have examined him. They
say it is useless to hope that he will be
raving mad to the end of his days. Then the
furies seize him, and he will hurl at his imaginary
tormentors anything he can lift. That is why his room
has nothing in it but a bed, and that is
fastened to the floor with heavy cleats. The mattress, made
of a material that resists his nails, is securely attached
to steal slats riveted to the bed frame, and there
is no covering. Blankets, spreads, pillows, and cheets were given
him at first, and he rnt them to tatters fighting
the dog. In the winter, his room is kept so
warm that covering is not needed. He was accounted one
of the brightest minds at the medical college where he
was a professor. It was predicted that he would do
great things in surgery. He was making a special research
in the field of vivisection. As he himself said, every
time he can get some one to listen. That was
the beginning of the hell. He was engaged to marry
one of the loveliest young women of his city. From
what I was told, she was as lovely in spirit
as she was in person. The woman, it is said,
was the real force that moved his work at such
amazing strides. He was eager to give her of the
very best of his energies and talents. As a quiet
and close observer of life, I am sometimes almost persuaded
to believe in fate. The story is that a whim
possessed his fiancee to go through the medical college, just
as I presume as a whim possessed you to go
through this place. She said nothing to him of her intention,
for she wanted to surprise him. Two girlfriends accompanied her,
and together they explored. An attendant, who must have been
exceedingly careless, was directing them, and at a certain place
in their adventure, fate willed that he should be called
elsewhere for a few minutes. In those few minutes, a
man was doomed to madness, a woman's heart was broken,
and several lives were made desolate. The place where the
attendant left them was in a corridor by a laboratory
where dissecting and other experimental work was done. The doctor's
fiancee opened the door of the room and peeped in.
At the opposite side, a man, with his back to her,
was working over some object. She at once recognized the
familiar figure, and as fate would have it, she was
seized with a caprice to steal up behind him, telling
her companions who he was and bidding them wait in
the corridor for the intendant. She went in, softly, closed
the door, and noiselessly tiptoed along the aisle between benches.
If there had been more light, but why say if
other than if fate had not taken her there that day.
Her lightly slippered feet made no sound, and she stood
behind him unnoticed. He might have heard, but he was
deeply engrossed in his work. She tilted slightly on one
foot and looked past him at the object which so
held his attention. She gazed a moment, and then, as
though forgetting his presence, she sprang to his side. A
dog was stretched on a dissecting How she discovered the
tactics of mystery unless she saw with the inner and
more penetrating vision, But she did see evidence of life
in an animal that had been carefully prepared by all
the modern methods as a subject for the dissector. The
doctor dropped his instruments and stood staring at her, speechless.
Had she dropped from above, he could not have been
more amazed and startled. It's alive, the girl gasped, yes,
he admitted, you had better not look at it. Please
come away. How did you get here? The girl never
moved nor took her eyes from him. It is in
the interest of science, of saving and preserving human life,
he began to explain. No doubt, A cold fear was
creeping into his heart at the sight of her. It
is done in nearly all colleges and hospitals. You know,
the animal is under a powerful anesthetic and does not
feel pain. A moment more she stood, So the tale
goes as though transfigured. And then you fiend, you coward,
she screamed, as she struck him in the face with
her parasol. She swung it with all her strength for
a second blow, and he threw his hands to ward
it off. There were red smears where he touched it,
and when she saw them, she flung the parasol from
her and swooned. Her companions, from where they were waiting
in the corridor, heard the scream and the commotion, and
rushed in just as the doctor picked her up and
ran after him. As he carried her to another room,
he told them that she had fainted at the sight
of the dissecting table. It was a fatal day for
the doctor. In his excitement, he had forgotten to wipe
his hands before he lifted the girl, and there were
red finger marks on her white dress. Almost as soon
as she revived, she saw them and swooned again. And
when she again revived, she began trying to tear off
the dress like she had lost her reason. One of
her companions telephoned to her home, and fresh clothes were brought.
It was perhaps all of an hour later, when sick
and too weak to walk, she was carried from the
room to which the doctor had taken her. That is
the end. The doctor pleaded with the girl's father and mother,
but in vain, she would never again permit him to
see her. She said she would as soon marry a murderer.
Night after night he paced the sidewalk in front of
her home and went away only when the lateness of
the hour and the vacancy of the street made him conspicuous.
He gave up his college work, neglected his personal appearance,
and at last became like a haunted man. Many dark
tales of what had happened were whispered among friends and
acquaintances of the two families. The girl became a nervous wreck,
and finally her people broke up their home and moved
to a distant city. Then something in the doctor's brain cracked,
and well, you have seen for yourself, he rose, a
gentle reminder that he could not spare more of his time.
As we shook hands in parting, he said Vivisection may
possibly be of service to medical and surgical science, but
it has nothing to do with love. The end of
the blood stained parasol