Hysteria (Part Two)

It was approximately midnight when I heard the scream. I hurried outside and ran toward Virginia’s cottage. The moon was bright, illuminating the treacherous path uphill. I heard a hissing voice hush her, but she would not be silenced. Shadows struggled in the candle-lit interior of her cottage. I rushed forward and the door was thrown open. A figure ran toward me, her long fair hair trailing after her. Behind her came a hobbling figure too slow to overtake her. Within the span of a breath she had cowered behind me, pointing at the hobbling man.
“He is trying to kill me!” she cried.
“I donna’ wanna’ kill her!” Henry said, his knife glinting in the moonlight. “Just her wanderin’ womb! It needs to cease its dreamin’ before it start’s wakin’! Will tol’ me so!”
The man had lost his senses. His eyes were wild with madness.
“Stop, Henry!” I said.
He did not stop, but raised the knife. I rushed to meet him, grabbing the arm with the thirsty blade. His eyes glowed with moonlight, and madness, and his cheeks glistened with tears.
“You donna’ understand!” he cried as we struggled. “I have to silence her screams! I have to silence the blasphemy of her wanderin’ womb!”
His mouth reeked of beer and his words rang with lunacy. “The wanderin’ womb!”.
“Get a grip on yourself!” I said. “Stop this! Drop the knife! William paid you to watch over her, not slay her!”
“You donna’ know the price!” he sobbed. “You donna’ know what he done to satisfy the Pact!”
I was taller than him, and had two good legs, but his madness lent him strength. Gradually, however, his crippled leg betrayed him, giving way as we both tumbled to the ground, the knife between us. I felt a splash of wetness, and the seaman shook as if suffering from a spasm of the spine. The struggle went out of him and he lay among the gorse, clutching the knife buried in his side. The blood was black by moonlight, like the shadowy cowl of Death himself.
“I meant her no harm,” he sobbed. “Only to free her. To free her from the wanderin’ womb!”
I rose to my feet, breathless and shaken. Virginia clung to me, looking down upon the madman. His breath shallowed, thinning and softening as the dark pall of Death spread wider.
“Ye’ donna’ un’erstand,” he gasped. “It’s an abomination. That…wanderin’…womb…”
They were his final words. He lay still then; dead as the face of the moon.
“Virginia!” I said, turning her away from the corpse. “Did he harm you?” I pulled her toward her cottage. “Come. I must check you for wounds.”
We entered her cottage. A candle burned by the window, but the writing desk was overturned, its contents spilled upon the floor. I used the candle to light an oil lamp, its fiery light further banishing the shadows. Virginia watched me with untroubled eyes, and I wondered, momentarily, if she would relapse into her catatonia. Instead, she let slip her white gown and stood denuded before me, her pale skin immaculate in that livid light. I was beside myself with astonishment.
“You said you would inspect me for wounds,” she said.
“At once!” I said, rallying my faculties against my astounded wonderment. “Of course, of course!”
Immediately, I surveyed her body most closely, holding the oil lamp near to reveal any lacerations or bruises that might need tending. Finding none, I told Virginia she was most fortunate and that she could clothe herself once again. She did not. Instead, she sat down upon her bed and stared at me— or perhaps stared at something beyond me. At length, she spoke.
“My husband assigned him to me,” she said plainly.
“Yes,” I said. “But certainly not to harm you. William would never…”
She tossed her fair hair impassively.
“What would you say if I told you that I almost welcomed his blade? What would you say if I told you I am tempted, even now, to withdraw that knife and thrust it into my heart? In truth, I am not even sure why I screamed. An old, animal instinct, perhaps.”
“You are suffering from your illness,” I told her. “You just need more treatment and more time to recover.”
She scoffed. “Time? Time is exactly what I do not need, nor have.” She smirked at the door. “That man was not so wicked as you might conjecture,” she said. “He refused to use his knife unless I absolved him of the sin with my forgiveness. Is that madness? I wonder…”
“Religiosity is a certain madness,” I said, trying to keep my eyes upon her face.
She appeared amused. “Have you ever been touched by a god, Dr. Grace?”
“By a god, Mrs. Worthington?” I said, not understanding. “Do you mean touched by God? As in a religious conversion?”
“By either, then,” she said, sardonically crossing her bare arms across her bare breasts.
“I am not of a religious inclination, Mrs. Worthington.”
She laughed softly, and I feared that this latest encounter had indeed damaged her wits. No sane woman would be inclined toward mirth after nearly dying.
“I would have suspected not,” she said. “No, once you are touched by a god, everything changes. You are awakened in ways you cannot comprehend, and so, to reconcile yourself, you become as if asleep to the rest of the world. Turned off, like an oil lamp.”
I turned off the oil lamp, thinking she was implying a need for greater privacy from the light. Her nakedness glowed within the room with its lunar luminescence.
“I am speaking of my catatonia,” she said. “I may have appeared unresponsive, but that was because I was like a wagon overburdened with weight. Too much upon my mind and so I could not budge beneath those panoramic revelations. Or were they pandemonic?” She reached out her hand and touched mine, ever so lightly. “But you fetched me back from those overwhelming sensations. With this hand. This hand beckoned me away from the pandemonium. I was too awake, Robert. I was catatonic because I was too awake.”
Without thinking, I clasped her hand in mine.
“What truly ails you, Mrs. Worthington?” I asked. “Please help me to understand. I feel as if I have been groping in darkness since first I saw you.”
She slipped her hand from mine and stood up, walking past me and looking out her cottage window. Her pale hip brushed against me and I quivered involuntarily.
“I am ever upon a bridge of sighs,” she said, “and I know not which way to go. Left or right. Up or down. Perhaps down, then up.” She shook her head. “No, no. Someone such as myself would not ascend. Too great a sin weighs upon me, ever growing, and I know not how I can expunge it without committing yet another sin in its stead.”
I needed to leave her cottage. I realized this with much affright, for I felt myself drawn to her as she stood, steeped starkly in the luminosity of her nakedness, and feared I might breach that gulf between patient and doctor.
“I need to fetch some men to remove the body,” I said. “You should rest. If you have difficulties sleeping I will bring some wine…”
She turned upon me, pressing against me with her belly and breasts. She kissed me, and her kiss dispelled all thoughts from my head.
“I will be fine,” she said as she withdrew. “Good night, doctor.”
She lay down to bed and I— in my bewilderment— fumbled with the door. Stumbling out into the night, I walked as if a somnambulist in want of smelling salts. So overtaken was I that I tripped over the dead seaman’s body as I stumbled through the moonlight. The tumble roused me to my senses, reminding me of the cliffs always hemming the moors, and so I picked myself up and, with a sober mind, I woke a few Cornish men, including George Friggs, and we saw to the disposal of the body.
I had thought we would bury the man, but George infromed me that the Cornish earth was not kind to shovels nor to the backs using them. Instead, they chose to wrap him in cloth and weigh him down with rocks. They then took him in a small boat and dropped him into the Celtic Sea.
“Is a proper sailor’s burial anyhow,” George reassured me. “The bastard might have been mad, but he will find his peace in the hereafter.”
It was the only prayer uttered that night. Everyone was eager to return to bed. Yet, I lingered upon the shore, listening to the hiss and hush of the tides. My mind went, naturally, to Virginia, but I turned it aside and thought instead of Henry O’ Toole. He had not seemed a violent man. He was mad, to be sure. The glint of flint in his eyes must have soon given itself to a great fire upon the brain. Yet, I had not believed him capable of violence. He seemed a reluctant assassin prompted by as much concern for Virginia as for the world. And Virginia’s account cautioned an overly violent characterization. True, he wished to harm her, but it seemed an act of fear or desperation rather than wrath or lust or any other such fiery emotion. He had ultimately begged for forgiveness, she said, and that, more than likely, was what bought her chance at escape.
I recalled his final words, too, for a clue. He had spoken of a “wanderin’ womb”. The phrase struck me as familiar, though I could not place its reference. Thinking upon it, I returned to my cottage. Once there, I sought my books. Throughout the witching hours I read by oil lamp the various passages I had marked concerning ancient beliefs concerning the womb. It was as the rosy blush of dawn came stealing out of the East that I found a relevant passage concerning the womb. It was in Plato’s works, of all people’s, and that imbecile had, as usual, much of nothing to say about anything that struck his fancy. He believed the womb to be a wandering creature that moved about in the woman’s body. I could not think that Henry O’ Toole was familiar with Plato, nor such antiquated notions as the womb being a separate creature living within Woman. So, what was it that the hobbled seaman actually meant? Surely there was reason in his madness, however disproportional.
It was a mystery, and I was too exhausted for mysteries. As I lay myself to bed my fatigued mind went wandering itself. I remembered what my father had said to me about my plans to become a doctor focused primarily upon women. He had been chagrined, and moreover, furious.
“My own son a degenerate!” he had exclaimed. “It should not surprise me that others should follow this Age of Reason with such abandon, but my own flesh and blood?! You must understand, boy! They are epicureans, one and all! Hedonists with intellectual pretenses. They feed themselves with libraries full of absurd immoralities to justify their perversions. Man’s sinfulness will inevitably corrupt every human enterprise, including Medicine. You will be damned, my son!”
“Knowledge is a blessing, father,” I told him. “And there is no happier knowledge than that of the creatures with whom Man is so intimately entwined.”
“I have lived with women enough to know the faults of them,” my father said. “And there is no remedying them, anymore than remedying a single man’s soul. Think back to when Adam sought to remedy Eve’s discontent and know the fruit of humanity’s sins. That is why they suffer in childbirth. That is why the bed holds no pleasures for them. Original Sin.”
“Certain women of Asia have enjoyed the marriage bed for centuries,” I had said. “There is no reason why they should be the only ones. And to understand women would be to improve their health. Is that not what we should aspire to do as doctors? So much could be learned in conjunction with women. Imagine what I could learn if I were to travel to the Orient. Perhaps I could even learn the means for safer birthing…”
“So you learn to practice Medicine from women now, do you?” my father had countered. “And savages at that.” He had scoffed. “But I suppose Asian savages are vogue in London. Perhaps you should import some into your service. Why bother with midwives of the English stock when you might have more exotic flavors at your disposal?”
“Father,” I said patiently, “what is it that you are implying of me?”
“That you have always had a keen interest in women,” he said. “Which I would normally encourage if the woman was of means and breeding. But to have a keen interest in all women…well, I am sure it is lucrative, but it is affords others much in the way of gossip.”
“I do not care for gossip,” I said. “It impoverishes our species. I only wish to elucidate what is sorely lacking in human knowledge. Women are yet a mystery to us. Half the world is in shadow. We need to know more about them so we can properly treat them for their maladies. And I believe that much of their suffering is from extraneous inhibitions and needless oppression. Why not work to eliminate the causes of these hysteria symptoms? For instance, if husbands would only tend to their wives’ needs in the marriage bed…”
“A woman’s pleasure in the marriage bed comes in her husband’s pleasure!” my father snapped. “Nothing more within it. Her personal pleasures lie beyond it, in her children and in the upkeep of the household. There is no personal pleasure in the marriage bed for proper ladies, as every married man in England can attest.”
“I contest it,” I had said vehemently. “It cannot be so. If you could only see how transformed these women are after a proper treatment…”
“Enough!” my father had said, nearly screaming. “What would your mother say? What would she say, having given her life so that you might live? And for what? To seek the bestial pleasures of these…these…bacchantes?! There is only one treatment for women: to read the Bible and forsake all other indulgences. Even chocolate is a thing of diabolic design.”
“Father, how can you say such things?” I said. “You have been a doctor your whole life. You have been a man of Science and Natural remedy!”
“And what has it given me? A son dedicating his life to perversions, like all among his ignoble generation. You seek to not only eat of the Forbidden Fruit, but to plant its seeds and make an Eden of your own; a manmade blasphemous thing that is a blight to the eyes of God.”
“We are only helping our fellow people,” I said.
“Helping your fellow people at the cost of the Master that made you,” he said. “Goodly works of God are being reduced to Natural trivialities, like ancient mountains mined for gold. This is the price of so-called Progress.”
“We must learn, though,” I argued. “Regardless of what it does to the superstitions that we hold dear, and indeed because of what it does to those superstitions. We must yoke ourselves to Progress.”
My father had shaken his head slowly, ruefully. “But you will not like what you find, son. It will be like gutting a flower to see how its petals bloom. All you will be left with is rot.”
Ignorance, for me, was a blasphemy. And I had no use for gods of any kind. My own birth had slain my mother. What sort of god demanded such a terrible price with so much infinite power and wisdom at his disposal? To me, if there was a god then he was a cruel tyrant, for his very breath was a great storm at sea that sank ships and widowed women and orphaned children upon his unfeeling whim. He was an elemental creature beyond Reason, and so beyond Empathy for the creations he had forged through eons of bloody Natural Selection. His very breath soured the world.
And I vowed I would dedicate my whole life to casting just a sliver of light upon his shadowy depths, if only so he had less darkness wherein to dwell, unseen, like the monster that he was.
Now, of course, I truly regret glimpsing god, for it is one of many of the horrors I must take with me to the grave, burdened as I am with hideous revelations.

***

My ghosts clung stubbornly to me throughout the night. Their cumbrous, clammy touch inspired frets and fatigue without relief. My father’s ghost bickered and demeaned me while the faceless ghost of my mother blamed me for her death. When I attempted to speak— to apologize to my mother and tell her my intention to atone for murdering her with my birth into this world— I had no tongue. I had no voice. I had no breath. The ghosts of my parents sat upon my chest and I could only roll my head about, powerless against their condemnations.

***

I woke late in the afternoon the next day. Charlotte had asssumed liberty in sitting next to my bed, in a ladderback chair.
“What is the matter?” I asked.
“You were sleepin’ awfully long, sir,” she said. “I feared you might be sick.”
“I could not sleep well,” I said. “There was an incident last night, of which I should like to inform you and your sisters. It may affect Mrs. Worthington’s convalescence here.”
“As you say, sir,” she said, rising from the chair. She lingered by the bedside, her face a silent seal of concern and apprehension. Her presence vexed me.
“Is there anything else, Charlotte?” I asked impatiently.
“No, sir,” she said, curtsying. She hesitated. “I beg your pardon, sir, but I only wondered if there were anything I might do for you.”
“Yes,” I said, with admittedly waspish irritation. “Your chores. That is what I pay you for.”
She curtsied once again and left to join her sisters. I was suffering too much from a headache to be pestered at that moment by Cornish girls with their silly peculiarities. I rose from bed, groggily, and prepared myself for another day. As I often did upon rising, I searched for the velvet pouch with which William had secured his wife’s safekeeping. Its heft of wealth was reassuring. There were enough jewels, pearls, and gold to buy a manor house further inland and live the rest of my days in comfort. And perhaps I would do that. Perhaps, I fancied, I would invite the Worthingtons to winter there.
Perhaps William would be too preoccupied with business and Mrs. Worthington would come alone.
It was an ignoble fancy, but it gave haste to my movements despite my fatigue. I hurried to don my clothes and to start the day, heading directly to Virginia’s cottage. She was already upon the moor, walking through the gorse. Her whitely golden hair streamed in the briny breeze— tumbling with the shamelessness of a Greek nymph. She turned to me, as if expecting me, and smiled.
“It is high time you had risen,” she said in her husky, yet melodic, voice. “I was beginning to fear that the madman had not been so dead as thought and had taken you with him.”
“He cannot harm you now,” I said, “nor anyone.”
“Thanks to you,” she said, smiling openly as the sea winds blew her long fair hair about her face. She looked like an elfin queen behind that wilderness of flaxen hair. My heart leapt in anticipation of becoming lost in its caress. I was quite lost in such unbecoming fancies. “You are my knight now,” she said. “I shall dub thee Lancelot, though I dare say it is an ill-omened title.”
“I would gladly be your Lancelot,” I said.
She took my hands in her own. “And would you kill a dragon for me, if I asked it of you?”
“Anything you wished,” I said, grinning at what seemed a childish jest.
“And if the dragon was a part of me,” she said, “and would mean my own death to free me, would you do it?”
All mirth vanished in the instant, blown away by the faint stench of rot upon the winds.
“I do not like this conjecture,” I said.
She smiled and let go of my hands. “It is just a fancy of mine, is all,” she said. “Come now. Let us walk away this angst. Give our demons a jaunt, as a kettle master would his dogs.”
We walked for much of the day upon the moors and the heathland. The sun was radiant and the flowers further inland were ebullient with its light. It was an idyllic stroll. We said little except to comment upon a certain flower, or the refreshing air, or the sparkle of the sea. Eventually we came to a granite outcropping near an old ruin of a building. Well-worn ruts formed a crude road leading away to a shore nearby shore. I had never been so far from my clinic. It was exhilarating in its own way, and keenly I was pleased with having Virginia by my side. Nor did I fail to understand the scandalous nature of my emotions. I was dancing upon a steep and slippery precipice.
“This must have been a mine once upon a time,” I remarked. “Copper or tin, I should think. Maybe even iron. I do not know.”
“It contrasts greatly with the heath,” Virginia said. “Indeed, it is most foul in appearance, like a ruin where once it was likely beautiful.”
“Pardon me,” I said, “but did not your family’s fortune come from mines?”
“Yes,” she said. “But they have been barren for a long time.”
“And so you married William,” I said, the implications distasteful. “I presume to understand that his newfound wealth has been a result of mines in America.” I thought again of the strange creamy white gold and oddly coloured jewels that resided in the velvet pouch in my bedcamber. “Gold mines, if I am not mistaken. Is that so?”
“He has found wealth in America,” she said quietly.
“So,” I said, hoping that I did not inquire too clumsily into this rather personal business, “how did he acquire such opportunities? Did he buy a teat off that Golden Calf? What has he traded for such wealth?”
Virginia was quiet a very long time. “Something not so near and dear to his heart as gold,” she said, her long fair hair blowing around her like an aureola.
“I see,” I said, not at all seeing what she meant.
Virginia continued to gaze at the plundered earth with its open wounds of blasted turf and rent rock. There was a wrathfulness in her countenance. Combined with her beauty, it made her appear like an avenging angel.
“What a creature Man is,” she said. “When Man looks upon something, he must either control it or destroy it. Whether it be animals or land or Woman, he must control or destroy it. But soon there will come things that Man cannot control; things which he will despair of ever destroying. It will be as a new hell for Man, then; one that Man will not be capable of reconciling himself with, but like a fly against a window pane he will slam himself again and again in the futile effort to break free. Whereas Woman…well, Woman has learned to deal with such hells since her creation and will, through her strength, endure yet another glass cage no different than the one before.”
She trembled as she spoke, but whether wroth or ill I could not tell. I know now that her tremors were born of simultaneous sources.
“Are you well, Virginia?” I asked, touching her wrist.
She drew away from me, and there came a momentary flare of hatred in her eyes. But she shook her head and sighed. “I am sorry, Robert,” she said, warily. “It has been a long walk and I should like to return to the cottage.”
“As you wish,” I said. “Let us go.”
We returned to the village. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne were in the field, affecting to pick flowers. When I approached the three sisters, only Anne and Emily hailed us. Charlotte turned away, as if lost in her own thoughts.
“It is good to see you out of bed, sir,” Anne said. She eyed Virginia with a sidelong glance that I disliked. “And our one and only patient is doing well, too, it seems.”
“Yes,” I said, “though the ruffian I dispatched last night merely had her in his grasp.”
The sisters’ demeanors changed upon the instant from smoldering resentment to startled apoplexy.
“Indeed, Dr. Grace?!” Emily said, her mouth a moue of surprise. “What happened?”
“It does not matter,” I said, wanting to spare Virginia the recollection. “It is enough to know that I have slain the deluded fool with his own blade. Now you no longer need fear any trespassers.”
The revelation overawed the three sisters and I, to my great shame, took pride in being a hero of my own story, especially since it involved saving the life of the beautiful Virginia Worthington. I exulted in it, truly, and blinded myself to my own folly.
I sent the three sisters home early once again, after they had made an early supper for Virginia, and then I set myself down to the tavern once again, hoping to speak to George about last night’s bloody business. In truth, I wanted to regale the Cornish men— to whom I was considered little more than a London dandy— with my heroic encounter with violence the night before.

***

As Fate would have it, I would not be able to confer upon the Cornish flock my grand tale of valor. Instead, I greeted George at the bar to order another modest meal of mutton and potatoes and was served, instead, with a sobering bit of news.
“Dr. Grace,” he said, “I received a letter today from a lad working a merchant ship. We were to deliver it to you at once, but your midwives said you were resting. Later, they said you had gone for a stroll. I am sorry for the tardiness of its delivery, but here it is, swift as bad luck could have it.”
He handed to me an envelope with William’s seal upon it. I sat down, then, next to a candle and opened the letter, reading its contents. It had not been written by William, nor did it claim to be. Rather, it was written by the captain of his trade ship. It reported—in a succinct, clinical hand—that William had taken his own life in the captain’s quarters. My childhood friend left no testimony behind, and gave no forewarning to his self-destructive state of mind. The captain had sent the letter ashore with the lad and then continued North, having too much cargo to tarry for formalities. Since I was Virginia’s caretaker it was incumbent upon me to inform her of the tragedy. In the meantime, the captain would oversee William’s trade ventures, as had been a contractual stipulation previously agreed upon in the event of misfortune.
I was shocked. William had been a lifelong friend, and now his life was at an end. Simultaneously, I felt a quickening rush of relief and, moreover, joy. Virginia was now a widow, and as such was available to court. True, there had to be a sufficient period of mourning, but afterwards she would yet remain in my care and, so, be free to wed me as she undoubtedly desired. Yes, fool as I was— and, moreover, a repugnant opportunist, it seemed—I had no doubts as to her attachment to me; no more doubts than as to my attachment to her.
I thanked George and left the tavern, walking uphill toward the seaside moor. The moon was full as I approached Virginia’s cottage. I rapped at the door once, and it at once opened.
“Robert?” she said. “Is something the matter?”
“I am afraid so,” I said, affecting proper solemnity for the message. “Please, be seated. This will come as quite the shock.”
She did not sit, but stood by the window, turning away from me. Her petticoats seemed swollen with an errant wind through the window. She did not turn away from the window, but stared out at sea. I wondered, perhaps, if she was looking for William somewhere beyond the horizon, or if she was looking for something else.
“I have terrible news,” I said.
“Did William kill an Albatross?” she asked, her voice flippant.
“No,” I said. “It saddens me to say it, but it appears he has…taken his own life.”
I expected female frailty, and so rushed to her should she be faint. But in the stead of a swooning woman I found an unmoved statue of icy scorn.
“A coward’s end, then,” she remarked. “I knew he had not the stomach to endure what he had begotten upon the world. Begotten with his scheming and conniving. How ironic that I should have the stomach to see it through to the end.” She turned away from the window, then, and I saw how beautifully icy her blue eyes were. “Tell me, doctor, since you have the privilege of being both a man and a doctor that treats women, what do you think of that trite epithet, ‘the fairer sex’?”
I knew not how to answer her, for I knew not the purpose in such a question. Before I could stammer a response, she took my hand and led me toward her bed. The lunar luminescence of her face outshone the moon itself, her skin seemingly glowing in the shadows.
“I am ready for another treatment, Robert,” she said. “For I wish to be reminded of how a woman should feel before it is too late to feel anything human. But I do not want you to treat me as you would any other patient. I do not wish for you to treat me as a doctor should. Rather, I want you to rut upon me as a man would a woman, naturally, without these pretenses of Medicine. Be as a beast upon me, and let me be as a beast upon you.”
Whether it was dread or exultation that silenced me, I do not know. But I did as she commanded.
She undid her petticoats and stepped out from that frilled garment, slick with her nudity. Her belly was protuberant and hung upon her solidly, and yet it did not repulse me. Her breasts, too, were swollen, and her nipples dark and engorged, the tips damp already with excited milk. I will not omit that I did take her, then, as she wished it, and she took me, in turns, straddling me as her milk trickled upon me. The excitement I felt was as a new awakening, very much akin to those that I gave to my patients in the clinic. For who was I to fool myself into believing that what I practiced was clinical medicine? What I did for my female patients was as Hedonistic as my father avowed, and was all the more therapeutic because of its Natural basis in human pleasures. It was simply animal instinct sanctified by the pretense of Medicine.
And yet, even in the euphoria of our mutual paroxysm, I felt dawn a fear akin to religious terror. As my hands cupped her breasts and I gazed up at her, I saw the climactic triumph in her eyes, and yet I was drawn in my attentions to the rotund swell of her belly and the strange, overabundant movement that writhed there, deep in the mysterious womb of Woman.

***

What was it that lured my heart to these iniquities? Idleness, perhaps, and indolence, too. Perhaps it was the idle hours that tempted my mind ever toward my singular patient. Singular, also, was the vice, for had I more patients in my care such fixations would not have diverted and vexed me so strongly within the lecherous lap of so much leisure. Indeed, idle hands are the devil’s playthings, and I had idle hands in want of work. Wanting work, I exercised them, and my heart, upon the newly widowed Virginia Worthington. It was a passionate, shameless enterprise.
We dropped all pretenses as to doctor and patient. Instead, the treatment cottage became as a rutting grot of amorous delights. The sisters inquired after us only once, happening upon us in our mutual pleasures, and they fled in appalled fright. This encroachment only catalyzed our passions. Seeing Charlotte’s heart break awoke in me a Sadist I had never known. This demonic twin reveled in debauchery and its gremlin familiar, gossip.
Again and again Virginia and I sought each other’s flesh. Moreover, we walked like husband and wife through town. The Cornish people were aghast at our impropriety. Yet, it delighted us to no end. We relished our shared flesh and shared sin. We took our supper in the tavern, much to George’s horror, and that he did not refuse my coin only made it the more enjoyable experience. For weeks we cleaved to one another. It was not Love, nor was it wholly Lust. Indeed, it was more of an act of ruination upon society, and civilization. Like animals we were, slighting the conventions of modern civilization by savaging ourselves with every bedroom taboo that willed itself upon us in our ardour. We were as unashamed as Adam and Eve, and as corrupt as the Serpent, yet no one dared to burn our Garden down.
But a certain melancholia would clutch Virginia intermittently, like a hawk upon a hare, and she would turn wan and swoon away after the paroxysms had at last left her. In these moments of lethargy she would beg me, with a wanton’s sincerity, to end her life.
“You do not know the agonies I know,” she said. “You do not know the horrors visited upon me by the shadows of this world.”
I explained to her the absurdity of this fixation and vowed that I was forbidden from harming another. I had taken the Hippocratic oath, and the first vow was to do no harm. Yet, even then I knew I was deluding myself. By refusing to end her life, and thus aborting the creature growing within her womb, I had done unto the world a greater harm beyond all reckoning.
Gradually, Virginia’s belly swelled all the more with child, and yet my desire for her only increased. My mind turned ever toward her, even as I slept at night, lost in the nightmares that visited me in my vulnerable hours of sleep. I saw, yet again, the Great Flood that subsumed the continents. I stood upon the ridged spine of the earth, surrounded by endless ocean to either side. I saw the island rise with its terrible countenance. I saw the dark, indifferent eyes and the maw thrashing its ropy appendages upon the water. I saw Virginia entwined within its writhing tendrils.
When I heard her screams, I did not know if they were screams of joy or of agony. Perhaps they were both.

***

The sisters never returned to my employment. The Cornish people avoided me, except whenever wealth held sway, and even then they acknowledged me with a begrudging taciturnity. I pondered the notion of selling the cottages and taking the jewels and gold and gems that William had given me and moving inland. Thinking it would please Virginia, I told her of my plans while abed in the aftermath of our passions. Contrary to my expectations, she succumbed to a rage.
“And I suppose you think I will leave with you?!” she cried. “You suppose you and I will live happily ever after, growing old together like true loves in a ridiculous French novel? That is absurd, Robert, and you know it!”
“What is errant in the idea?” I demanded, becoming angry. “Do you not wish to escape to some private place where we might live in happiness? An estate in the country, perhaps? Or do you wish to return to London? I would be willing to live in London, but you must know that there will be gossip. Gossip of which we would be powerless to silence.”
She sat up in bed, her belly swollen to a full rotundness and her breasts almost always trickling milk now— so much so that it ruined the sheets, though I had long foregone frets upon such things. Even the unnatural writhing of her womb did not give me pause or halt my breath with terror. She looked upon me with her blue-eyed scorn, and it both withered me and excited me. I loved when she so loathed me with a single look.
“Powerless?” she said, her hysteria taking hold of her. “Powerless? Is that what you fear? Well, perhaps you should. Man has never known the powerlessness inherent in being born Woman. Man does not know the rough indifference of a rutting beast mounting him against his protestations, being taken body and soul by the indifferent whim of another. But he will know it. That time will come soon enough.”
“I only wish that we live as husband and wife,” I said, feeling an angry possessiveness overtake me. Her hysterical fits always provoked me, for I still understood little of their nature. “I am your doctor, after all, and I know what is best for you.”
She stood up, quivering with rage. She did not bother to don her clothes, but left her cottage without clothes or shame. I hastened to clothe myself and follow her, lest great anger would lead to great folly.
There were no sane men or women out of doors that night in Cornwall. A tempest was blowing in upon the Celtic Sea, like a raging dragon crashing aground in its wrath. The sea-borne gales blew and bellowed, as if the Atlantic itself was warring with the continents. I could not walk long without nearly toppling over with their belligerent wails. It was a black night illuminated only in flashes of lightning. All was hidden and revealed in spasmodic intervals, light and darkness frenetic in their struggle. Fearing that Virginia would lose herself in such a night, I called for her and hastened my own tentative tread, all the while frightened of the treacherous cliffs that dropped dizzily toward the throe-thrown sea.
I found Virginia soon enough. She swayed at the edge of the cliff. Jagged rocks gaped like a maw below her, as if she was a worm upon a hook. I called to her, pleading that she come away from that airy threshold. The winds howled in elemental rage, and the lightning flashed.
“I will never be powerless again!” she screamed beneath the tumult of the winds. “Neither Man nor God nor Devil will own me!”
I pleaded with her to step away from the cliff. I begged and shouted and sobbed for her return.
“If I am to die,” she cried, “then I shall decide when and how! No Man or Devil or God will decide it so! Only myself! I was not allowed to choose my life, but I will choose my death! I will have autonomy with my final breath!”
“Virginia!” I shouted, rushing toward her.
A wink of darkness and then a flash of lightning and she was no longer upon the cliff. I ran to the place of her disappearance and gazed down below at the terrible crags. There, sprawled limply, as if she had only recently been treated by hysterical paroxysm, Virginia Worthington lay broken and bloodied upon the teeth of the sea. I stared on in horror as the rain fell. Lightning flashed and crackled in triumph, its epileptic illumination brightening her body. I saw, then, that her belly undulated as if in unnatural contractions. Uncertain of my own eyes, I watched as there expelled from her body a mass neither human nor animal. It glistened, as if with scales, and crawled in agony with webbed fingers and coiling tendrils. Soon it slipped into the crashing surf and was carried out to the depths as if within a foamy cradle. Another flash and my eyes beheld something gigantic within the sea; something my mind could not comprehend and so merely blurred its form with a rush of panic. I staggered back from the cliff and ran headlong down the hill toward the village; toward any manmade dwelling wherein I could escape that terrible image and the maddening elements.

***

I proposed to Charlotte the next day, bitter with tears and fears and steeped in my own folly. She was repulsed and she vehemently declined my offer. In time she would marry a Cornish tradesman of relatively good financial standing and has never answered any of the letters I have sent her, nor have her sisters answered to my ink. Unable to abide the sea since that tragic night, I moved further inland, relocating to London. I never married and instead directed my life to plying my profession. I was therefore separate from Woman even as I treated Woman for her hysterical maladies. I became as a device used to exorcize excessive sexual retention. I later read the works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and the other psychoanalysts who pioneered the strange realm of Woman in all of its exotic terrors. It elucidated no more for me than the anatomical reactions evident in my patients. But perhaps it was willful misunderstanding on my part that led me to my continuing mystification in that realm. To dare true enlightenment seemed to me to be not unlike flinging myself from a cliff headlong into unknown crags and indifferent tides. Woman’s sexuality is as frightening, if not more so, than anything else the Sciences might reveal. Indeed, I thought of Freud as some pagan shaman summoning disturbing creatures from the depths of the psyche, and so, after a time, cloyed of his works, turning my attention solely to the pragmatic applications of my profession rather than extrapolating an overarching theory or revelations from collated findings. The latter was the road to madness, I realized, as was any memory associated with Virginia.
I still read literature from women in the East. Despite the insistence by so many in the West that they were barbarians, I could not help admiring their honesty and the pure, personal romanticism of their stories. It seemed to me that their view on Woman’s sexuality was both healthy and practical. Indeed, I never read once a translation indicating that they ever suffered from hysteria. Then again, had such a perspective been adopted by the West I would not have had a vocation nor have been steeped as I was in such lucrative petticoats.
Yet, as all things do, even this vocation came to an end. Nor did it end from retirement or the needfulness of my wanting health. In truth, I could have retired when returning from Cornwall, such were my finances. Yet, I remained devoted to Medicine because it gave to me a sense of purpose, and justified contact with Woman. And I walways wished to be of service to the fairer sex. It eased my soul knowing I helped Woman after Woman died birthing me.
But then a day came when a nervous husband brought his wife to the clinic, seeking la titillation du clitoris. She was no beauty, nor was she homely, yet there was in her complexion a familiar luminescence that staggered me with its lambency. I treated her for her catatonia, with some effort, and wished to think her glow an illusion of my failing eyes. Then came another woman, escorted to my clinic while suffering the same stupor and lunar luminescence. And another. And yet another. With each new patient my health waned and my mind became haunted with the same images that rose again and again within the realm of sleep. At last I could suffer it no longer and told these distraught husbands to bring their wives to someone else. I did not care whom, even if Dr. Severan was still practicing his butchery. I would have no part in it, either way. I merely wanted peace and solitude away from Man, Woman, God, Devil, and Sea.
And so now, as Death readies himself for his final visit, I only wish to unburden myself of what I have come to know, and what is soon to come. I do not believe the tide can be turned about, nor the infestation stymied. There is no cure for the Wandering Womb.