Light, Descending

by Octavia Randolph

  He began to tear at his clothing, pulling so hard on his stock that he nearly choked himself, then found the loose end and yanked it from his neck. Buttons flew across the room and pinged to the floor as with both hands he wrenched off his waistcoat. Shoes, stockings, trousers, underdrawers all came off and were thrown to the floorboards. The cold was intense and he knew it was a weapon he could use against his foe. Inspired, he flung open the window casement to the winter night. He saw this as an invitation to the Devil, and he laughed. Let him fly through the window into his room and join him! Ruskin moved from the open window and swung his arms through the frigid air. He began pacing, marching up and down across the floor, swinging his arms in military rhythm. He would use his arms and fists in battle, and if that failed he would challenge the Devil to a contest of words! But can the Devil speak truth? he asked, a Banquo consulting with the witches in Macbeth: And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray us!

  He noticed he was not alone in the room. Ophelia was there––an Ophelia with copper hair––singing her lament of lost maidenhood, and Desdemona, made wonton and the night with her, and the naked sleeping Imogen, with vile lusting Iachimo standing over her. He lunged at Iachimo, driving him from the innocent Imogen, and then all three women merged into one, a Visitation. The face was soft and beautiful, and the hair was every colour, but then the face hardened and the hair thickened into writhing serpents circling her head. He threw his arm up over his eyes to stop her paralysing stare. He was St. George, slayer of dragons, imbued with strength to kill his sister Gorgon, their names rooted in gorgós, ‘dreadful’, dreadful mother to both George and Gorgon. He rushed at her and fell into the desk and she was gone.

  He was tangled in a net and could not free himself. Rose came, just a child of ten years, and tried over and again to untangle him, until she blamed him for getting wilfully entangled, and left him despairingly. He was shot 20 times over, and forced to be attendant on a desperate artillery man who fired batteries of ball and grape into opera-houses and shot whole audiences dead at a discharge. But he must not be distracted. The Devil was coming to claim him and he must march and swing his arms until he arrived. The wind blew and ruffled the loose papers on his work table and one by one the sheets were licked up and flew around his room, his introduction to the Turner exhibition, Turner who was in Heaven, with Rose. Turner and Rose, it was ever Turner and Rose.

  He marched for hours and miles and when he was going to fall he thought the sky was lightening and he had deterred the Devil from his call. Then from his mirror something cat-like, black, leapt out at him. Here! Here he is now! He caught it up in his arms and flung it against the floor. He heard the dull thud but the fiend had vanished––he waited––nothing more! He had triumphed, and fell down in ecstasy and anguish.

  Ruskin’s manservant, Peter Baxter, rapped on his master’s door punctually at seven with his morning coffee. The passage was cold and almost completely dark, and the candle on the tray flickered in an unusual draught. Mr. Ruskin got involved with his morning letter-writing and sometimes didn’t respond at the first knock. “Mr. Ruskin,” called Baxter, rapping again. His knuckles were cold enough that the slight action hurt.

  He shifted the tray to one arm and pressed his ear to the door. He could hear something, though no crack of lamplight shone at the bottom of the door. Was Mr. Ruskin reading aloud within? Yesterday had been Good Friday, perhaps he was in prayer.

  Baxter repeated his call. He heard, in return, a low wailing groan. “Mr. Ruskin, sir?” repeated Baxter, and pushed open the door. The candle blew out at once in the wind gusting in through the open window, but the daylight had advanced enough for him to discover his master. John Ruskin lay, utterly unclothed, across his still-made bed, while snow blew in from the unlatched window. His blue eyes were startlingly open and his mouth was slack, and from it came a kind of ghoulish singsong.

  Baxter dropped the tray on his master’s bedside table, hooked the window closed, and pulled a blanket off the end of the bed with which he covered Ruskin. Then he turned and ran for Mrs. Severn with all the energy of his twenty-two year old legs.

  Two hours later Joan Severn wrote out a telegram message for Peter Baxter to carry across into Coniston village. She would let herself cry after he had left and she was alone for a moment. She had done all she could for her cousin John; with Baxter’s help he had been dressed and laid under a quantity of coverlets. The room had been warmed and in the few moments when he was not thrashing she had even tried to squeeze a few drops of brandy between his now-clenched teeth. The side of her face was aching from where he had struck her at the jaw-line, and Baxter had been bitten twice. Yet her cousin had no fever, his skin was still cool from exposure, and his teeth showed no sign of chattering. It was a form of physical delirium that started and abruptly ceased, yet the unfocussed vocalizations were almost constant.

  Down in London Sir John Simon had received Joan’s telegram at his offices just before eleven o’clock. Simon had been Ruskin’s physician for more than twenty years, and after dispatching a message to his wife at home asking that a bag be made up for him arranged his affairs as best he could to permit his hasty departure to Brantwood in the Lake district. It was now almost twelve hours later, and Sir John stood, fingers grasping the emergency stop cord, in the dim vestibule of a railway carriage as the locomotive pulling it slowed, without stopping, to pass through Coniston station. He rolled the ribbed surface of the cord between his finger pads and waited as the station came into view, a lone lantern hanging from the sign standard. He had left London too late for a train which made a scheduled stop, but Simon timed his arrival well. A quick jerk downward and the deed was done. As the suddenly arrested train squealed to a halt Simon handed his card to the confounded conductor and stepped down at Coniston.

  Ruskin’s carriage stood in the dark of the station yard to meet him. Simon was already fatigued and assumed he had a sleepless night before him. The drive along the tip of the lake to Brantwood took the better part of an hour, but all the front room lamps were lit when he stepped down before the door. Up above, by the tower room he knew to be Ruskin’s, a lamp burned. The front door opened, framing Joan on the threshold, waiting for him.

  She must be, Simon thought, just past thirty now; a healthy, plain-faced, sweet-tempered Scotswoman with the patience and resourcefulness of her tribe. Tidy foot and hand, and an attractively mature figure. Three little ones under the age of five, and the whole household to run.

  As soon as he removed his coat and turned to her he saw the mumps-size swelling on her jaw and attendant discolouration. “Did he do this?” he asked.

  She nodded her head, ashamed at the look of her, ashamed for her cousin.

  “Right,” murmured Simon. “Well then, let’s see him.”

  Joan took a lamp in hand and Simon reclaimed his grip on his medical bag and followed her up the darkened stair and along the passage to Ruskin’s room. The door was closed for warmth and when Joan opened it Simon saw a youth sitting on a stool at the foot of the bed. He rose at once, and Joan said, “Peter, Sir John is here. You may go now.”

  The boy glanced down at the still figure in the bed and Simon read his reluctance to leave. “No, let him stay, at least for a while,” he said. Ruskin had always inspired devotion in his servants; with his confused social philosophies alternating between extreme Toryism and communism Simon couldn’t fathom how servants puzzled him out.

  “Hold the lamp for me, Peter––what?” instructed Simon.

  “Baxter, sir,” he answered, taking up the lamp and moving in over Ruskin’s head with it. Ruskin’s face was white, his lips colourless. Simon reached under the blankets for Ruskin’s wrist, but as soon as the lamp light fell on Ruskin’s face the inert patient came to animated life, twisting sharply away from Simon’s grasp and kicking out with unexpected force with his blanketed legs. A piercing shriek accompanied these action
s. Simon turned to the recoiling Joan.

  “Joan, go to bed,” he ordered. “Baxter and I will suffice.”

  During the night Simon administered morphia in combination with chloral that his patient might sleep, but as he awoke Ruskin resumed a state of such agitation that soon chloral needed to be administered continually. Two days into Simon’s visit Ruskin became almost completely unresponsive, and later that night Simon thought he had lost him, so depressed was pulse and breathing. But the physician had not upended his life and responsibilities to lose his patient as quickly as this. To increase vital action stimulants were urgently required. With Baxter aiding him Simon force-fed brandy and water as antagonists, along with copious amounts of tepid coffee and milk, and Ruskin lived.

  Simon did not discover the diary until it became apparent that the episode would be prolonged and outside assistance was imperative. A complement of male nurses were sent for. Prior to their arrival he and Joan had swept through Ruskin’s bedroom, gathering small treasures to be kept in Joan’s safe-keeping. She gathered up John James Ruskin’s watch, a golden chain, Sir Walter Scott’s silver pen––a few precious and pocketable items, and carried them off to her own rooms. Certain things were already kept locked by Ruskin in his desk, and she took as well the key. Simon then approached Ruskin’s desk, covered with opened books. There was his ancient box Bible with the frayed red velvet cover, open to II Timothy. Atop the translucent page was a closed copy of Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, placed as if to mark the passage below. Simon allowed his eye to travel down the narrow columns. “For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good...” he scanned. Three other books he did not recognize, and closed them to see their titles. One was Ruskin’s neighbour Miss Susie Beever’s commentary, Remarkable Passages in Shakespeare. Another was a treatise by one Thomas Brassey, On Work and Wages. The third was Ruskin’s diary.

  Simon was not the kind of man to read another’s diary, and if Ruskin had been incapacitated by a mere physical ailment the doing so would be unthinkable. But now, regarding the narrow, long, buckram volume before him, he wondered if he might find some valuable clew to the cause of Ruskin’s distressed mind.

  The diary was open as Ruskin had left it. Behind it, laying in a holder, was a steel pen, dried ink on its nib. Ruskin, always so meticulous, had not used his pen-wiper after his last entry.

  Simon was decisive by nature, and he knew he must look and read or close the book and lock it away. He lifted the book in his hands and read.

  Finished, and my letter from ‘Piero’ my Venetian gondolier put in here, and all. I am going to lock up with the Horses of St Marks. ¼ to one by my Father’s watch––22nd February 1878––

  I couldn’t find the key and then remembered I had not thanked the dear Greek Princess––nor Athena of the Dew––and Athena κερaμιτς

  This was the final entry. “Athena ‘of the Earth’,” Simon repeated to himself. These goddesses were from Ruskin’s The Queen of the Air, he thought. He backed up to the beginning of the entry for 22nd February and scanned.

  ––Too much to write. ––I don’t think I shall forget––the chief message to myself as a painter, coming after a Sculptor...

  Good Friday. Recollected all about message from Rosie to me as I was drawing on the scaffolding in St Georges Chapel––My saying I would serve her to the death––…

  ––Can the Devil speak truth (confer letter to Francie about her little feet)…

  If that thou beest a Devil &c. connected with, (Made wanton––&c. the night with her.) Tintoret––(sempre si f ail mare maggiore) I did’nt know where to go on––but don’t think I should stop. ––And Andrea Gritti-then? Quite unholy is he, you stupid? ...And the Blind Guide that had celestial light? Yes––and you barefoot Scotch lassies––Diddie and all of you dears––if only you would go barefoot a bit, in the streets So pretty––so pretty. Naked foot, that shines like snow––and falls on earth––or gold––as mute.

  Simon closed the slender volume and carried it away to his room.

  Ruskin was never left alone. The male nurses imported for the occasion had stocky bodies fitted for pugilists; and one of them, Jackson, had the stance and deformed ear of an actual prize-fighter. In addition to these trained hands, Baxter, and Joan when Simon permitted, attended the patient when Simon was not in the room. Sitting up with him in the watches of a night in which Ruskin slept, Simon listened to the shallow breaths drawn and the slight rise and fall of the blankets covering him. He reached to check the pulse, and then was startled by Ruskin’s hand curling around his own. Ruskin’s hand clasped his own, the pale skin dry but the fingertips soft, and Simon held his friend’s hand as his own eyes dimmed.

  Such moments of peace were fleeting. Simon could not predict which phenomena might spur his patient to wild delirium. He had a horror of any dazzle. Care had to be taken to prevent Ruskin from seeing any sparks from the coal-fire, or glint of fire-light reflected in the polished mahogany of his bedstead; the sight of any gleaming, twinkling light reduced him to wild screaming.

  In an attempt to restore equilibrium Simon had pondered fomentations of various kinds. He had read of American physicians experimenting with a fall of cold water upon the head of an insane person, but, having no access to a douche to provide the necessary water drop, had resorted to applications of cold water to the head and feet. He considered, then discarded, the plan of employing a rubifacient as a counter-irritant; he could not see himself subjecting so weakened a patient to mustard-plasters or blistering ammonia liniments.

  At this point Ruskin had periods when chloral was not needed continually, but though the bouts of violence had abated the mania had not. He spent hours repeating a single word or phrase. One day it had been “Everything white! Everything black!”; another, endlessly and mournfully, “Rosie-Posie,” one of Ruskin’s myriad pet names for his late beloved. There was also a ceaseless, rhythmic clapping of the hands. Today this had been accompanied by inchoate shouting so extreme that daytime chloral was administered as a calmative.

  Materia medica is finite, thought Simon as he stirred and measured out the mixture; the depths of the abyss into which Ruskin had plunged infinite.

  Joan moved to the window and pulled back the curtains, coaxing from the mid-March afternoon as much light as the sodden landscape would allow. With the house teeming with nurses the study was the only room in Brantwood in which she might sit down for an hour in relative quiet with her departing guest. And as it was his room, filled with his geological specimens, his Turner water-colours, his medieval manuscripts, his own long shelf of published writings, it reminded her of the manifold interests and prodigious intellectual output of her cousin, lying muttering upstairs in his bedroom. What has been can be again, she reminded herself. She took up her position by the teapot.

  Simon gazed down upon the crisp tablecloth, the blue and pink Staffordshire, the freshly boiled eggs and thinly sliced bread, the jam tarts from last summer’s Brantwood berries. “You lay, as always, a lovely tea, Joan,” he said.

  They sat together at the small octagonal table as she poured out. The dark half moons under her eyes made her pink skin look more delicate than it was.

  She brought the fluted teacup to her lip and then lay it down untouched. She was crying again. “I’m so sorry, sir.”

  Simon was a listener, and he waited.

  “It’s the china; when I took Coz that tray yesterday and he flung it at me, and it all smashed to bits against me and the door frame––and he loves this pattern so, he does, and will be so aggrieved if he ever realises that he broke so much of it.” She shut her eyes against the memory, squeezing out more tears.

  “I hope he lives to repent of that, and so much more,” he told her, and smiled.

  Despite his mild jest, his mind flickered a moment on the tin feed
ing cup with spout from which Ruskin was now being force fed; it was a long way from the delicate Staffordshire. Simon was exhausted too. Early next morning he was headed back to London, resuming his life and his position, facing the official reports to be read and opinions to be written. He could picture his desk now, its surface half obscured with pressing correspondence. Public health, sanitation––the care of and planning for the thousands and tens of thousands was his special faculty, and for the fortnight past he had been wholly absorbed with attempting to save the slight and overtaxed frame housing the labyrinth recesses of Ruskin’s broken mind. His position was not unlike that of a scientific man who, long used to handling a telescope, had suddenly had a microscope thrust in his hands––the focal points and subject matter were that disparate.

  Joan made him a plate of eggs and bread. The setting sun, low all day in its March transit, broke through the cloud cover for a moment. They both paused to gaze out the window before them. Simon regarded the lingering crusts of snow beneath the dripping shrubberies, and his eye travelled down the slope to the barely rippled surface of Coniston Water below, gleaming dully like liquid lead. He would have liked to have registered it as mercury, a quick-silver lake as furtive and fervid as his patient’s mind when conscious, but Ruskin had been barely responsive all day and the lake looked leaden.