Free The Citadel by A. J. Cronin Page B

strangely lately, getting into trouble at the mine, losing his memory. He had turned quarrelsome and violent.
    ‘I don’t like it, Manson.’ Bramwell nodded sagely. ‘I’ve seen mental trouble before. And this looks uncommonly like it.’
    Andrew expressed his concern. He had always thought Hughes a stolid and agreeable fellow. He recollected that Annie had looked worried lately and when questioned had inferred vaguely, for despite her proclivity for gossip she was reticent upon family affairs, that she was anxious about her brother-in-law. When he parted from Bramwell he ventured the hope that the case might quickly take a turn for the better.
    But on the following Friday at six o’clock in the morning he was awakened by a knocking on his bedroom door. It was Annie, fully dressed and very red about the eyes, offering him a note. Andrew tore open the envelope. It was a message from Doctor Bramwell.
    Come round at once. I want you to help certify a dangerous lunatic.
    Annie struggled with her tears.
    ‘It’s Emlyn, doctor, bach. A dreadful thing has happened. I do hope you’ll come down quick, like.’
    Andrew threw on his things in three minutes. Accompanying him down the road, Annie told him as best she could about Emlyn. He had been ill and unlike himself for three weeks, but during the night he had turned violent, and gone clean out of his mind. He had set upon his wife with a bread knife. Olwen had just managed to escape by running into the street in her nightgown. The sensational story was sufficiently distressing as Annie brokenly related it, hurrying beside him in the grey light of morning, and there seemed little he could add, by way of consolation, to alter it. They reached the Hugheses’ house. In the front room Andrew found Doctor Bramwell, unshaven, without his collar and tie, wearing a serious air, seated at the table, pen in hand. Before him was a bluish paper form, half filled in.
    ‘Ah, Manson! Good of you to come so quickly. A bad business this. But it won’t keep you long.’
    ‘What’s up?’
    ‘Hughes has gone mad. I think I mentioned to you a week ago I was afraid of it. Well! I was right. Acute mania.’ Bramwell rolled the words over his tongue with tragic grandeur. ‘Acute homicidal mania. We’ll have to get him into Pontynewdd straight away. That means two signatures on the certificate, mine and yours – the relatives wanted me to call you in. You know the procedure, don’t you?’
    ‘Yes.’ Andrew nodded. ‘What’s your evidence?’ Bramwell began, clearing his throat, to read what he had written upon the form. It was a full, flowing account of certain of Hughes’s actions during the previous week, all of them conclusive of mental derangement. At the end of it Bramwell raised his head. ‘Clear evidence, I think!’
    ‘It sounds pretty bad,’ Andrew answered slowly. ‘Well! I’ll take a look at him.’
    ‘Thanks, Manson. You’ll find me here when you’ve finished.’ And he began to add further particulars to the form.
    Emlyn Hughes was in bed and seated beside him – in case restraint should be necessary – were two of his mates from the mine. Standing by the foot of the bed was Olwen, her pale face, ordinarily so pert and lively, now ravaged by weeping. Her attitude was so overwrought, the atmosphere of the room so dim and tense, that Andrew had a momentary thrill of coldness, almost of fear.
    He went over to Emlyn and at first he hardly recognised him. The change was not gross, it was Emlyn true enough, but a blurred and altered Emlyn, his features coarsened in some subtle way. His face seemed swollen, the nostrils thickened, the skin waxy, except for a faint reddish patch that spread across the nose. His whole appearance was heavy, apathetic. Andrew spoke to him. He muttered an unintelligible reply. Then, clenching his hands, he came out with a tirade of aggressive nonsense, which, added to Bramwell’s account, made the case for his removal only too conclusive.
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