by John Fowles
Charles looked at him, then down at the carpet.
"I am in your hands."
The doctor stared thoughtfully at Charles. He had just set a little test to probe his guest's mind. And it had revealed what he had expected. He turned and went to the bookshelves by his desk and then came back with the same volume he had shown Charles before: Darwin's great work. He sat before him across the fire; then with a small smile and a look at Charles over his glasses, he laid his hand, as if swearing on a Bible on The Origin of Species.
"Nothing that has been said in this room or that remains to be said shall go beyond its walls." Then he put the book aside.
"My dear Doctor, that was not necessary."
"Confidence in the practitioner is half of medicine."
Charles smiled wanly. "And the other half?"
"Confidence in the patient." But he stood before Charles could speak. "Well now--you came for my advice, did you not?" He eyed Charles almost as if he was going to box with him; no longer the bantering, but the fighting Irishman. Then he began to pace his "cabin," his hands tucked under his frock coat. "I am a young woman of superior intelligence and some education. I think the world has done badly by me. I am not in full command of my emotions. I do foolish things, such as throwing myself at the head of the first handsome rascal who is put in my path. What is worse, I have fallen in love with being a victim of fate. I put out a very professional line in the way of looking melancholy. I have tragic eyes. I weep without explanation. Et cetera. Et cetera. And now..." the little doctor waved his hand at the door, as if invoking magic "...enter a young god. Intelligent. Good-looking. A perfect specimen of that class my
education has taught me to admire. I see he is interested in me. The sadder I seem, the more interested he appears to be. I kneel before him, he raises me to my feet. He treats me like a lady. Nay, more than that. In a spirit of Christian brotherhood he offers to help me escape from my unhappy lot."
Charles made to interrupt, but the doctor silenced him.
"Now I am very poor. I can use none of the wiles the more fortunate of my sex employ to lure mankind into their power." He raised his forefinger. "I have but one weapon. The pity I inspire in this kindhearted man. Now pity is a thing that takes a devil of a lot of feeding. I have fed this Good Samaritan my past and he has devoured it. So what can I do? I must make him pity my present. One day, when I am walking where I have been forbidden to walk, I seize my chance. I show myself to someone I know will report my crime to the one person who will not condone it. I get myself dismissed from my position. I disappear, under the strong presumption that it is in order to throw myself off the nearest clifftop. And then, in extremisand de profundis--or rather de altis--I cry to my savior for help." He left a long pause then, and Charles's eyes slowly met his. The doctor smiled, "I present what is partly hypothesis, of course."
"But your specific accusation--that she invited her own..."
The doctor sat and poked the fire into life. "I was called early this morning to Marlborough House. I did not know why--merely that Mrs. P. was severely indisposed. Mrs. Fairley--the housekeeper, you know--told me the gist of what had happened." He paused and fixed Charles's unhappy eyes. "Mrs. Fairley was yesterday at the dairy out there on Ware Cleeves. The girl walked flagrantly out of the woods under her nose. Now that woman is a very fair match to her mistress, and I'm sure she did her subsequent duty with all the mean appetite of her kind. But I am convinced, my dear Smithson, that she was deliberately invited to do it."
"You mean ..." The doctor nodded. Charles gave him a terrible look, then revolted. "I cannot believe it. It is not possible she should--"
He did not finish the sentence. The doctor murmured, "It is possible. Alas."
"But only a person of ..." he was going to say "warped mind," but he stood abruptly and went to the window, parted the curtains, stared a blind moment out into the teeming night. A livid flash of sheet lightning lit the Cobb, the beach, the torpid sea. He turned.
"In other words, I have been led by the nose."
"Yes, I think you have. But it required a generous nose. And you must remember that a deranged mind is not a criminal mind. In this case you must think of despair as a disease, no more or less. That girl, Smithson, has a cholera, a typhus of the intellectual faculties. You must think of her like that. Not as some malicious schemer."
Charles came back into the room. "And what do you suppose her final intention to be?"
"I very much doubt if she knows. She lives from day to day. Indeed she must. No one of foresight could have behaved as she has."
"But she cannot seriously have supposed that someone in my position ..."
"As a man who is betrothed?" The doctor smiled grimly. "I have known many prostitutes. I hasten to add: in pursuance of my own profession, not theirs. And I wish I had a guinea for every one I have heard gloat over the fact that a majority of their victims are husbands and fathers." He stared into the fire, into his past. " 'I am cast out. But I shall be revenged.'"
"You make her sound like a fiend--she is not so." He had spoken too vehemently, and turned quickly away. "I cannot believe this of her."
"That, if you will permit a man old enough to be your father to say so, is because you are half in love with her."
Charles spun round and stared at the doctor's bland face.
"I do not permit you to say that." Grogan bowed his head. In the silence, Charles added, "It is highly insulting to Miss Freeman."
"It is indeed. But who is making the insult?"
Charles swallowed. He could not bear these quizzical eyes, and he started down the long, narrow room as if to go. But before he could reach the door, Grogan had him by the arm and made him turn, and seized the other arm--and he was fierce, a terrier at Charles's dignity.
"Man, man, are we not both believers in science? Do we not both hold that truth is the one great principle? What did Socrates die for? A keeping social face? A homage to decorum? Do you think in my forty years as a doctor I have not learned to tell when a man is in distress? And because he is hiding the truth from himself? Know thyself, Smithson, know thyself!"
The mixture of ancient Greek and Gaelic fire in Grogan's soul seared Charles. He stood staring down at the doctor, then looked aside, and returned to the fireside, his back to his tormentor. There was a long silence. Grogan watched him intently.
At last Charles spoke.
"I am not made for marriage. My misfortune is to have realized it too late."
"Have you read Malthus?" Charles shook his head. "For him the tragedy of Homo sapiens is that the least fit to survive breed the most. So don't say you aren't made for marriage, my boy. And don't blame yourself for falling for that girl. I think I know why that French sailor ran away. He knew she had eyes a man could drown in."
Charles swiveled round in agony. "On my most sacred honor, nothing improper has passed between us. You must believe that."
"I believe you. But let me put you through the old catechism. Do you wish to hear her? Do you wish to see her? Do you wish to touch her?"
Charles turned away again and sank into the chair, his face in his hands. It was no answer, yet it said everything. After a moment, he raised his face and stared into the fire.
"Oh my dear Grogan, if you knew the mess my life was in ... the waste of it ... the uselessness of it. I have no moral purpose, no real sense of duty to anything. It seems only a few months ago that I was twenty-one--full of hopes...all disappointed. And now to get entangled in this miserable business..."
Grogan moved beside him and gripped his shoulder. "You are not the first man to doubt his choice of bride." "She understands so little of what I really am." "She is--what?--a dozen years younger than yourself? And she has known you not six months. How could she understand you as yet? She is hardly out of the schoolroom."
Charles nodded gloomily. He could not tell the doctor his real conviction about Ernestina: that she would never understand him. He felt fatally disabused of his own intelligen
ce. It had let him down in his choice of a life partner; for like so many Victorian, and perhaps more recent, men Charles was to live all his life under the influence of the ideal. There are some men who are consoled by the idea that there are women less attractive than their wives; and others who are haunted by the knowledge that there are more attractive. Charles now saw only too well which category he belonged to. He murmured, "It is not her fault. It cannot be."
"I should think not. A pretty young innocent girl like that."
"I shall honor my vows to her."
"Of course."
A silence.
"Tell me what to do."
"First tell me your real sentiments as regards the other."
Charles looked up in despair; then down to the fire, and tried at last to tell the truth.
"I cannot say, Grogan. In all that relates to her, I am an enigma to myself. I do not love her. How could I? A woman so compromised, a woman you tell me is mentally diseased. But ... it is as if ... I feel like a man possessed against his will--against all that is better in his character. Even now her face rises before me, denying all you say. There is something in her. A knowledge, an apprehension of nobler things than are compatible with either evil or madness. Beneath the dross ... I cannot explain."
"I did not lay evil at her door. But despair."
No sound, but a floorboard or two that creaked as the doctor paced. At last Charles spoke again. "What do you advise?"
"That you leave matters entirely in my hands."
"You will go to see her?"
"I shall put on my walking boots. I shall tell her you have been unexpectedly called away. And you must go away, Smithson."
"It so happens I have urgent business in London."
"So much the better. And I suggest that before you go you lay the whole matter before Miss Freeman."
"I had already decided upon that." Charles got to his feet. But still that face rose before him. "And she--what will you do?"
"Much depends upon her state of mind. It may well be that all that keeps her sane at the present juncture is her belief that you feel sympathy--perhaps something sweeter-- for her. The shock of your not appearing may, I fear, produce a graver melancholia. I am afraid we must anticipate that." Charles looked down. "You are not to blame that upon yourself. If it had not been you, it would have been some other. In a way, such a state of affairs will make things easier. I shall know what course to take."
Charles stared at the carpet. "An asylum."
"That colleague I mentioned--he shares my views on the treatment of such cases. We shall do our best. You would be prepared for a certain amount of expense?"
"Anything to be rid of her--without harm to her."
"I know a private asylum in Exeter. My friend Spencer has patients there. It is conducted in an intelligent and enlightened manner. I should not recommend a public institution at this stage."
"Heaven forbid. I have heard terrible accounts of them."
"Rest assured. This place is a model of its kind."
"We are not talking of committal?"
For there had arisen in Charles's mind a little ghost of treachery: to discuss her so clinically, to think of her locked in some small room...
"Not at all. We are talking of a place where her spiritual wounds can heal, where she will be kindly treated, kept occupied--and will have the benefit of Spencer's excellent experience and care. He has had similar cases. He knows what to do."
Charles hesitated, then stood and held out his hand. In his present state he needed orders and prescriptions, and as soon as he had them, he felt better.
"I feel you have saved my life."
"Nonsense, my dear fellow."
"No, it is not nonsense. I shall be in debt to you for the rest of my days."
"Then let me inscribe the name of your bride on the bill of credit."
"I shall honor the debt."
"And give the charming creature time. The best wines take the longest to mature, do they not?"
"I fear that in my own case the same is true of a very inferior vintage."
"Bah. Poppycock." The doctor clapped him on the shoulder. "And by the bye, I think you read French?"
Charles gave a surprised assent. Grogan sought through his shelves, found a book, and then marked a passage in it with a pencil before passing it to his guest.
"You need not read the whole trial. But I should like you to read this medical evidence that was brought by the defense."
Charles stared at the volume. "A purge?"
The little doctor had a gnomic smile.
"Something of the kind."
28
Assumptions, hasty, crude, and vain,
Full oft to use will Science deign;
The corks the novice plies today
The swimmer soon shall cast away.
--A. H. Clough, Poem (1840)
Again I spring to make my choice;
Again in tones of ire
I hear a God's tremendous voice--
"Be counsel'd, and retire!"
--Matthew Arnold, "The Lake" (1853)
* * *
The trial of Lieutenant Emile de La Ronciere in 1835 is psychiatrically one of the most interesting of early nineteenth-century cases. The son of the martinet Count de La Ronciere, Emile was evidently a rather frivolous--he had a mistress and got badly into debt--yet not unusual young man for his country, period and profession. In 1834 he was attached to the famous cavalry school at Saumur in the Loire valley. His commanding officer was the Baron de Morell, who had a highly strung daughter of sixteen, named Marie. In those days commanding officers' houses served in garrison as a kind of mess for their subordinates. One evening the Baron, as stiffnecked as Emile's father, but a good deal more influential, called the lieutenant up to him and, in the presence of his brother officers and several ladies, furiously ordered him to leave the house. The next day La Ronciere was presented with a vicious series of poison-pen letters threatening the Morell family. All displayed an uncanny knowledge of the most intimate details of the life of the household, and all--the first absurd flaw in the prosecution case--were signed with the lieutenant's initials. Worse was to come. On the night of September 24th, 1834, Marie's English governess, a Miss Allen, was woken by her sixteen-year-old charge, who told in tears how La Ronciere, in full uniform, had just forced his way through the window into her adjacent bedroom, bolted the door, made obscene threats, struck her across the breasts and bitten her hand, then forced her to raise her night-chemise and wounded her in the upper thigh. He had then escaped by the way he had come.
The very next morning another lieutenant supposedly favored by Marie de Morell received a highly insulting letter, again apparently from La Ronciere. A duel was fought. La Ronciere won, but the severely wounded adversary and his second refused to concede the falsity of the poison-pen charge. They threatened La Ronciere that his father would be told if he did not sign a confession of guilt; once that was done, the matter would be buried. After a night of agonized indecision, La Ronciere foolishly agreed to sign.
He then asked for leave and went to Paris, in the belief that the affair would be hushed up. But signed letters continued to appear in the Morells' house. Some claimed that Marie was pregnant, others that her parents would soon both be murdered, and so on. The Baron had had enough. La Ronciere was arrested. The number of circumstances in the accused's favor was so large that we can hardly believe today that he should have been brought to trial, let alone convicted. To begin with, it was common knowledge in Saumur that Marie had been piqued by La Ronciere's obvious admiration for her handsome mother, of whom the daughter was extremely envious. Then the Morell mansion was surrounded by sentries on the night of the attempted rape; not one had noticed anything untoward, even though the bedroom concerned was on the top floor and reachable only by a ladder it would have required at least three men to carry and "mount"--therefore a ladder that would have left traces in the soft soil beneath the window ... and the defense established
that there had been none. Furthermore, the glazier brought in to mend the pane broken by the intruder testified that all the broken glass had fallen outside the house and that it was in any case impossible to reach the window catch through the small aperture made. Then the defense asked why during the assault Marie had never once cried for help; why the light-sleeping Miss Allen had not been woken by the scuffling; why she and Marie then went back to sleep without waking Madame de Morell, who slept through the whole incident on the floor below; why the thigh wound was not examined until months after the incident (and was then pronounced to be a light scratch, now fully healed); why Marie went to a ball only two evenings later and led a perfectly normal life until the arrest was finally made--when she promptly had a nervous breakdown (again, the defense showed that it was far from the first in her young life); how the letters could still appear in the house, even when the penniless La Ronciere was in jail awaiting trial; why any poison-pen letter-writer in his senses should not only not disguise his writing (which was easily copiable) but sign his name; why the letters showed an accuracy of spelling and grammar (students of French will be pleased to know that La Ronciere invariably forgot to make his past participles agree) conspicuously absent from genuine correspondence produced for comparison; why twice he even failed to spell his own name correctly; why the incriminating letters appeared to be written on paper--the greatest contemporary authority witnessed as much-- identical to a sheaf found in Marie's escritoire. Why and why and why, in short. As a final doubt, the defense also pointed out that a similar series of letters had been found previously in the Morells' Paris house, and at a time when La Ronciere was on the other side of the world, doing service in Cayenne.
But the ultimate injustice at the trial (attended by Hugo, Balzac and George Sand among many other celebrities) was the court's refusal to allow any cross-examination of the prosecution's principal witness: Marie de Morell. She gave her evidence in a cool and composed manner; but the president of the court, under the cannon-muzzle eyes of the Baron and an imposing phalanx of distinguished relations, decided that her "modesty" and her "weak nervous state" forbade further interrogation.