The House of Dr. Edwardes

by Francis Beeding

  “And now,” thought Constance, “I know exactly what is meant when they say that every hair was in place.”

  She had never seen anyone so utterly correct. This was not a man, but a figure in geometry. He wore a black coat with striped trousers, faultlessly creased. His face would have delighted a cubist painter in search of a subject. Two prominent cheekbones and a noticeable chin made an isosceles triangle, while an unnaturally straight mouth ran parallel with his level brows.

  “I am the laboratory assistant of Doctor Edwardes,” he stated. “I have been with him for eleven years. There are eight patients with us at present.”

  “Item one, item two and item three,” said Constance to herself. “His boxes seem to be quite in order.”

  Aloud she said something polite, and asked whether he had yet had breakfast.

  “I breakfast at seven-thirty,” he informed her. “I perceive, however, the motive of your inquiry,” and he crossed to the white stone hearth and pressed a bell.

  It was as though he had said, “You don’t, of course, really want to know whether I have had my breakfast, but merely to intimate that you would like some breakfast yourself.”

  Constance decided that she was going to dislike this man. He was one of those people who expected you always to go at once to the point. She ought to have walked straight up to him and said, “I am Constance Sedgwick. I am hungry. I want some breakfast.”

  He sat with her as she ate. He did so in the manner of one who had set apart just these twenty minutes in order to make her acquaintance, and as though he had decided to give her just such items of information, mainly about himself, which were in his view necessary to her at that particular stage. Running over afterwards what he told her, she arranged it thus:

  “He was forty-nine. He had not got a medical degree, but he was a licensed chemist. His position was one of great responsibility because there was no other licensed chemist nearer than Thonon. The patients called him Doctor Deeling. There were only eight patients. One of them was the nephew of a marquis. He mentioned him first for that reason. There had been a serious accident, but doubtless she had heard of it already. The patient responsible for the accident was very well connected, but Doctor Murchison had knocked him down with a spanner. Also a keeper had been killed. Doctor Edwardes was a very remarkable doctor. Nearly all his patients were ladies and gentlemen. It was a privilege to belong to so distinguished a house. He had great influence at Château Landry—in fact, she really owed her appointment to him. He had insisted that Doctor Edwardes was overworked, and he had suggested an increase of staff. If Doctor Edwardes had sooner taken his advice Doctor Edwardes would not now be taking a rest. He hoped the new doctor would be satisfactory, and he especially hoped the new doctor would treat the patients with respect. They were mad, of course, but they all belonged to very good families, etc., etc.”

  He came to a sudden stop, as though he had finished saying just what he had intended to say, and it was then that Doctor Murchison came into the room.

  Constance, as she rose to greet him, was aware of a friendly penetrating interest in herself, and a sad glance of amusement, in which her complicity was invited, at Mr. Deeling.

  “Good morning, Miss Sedgwick,” said the doctor. “I hope you slept well.”

  “Too well, apparently,” she answered. “Mr. Deeling has just been telling me that he breakfasts at seven-thirty.”

  “Mr. Deeling is most exact,” said Doctor Murchison.

  “If I might make a suggestion. Doctor,” began that gentleman.

  “Certainly, Mr. Deeling.”

  “As I have already informed Doctor Sedgwick,” Mr. Deeling went on, “I haven’t got a medical degree, but the patients here are in the habit of addressing me as Doctor Deeling, and I think it strengthens my authority. Unless, of course, you have any objection.”

  “None whatever,” said Doctor Murchison.

  Mr. Deeling looked at his watch.

  “Thank you, Doctor. I will now, if I may, attend to your prescriptions. I may say that some of them are new to me, bat you may rely on their being accurately made up.”

  Doctor Murchison looked after the retreating figure with a queer expression. Then he turned to Constance.

  “Well, Miss Sedgwick,” he said. “What do you make of him?”

  “He is certainly a bore,” she answered, and then wondered at her carelessness. It was her habit to speak her mind very frankly, but it was indiscreet, as she at once perceived, to comment thus upon a colleague to a chief to whom she was as yet almost a stranger.

  But he looked at her with a smile, and she felt that he was not so much of a stranger after all.

  “Surely not a bore,” he protested. “I should rather regard him as an interesting case. He raises, too, a question which I am often tempted to consider.”

  “Namely?”

  “If that man is sane, are we really justified in trying to cure the others?”

  Half an hour later Constance sat with Doctor Murchison in the spacious room of Doctor Edwardes. One half of it was known as the office, and contained a large desk and typewriter. The other was fitted up as a comfortable living room. This part of it was lined with books, and there were several sofas and easy chairs placed about a huge hearth. There were also one or two good oak chests, and several trophies of mediaeval weapons on the wall.

  There was a smaller desk and chair near the large desk of Doctor Edwardes, and it was here that Constance was installed.

  “I understand from the terms of your engagement,” said Doctor Murchison, “that you are ready to do what secretarial work is necessary in addition to assisting me with the patients as your medical degree qualifies you to do.”

  He spoke quickly and to the point, which was agreeable to Constance, and confirmed the good impression she had formed of him on the previous day.

  “Yes,” she said, “I am here to make myself useful in any capacity.”

  “I suggest,” he went on, “that we set aside an hour, say from 9.30 to 10.30 a.m. each day, for dealing with correspondence and other matters. Doctor Edwardes apparently deals with everything, even including the running of the house, but I have handed over that side of the business to Mr. Deeling. I want to devote my time almost exclusively to the patients. You will find all the particulars about them in that cabinet over there, which contains a complete file for each case. There are three women, who should, I suggest, be your own particular charge. One of them is very silent, and spends most of her time in her own room—an ordinary case of religious mania. She is under the impression that she is a reincarnation of St. Theresa, and is much given to contemplation. Another is more interesting. She thinks she is growing backwards and becoming younger each day instead of older. At the moment she has reached the age of ten.”

  “What do you mean?” said Constance.

  “That she is going backwards,” he repeated. “She is ten this year, she will be nine next year and eight the year after.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Constance. “And what happens when she reaches 0?”

  “That is the question, and it worries her.”

  “She thinks she will die?”

  “I have asked her what she thinks is going to happen, and she says that she will change. I don’t know what she means by that. It is a curious case. You will find all the particulars in file B.3.”

  There was a short silence, broken by a sudden crackling like dry wood burning. Constance looked up. Doctor Murchison was gnawing the end of his pencil, and the sharp tiny crack, as it split in half lengthwise, sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet room. He was not looking at Constance, but above her head, seemingly at a far corner of the ceiling, while his strong white teeth rent the wood. Constance moved in her chair. Doctor Murchison laid down the remains of the pencil and looked across at her.

  “The men patients are rather more interesting,” he said, “and there is one case, at least, which is dangerous. The men I propose for the moment to keep altogether under my own per
sonal control. I hope you will not misunderstand.”

  He seemed nervous, and looked at her as though anxious to see exactly how she would take it.

  “But, of course. Doctor Murchison,” she answered, “I quite understand. It’s perfectly natural that you should wish me to begin with the simpler cases, and leave the others to you. And please don’t bother about my feelings in a matter which is purely professional. I am here to learn and to be as useful as possible.”

  He regarded her gravely for a moment.

  “Of course,” he went on, “there is nothing to prevent you studying any of the cases. Two or three of the men are simple enough. There’s an extremely tiresome fellow who calls himself ‘Colonel’ Rickaby.”

  “Isn’t he really a colonel?” demanded Constance. “He is an old Anglo-Indian, who seems to have had a poor time of it among a rather hard-living set of military men in the Punjab. He now tries to believe that he was the finest fellow of them all, and talks as though he had been in the habit of shooting big game in the intervals of saving the Indian Empire. Then there is a painter-poet or poet-painter who will, I think, interest you. He suffers badly from persecution mania. The High Churchman is not so interesting. Melancholia is very common among parsons. I suppose it is due to their frequent money troubles and their large families. The other cases are more difficult, and I think you would do well, as I have suggested, to leave them entirely to me. I would, indeed, ask you for the moment to devote most of your time to the women patients who have hitherto, I gather, been somewhat neglected. Doctor Edwardes, strictly between ourselves, did not pretend to take the same amount of interest in all his cases, and his notes on these women are not nearly so full as I should like.”

  “What exactly do you wish me to do?” she inquired. “I assume we are more or less bound to continue the system of our chief. As you know, he notes with the most painstaking accuracy his observations on each case. These observations, recorded over a number of months or years, have enabled him, so he maintains, to form the most accurate and convincing picture of their various mentalities. Their peculiarities are carefully tabulated, and they are then divided and sub-divided according to a system of his own, which is a derivative of the symbolist method of Freud. He then tries to cure his patient of the delusions which, as shown by his notes, occur most frequently. It is necessarily a long process, and one which gives slow but durable results. I believe he has effected some remarkable cures. During his absence, I shall naturally confine myself to continuing his records, and I shall be very grateful for your assistance, more especially in the matter of the women and the old colonel.”

  For the next half-hour they discussed details. Doctor Murchison, who followed a somewhat different school from Doctor Edwardes, had ventured to introduce, if not a radical at least a somewhat marked change in the routine of the Château. It appeared that Doctor Edwardes had always treated his patients, though kindly, with a certain severity. Doctor Murchison was proceeding on different lines. The inmates of Château Landry were henceforth to have considerably more freedom; to be humored as far as possible, and only dealt with firmly when the necessity arose. The routine and discipline of the Château was to be generally relaxed.

  “I have, for example, ventured to suppress morning and evening prayers,” said Doctor Murchison. “They annoyed the colonel, and I don’t think they did much good to anybody else. We are going in future to make all these people as happy in their several ways as is possible.”

  “But you will not, I suppose, go so far as to encourage their illusions,” objected Constance.

  “No further than we do in dealing with people who are sane,” said Doctor Murchison, smiling.

  “I don’t quite understand.”

  “If in ordinary life you meet a man who is under the impression that he thinks for himself, or a woman who believes her conduct to be rational, you do not necessarily feel bound to destroy that illusion. On the contrary, I should have said that human society is mostly based on a mutual respect for one another’s misconceptions. I only ask that we should extend to our patients the common politeness which we practise towards the world in general.”

  “Of course,” said Constance smiling, “if you only wish me to be polite.”

  “Politeness,” intercepted Doctor Murchison, “consists in respecting the illusions of your neighbor on the understanding, of course, that he will similarly respect your own.”

  She hardly knew whether he was serious. He spoke lightly, but there was an undercurrent of willful mockery which did not seem to be altogether assumed.

  “One other point,” said Constance, after a pause. “Mr.

  Deeling was talking to me about the patient who tried to escape. I understand that he is rather seriously hurt. Do you wish me to attend to his nursing?”

  Doctor Murchison did not answer at once, and Constance felt for a moment as though she had been guilty of an indiscretion. He must, she reflected, be feeling pretty sore over that unlucky business.

  Finally he rose and walked across the room. His back was turned on her. He stopped short but said nothing, and Constance waited in silence.

  Then abruptly he wheeled about and faced her.

  “I should prefer not to discuss that case,” he said at last. “In fact, it is best that you should have as little to do with it as possible. You will understand my feelings in the matter. I all but failed in my duty, but by a miracle I succeeded, at the cost,” and here his voice faltered for a moment, “at the cost of a human life.”

  He ceased, and Constance looked down at the notebook on her knee, in which she had been taking a record of their conversation.

  Suddenly, to her surprise, a hand touched her lightly on the shoulder. She looked up. Doctor Murchison was standing over her.

  “I would not,” he said, “have you needlessly disturbed by what that poor soul suffers, but believe me he is bound to the powers of darkness, bound and chained,” and he paused a moment and threw back his head, “and yet he glories in it. What is strangest of all, in his lucid moments he studies his own case. If he were not a hopeless madman he might be the most remarkable of living alienists.”

  He turned and walked straight from the room. At the door, however, he paused.

  “He is in his room recovering from the effects of the journey,” he added. “I must beg you to hold no communication with him until I see fit for you to do so.”

  “You may rely on me,” replied Constance, and the door closed.

  II

  Half an hour later Constance was on the southern terrace. This had been originally a space between the outer barbican and the inner wall, but it had been filled in to the height of the former and planted as a formal garden, with clipped hedges some two feet high, a sundial and half a dozen statues in the Versailles manner.

  A bright-eyed man seated on a stone bench rose as she began to walk down a broad path between clumps of bright flowers. He had a pointed beard and mustache. He wore a white shirt, open at the neck, and flannel trousers, rather the worse for wear.

  “The first of the lunatics,” thought Constance, as she bowed to him.

  He came towards her eagerly.

  “So you are the beautiful lady,” he said, “who has come amongst us. They have told me about you, but I would not believe it.”

  He gazed at her long and earnestly.

  “Yes,” he continued as she stood bewildered, “you are the beautiful lady. She let down her shining hair; but he could not climb, and they were always watching her. We must be careful. You should never have let them know that you were coming.”

  She wondered what to say to him, but he did not give her time.

  “Sit down,” he said, “and I will tell you of the most beautiful thing that has ever happened.”

  She seated herself mechanically as he bade her.

  “When I was a boy,” he went on, standing in front of her and speaking with a curious, dreamy intonation and little gestures of his hands, “I used to walk over Westminster Brid
ge. Every day I walked across it through the sunlight or the fog of London, and every day I passed a cab rank, and every day I read the notice which was nailed above it. ‘All heads,’ it said, ‘must face east.’ There it was, just a printed notice fastened to the lamp. And nobody seemed to know what it meant. But I think you would have known. All heads must face east—towards the desert, the palm trees and the lurching camels, east to golden Samarkand and dusty Bokhara, east to the Pamirs and the roof of the world, east to the blue tiles of China and the drifting blossom of Japan, east to the brown girls who dance in the sunlight. I read it and obeyed. I faced east, but I never went. I never went and now it is too late. You know the reason why, for you have seen them. They are watching me now, as I speak to you,” and he sank on to the bench by her side and covered his face with his hands.

  “Nonsense,” said Constance gently, more touched than she liked to confess. “Nobody can see us here.”

  A shiver went through him. He took his hand from his face.

  “They are waiting for me,” he said in a whisper. “They are always waiting for me—just beyond the white gate and all outside. They are waiting. One day they will get me. One day I shall be caught.”

  He leaped to his feet and his face was working.

  “They will come,” he shouted. “They will come tumbling down, thousands and thousands of them over the rocks,” and he pointed to the yellow crags above the fir trees which barred the horizon on either side. “Over the rocks,” he shouted again. “Over the rocks.” He turned away from her abruptly and disappeared down the path.

  Chapter Four

  I

  “Upon my word, the dashed brute—excuse my language, Miss Sedgwick—measured sixteen feet four inches from his whiskers to the tip of his tail, and weighed close on fifteen hundredweight, and killed—killed, mind you—stone dead with a twelve-bore shotgun at five paces. How’s that for a tiger?” and “Colonel” Rickaby drained the remnants of his whiskey and soda, his “chota peg” as he called it, with as much satisfaction as if he had just performed the deed.