The House of Dr. Edwardes

by Francis Beeding

  As Constance moved towards it, the right arm of the figure was lifted, and a voice cried out: “I forbid you to continue playing that infamous music!”

  Constance recognized the voice of Miss Archer, the religious devotee, who spent long hours in mystical devotions under the impression, at times, that she was a reincarnation of St. Theresa.

  “Why, Miss Archer, what is it?” said Constance, as she came forward into the chapel.

  Miss Archer turned towards her a pale face, delicately lined and glowing with indignation.

  “Please, Miss Sedgwick,” she entreated. “Tell him to come down.”

  She was deeply moved, and her black draperies rustled about her as she pointed once more at the organ gallery.

  The organ occupied most of the north transept. It was altogether out of proportion in size to the chapel. At the double keyboard sat Hyacinth Clearwater. He was leaning at that moment over the balcony of the loft, smiling impishly down at the two women.

  Constance paused, uncertain how to deal with the situation. Except for some occasional bickering between Miss Truelow and Colonel Rickaby, she had never yet had to encounter anything in the nature of quarrels between the patients.

  She saw at a glance that this was rather more serious, absurd as it might seem on the surface. Miss Archer was quivering from head to foot.

  Constance decided to try her influence upon Mr. Clearwater.

  “Come, Mr. Clearwater,” she said, “don’t you think it would be better to play some other tune, or won’t you stop altogether. It’s very pleasant in the garden this morning. Suppose we leave Miss Archer in peace. You can continue your practising later.”

  “Practising!” said Mr. Clearwater, assuming an attitude of pained surprise. “Practising, beautiful lady. Is that how you refer to my music?”

  He cast up his eyes as though in elfin mockery of the devout Miss Archer.

  “O jasper tones!” he cried. “O sable harmonies! How are ye profaned!”

  “Now, Mr. Clearwater,” protested Constance, “you know very well that I was not intending to disparage your music.

  You shall continue it this afternoon, when Miss Archer is resting.”

  “I never rest,” said Miss Archer abruptly, turning her white face towards Constance.

  A shaft of sunlight, striking through one of the slit windows, fell in a radiance about her, so that she looked like a nun in the style of El Greco.

  Constance tried another tack.

  “Won’t you come into the garden Miss Archer?” she suggested. “It’s so fine out of doors today, and I’m sure you would enjoy walking among the roses.”

  “The lilies and languor’s of virtue, the roses and raptures of vice,” chanted Mr. Clearwater from the balcony.

  “I will not leave this House to be profaned by that evil rhymster,” said Miss Archer in a loud voice, and she fell on her knees and covered her face with her hands.

  Mr. Clearwater rose with dignity.

  “Rhymster,” he echoed. “I allow no one to question my poetic gift. I would ask you to withdraw that expression, Miss Archer.”

  But she paid him no further attention. She was now muttering prayers between her fingers: “Si iniquitates observaveris Domine: Domine quis sustinebit?”

  Constance was disappointed. Mr. Clearwater had hitherto been her favorite among the patients, and she had found him quite easy to manage, fundamentally good-natured and tractable. She felt now as though he had been somehow removed from her control. This morning he seemed to be possessed by the very spirit of mischief. He faced her now like a difficult child, and Constance admonished him accordingly.

  “Come down at once,” she said, “and leave the chapel. If you can’t behave decently, you had better go!”

  He twisted round on the stool and looked at her stubbornly.

  “I was here first,” he said. “And I’ve got just as much right to be here as she has. I’m sure the doctor would say so.”

  And turning round to the keyboard, he began to play again.

  Constance stood below in the chapel, powerless to interrupt, though she felt that either she must continue to assert her authority or never stand again for sanity or discipline. She wondered how to meet the situation.

  In that moment of hesitation she was lost, for already the pipes were in full blast, and she could not have made herself heard even if she had thought of anything to say.

  She did not know the music he was playing—something, perhaps, by an unknown master or possibly a composition of his own. But she was caught by the power of it, a power in which there was clearly no relish of salvation. She found herself following helplessly a melody that leaped in strange intervals, but never at random, inevitable as the step of the statue of the commendatore on the stair. It sprang ungainly, it hobbled as on a crutch, it limped, it soared as on a broken wing. But always it advanced, and nothing could stay its progress. There was something in her that fled its approach, and yet was rooted to the earth as in a dream when the limbs refuse their office.

  Then suddenly there was a cry, and Constance turned to see Miss Archer running swiftly forward to the altar steps. A chair fell with a clatter on the stone floor as she swept blindly through the chancel. Arrived at the altar, she stopped abruptly and gazed straight before her between the six candles. Then she cried out again and turned swiftly, her arms outstretched like some distraught bat, which had blundered into a lighted globe.

  “The crucifix,” she screamed, “he has taken it away,” and, still screaming, she fell to the ground, rolling down the steps in some kind of fit.

  The music ceased abruptly, and Constance ran forward to where Miss Archer lay, insensible, with foam upon her lips.

  Then, as she bent over her patient, a voice came sternly from the end of the chapel.

  “What has been happening here Miss Sedgwick?” said Doctor Murchison.

  II

  The doctor passed quickly up the nave and reached the chancel.

  “Miss Archer has had a fit,” said Constance stupidly.

  “So I perceive,” replied Doctor Murchison coldly, and stooping over he felt the pulse of the unconscious woman. He put a silver whistle to his lips with his other hand as he did so, and blew three short blasts, which were answered a moment later by a warder.

  “Tell Nurse Webster that I shall want her in Miss Archer’s room immediately,” he said to the man, “and then come here with a stretcher.”

  The warder went off, to return a few moments later with a companion.

  During these proceedings Doctor Murchison said not a word. Constance stood by wretchedly, feeling miserably inefficient. Yet it seemed to her that, though she had apparently failed in her duty, it had scarcely been her fault. She did not see how, in the circumstances, she could possibly have avoided the crisis.

  The warders entering caused her to look up, and it was then that she saw Hyacinth Clearwater. He was stealing softly on tiptoe down the winding metal stairs which led to the organ loft, holding on to the rail and testing each step as he went, the complete picture of a schoolboy hoping to escape detection. He reminded her of the fox terrier at home when caught in the larder. But she had no time to observe the behavior of Mr. Clearwater. As the men stooped to place Miss Archer on the stretcher she sighed and opened her eyes. She found herself looking straight into the face of Doctor Murchison, who was bending over her. For a moment she stared at him. Then with a long shuddering sigh she covered her eyes with her hands.

  “The powers of darkness,” she whispered. “Now am I wholly forsaken, bound and delivered up.”

  The doctor smiled at her pityingly.

  “Come, Miss Archer,” he said gently, “you will soon be all right,” and he put a hand on her forehead.

  She shrank and shivered under his touch.

  “Signed and branded,” she moaned.

  She half rose from the stretcher, and said in a clear strong voice: “I call upon St. Michael and his angels,” and suddenly she began to pray hopeles
sly, incoherently, but continually to the effect that the Lord should protect her from evil which encompassed her on every side.

  At last, in the midst of her praying, she paused, and sitting upright on the stretcher faced the doctor, as though she were defying her own imminent destruction.

  “You have taken it away,” she said.

  “What does she mean?” inquired the doctor sharply of Constance, checking with a motion of his hand the movement of the stretcher bearers who were about to remove her.

  “She means the crucifix,” said Constance in a low voice.

  “She was upset by the playing of Mr. Clearwater, and suddenly she ran to the altar and found that the crucifix was no longer there.”

  “You have taken it away,” repeated the woman on the stretcher, and thrusting out her right arm she pointed full at the doctor. “You have broken it,” she said, “and buried it, and you are damned eternally. God give me strength to pray for your soul.”

  She sank back on the stretcher and relapsed into secret prayer.

  The doctor jerked his head, and the stretcher bearers moved steadily with shortened step out of the chapel with their burden.

  “And now, Mr. Clearwater,” said the doctor, as the curtain fell behind them, “I will attend to you.”

  Mr. Clearwater, who had reached the bottom step of the spiral staircase, and was tiptoeing towards the door of the chapel, swung round and tried to look completely unconcerned.

  “Come here,” said Doctor Murchison sternly.

  Mr. Clearwater came forward with an air of elaborate innocence, but with a careful eye on the doctor, like a puppy who is doubtful whether his master really intends to inflict the punishment he deserves.

  “Now, Mr. Clearwater,” said Doctor Murchison, “what have you to say for yourself?”

  “Nothing,” said Mr. Clearwater promptly, with a propitiatory smile. “I was just—er—playing—playing, you know.”

  “Wasn’t that rather inconsiderate?” said Doctor Murchison.

  “You must have known that your music was distressing to poor Miss Archer.”

  Mr. Clearwater looked quaintly at the doctor, almost as though there were an invisible wink in his eye.

  “I wasn’t playing for Miss Archer,” he said, “I was playing—I was playing for the beautiful lady here,” he concluded, indicating Constance with a sudden mendacity that took her breath away.

  “Yes,” continued Mr. Clearwater with a bright smile. “I was playing for Miss Sedgwick. You like my music, don’t you, Miss Sedgwick?” he asked, turning to her like a child inviting a confederate to play up.

  “I have not had much opportunity of hearing you,” said Constance coldly.

  “And may we ask, Mr. Clearwater, what it was that you were playing? I heard you as I came through the garden and it seemed vaguely familiar.”

  “Oh, nothing,” said Mr. Clearwater, “nothing at all just a little thing, nothing at all serious, you know.”

  “And what was its name?” persisted the doctor, quietly.

  “Its name?” echoed Mr. Clearwater, changing uneasily from one foot to another.

  “Look at me, Mr. Clearwater,” said Doctor Murchison in the same quiet tone.

  Mr. Clearwater looked at his toes and then unwillingly raised his eyes to the doctor.

  “What was its name?” Doctor Murchison repeated.

  Mr. Clearwater spoke now with a rush.

  “They call it ‘Jumping Joan,’” he said with a little laugh.

  “They played it in the old days when they burned witches in the street. And it frightened them properly, just as it frightened that nasty old witch a moment ago. Oh, yes, it’s a naughty little tune—very naughty indeed.”

  He was looking now at the doctor rather like a spoiled child who knows that he has misbehaved, but knows also that he will be indulged in his misdemeanors. And indeed, it seemed to Constance that Doctor Murchison with difficulty suppressed a smile.

  “Very well, Mr. Clearwater,” he said, “you may go.”

  Mr. Clearwater, like a schoolboy released by his master, turned on his heel and, leapfrogging over two or three kneelers and a prie-Dieu, landed lightly near the door of the chapel. Then he sped swiftly through the curtain, leaving Doctor Murchison and Constance alone.

  “I am afraid, Miss Sedgwick,” said Doctor Murchison after a pause, “that you have not had a very successful morning.”

  “I—I am sorry,” said Constance. “They seemed suddenly to get quite out of hand. I cannot understand your control. It is marvellous.”

  He gave no sign that he appreciated her rather blunt enthusiasm, and she blushed uneasily.

  “You will improve,” he said. “It is merely a question of time.

  But I must have a serious talk with you very shortly on those two cases. They are quite simple to handle if you know how to take them.”

  “I should be only too glad,” said Constance. “Tomorrow morning, if that would suit you, during the office hour.”

  They were walking slowly down the chapel as she spoke.

  “Not tomorrow,” said Doctor Murchison, “I expect I shall be ill tomorrow.”

  His face looked strangely haggard, and his eyes were abnormally bright—or was it merely the effect of the light striking down through the colored glass of the rose window as they moved westward towards the door?

  III

  Mr. Ambrose Deeling walked every evening once round the castle, or rather round that part of it inhabited by the patients, in order to see that they were all properly settled for the night. He was accompanied on these occasions by one of the two trained nurses, whose duty it was to look after those of the inmates of Château Landry whom it might be necessary to keep in bed either during the crises to which most of them were subject from time to time, or when they were attacked by some ordinary malady.

  Doctor Edwardes had originally been accustomed to visit the patients himself, or rather to look in at their rooms every night before they retired to rest, but of late years he had delegated this duty to Mr. Deeling, and Mr. Deeling set great store by its performance, partly out of respect for Doctor Edwardes, but more, as Constance suspected, owing to the fact that such a duty flattered his conceit, seeming for a moment to raise him from the status of a compounder and dispenser of drugs to that of resident physician.

  On that particular evening, Doctor Murchison had retired to his own room immediately after dinner, so that Mr. Deeling was left to conduct a desultory conversation with Constance for the half hour or so which preceded his rounds. He eyed her with more than a touch of irritation, as she sat opposite to him on the other side of the hearth, sipping his coffee and smoking the last of the three cigarettes a day which he allowed himself. She had from the first outraged his sense of the fitness of things, and he resented everything about her. She was a woman. She was young. She was a doctor. It was really absurd that she should be a “doctor,” and, if she were a doctor, she should not be sitting there in an evening dress of green velvet with bare arms. She should be dressed in black, with perhaps a touch of white at the throat and wrists, and her hair should be pulled back from the forehead and fastened in a knot low down on the nape of the neck, instead of being waved and shingled.

  He talked slightingly of the fine weather and of the new moon, of the remarkable purity of the air, of the lack of consideration shown by the servants. Only that morning, it seemed that one of the maids, Germaine, a village girl, had given notice for no particular reason, so far as he could see.

  Constance replied in monosyllables, and presently, picking up a magazine lying on the table beside her, began to turn the pages. Mr. Deeling rose.

  “Good night, Doctor Sedgwick,” he said, delicately stressing, as was his custom, the offending title.

  “Good night, Mr. Deeling,” she absently replied, and as she bent forward the light fell across her hair and one round arm that lay across the back of her chair.

  “Altogether too young,” said Mr. Deeling to himself as he c
losed the door behind him.

  He passed down the corridor to his own office, a little room on the ground floor of one of the four round towers which stood at each corner of the castle. It was fitted up as a laboratory, and contained, besides a number of locked glass cabinets which held the drugs used by Doctor Edwardes, two sinks, a number of glass retorts, pipettes and other apparatus, and a small pine-wood desk and a single swivel chair in front.

  Mr. Deeling crossed the room, sat down, opened a drawer of the desk and extracted his ledger. It was his daily custom to balance the amount of drugs which he had used in the dispensary, much as a merchant balances his accounts. He opened the ledger, at the same time taking a pile of little shiny leather notebooks from a pigeonhole in front of him. He had one notebook for each drug; that was his system. At the end of the day the amount used of each drug was noted in the big ledger; and at the end of the month he added up the totals and checked them against his stocks.

  He opened the big ledger and frowned. He had forgotten the date. It was the thirty-first of July. He would have to make up his account of the drugs that night, and he was tired. It did not occur to him, however, that the operation could be postponed. Wearily he began to run his pencil down the items, adding drams and scruples.

  He had not finished his task when there was a tap on the door, and Nurse Baxter, a pleasant Englishwoman of middle age, came into the room. It was time to make the nightly round of the castle.

  He took his electric torch and followed the nurse out of the room, switching off the light and pulling the door, which closed with a spring lock, behind him.

  He walked slowly down the corridor in front of the nurse, flashing his light officiously to either side as he went. The torch was not very obviously necessary, for there were lights in all the corridors, though they were shaded to little more than a soft glow. They passed from room to room, Mr. Deeling noiselessly raising the little nap which covered the spy-hole in the door of each of them, and looking quietly into each interior.