The House of Dr. Edwardes

by Francis Beeding

  All that was needed was patience, patience and a humble heart. “I am but a poor crushed manikin,” he murmured, using for the thousandth time the words of the old prayer that he had found in a sixteenth century Book of Hours.

  He put on his linen nightshirt, white as the robe of catechumen. Then he knelt on the bare floor and raised his hands in prayer. But the old words would not come, the words that he had said so often. That, too, was nothing strange; for now the prayers would never come, or when they came they were never now as they used to be.

  For one breathless instant, only four days ago, he had thought that the moment had arrived. There in the hay field, when they had danced together, danced in the sunlight, treading the withered fragrant grass of the valley, he had felt that it was imminent. But at the critical moment, as he had stepped forward, straining towards that cry in the forest, he had been suddenly confused. His mind had swung unaccountably back to the ritual of his old faith. He had fancied himself back in his parish church. There was his pulpit, with its flowers and fruit, and the lectern, with its ears of corn—the first fruits of the garden and the farm.

  For that vision and the gesture it had provoked he felt a strange remorse, and since then he had never ceased to pray for yet another chance. Nest time he would not thus be taken unawares.

  His gaze traveled up the white wall of the bare room to the black crucifix and the white carved figure nailed to it. His heart missed a beat. How had that remained? Was that vigilance, to have left that hanging there?

  He rose stiffly from his knees and moved to the wall. He unhooked the crucifix and held it in his hands, looking down at it. He must wait a moment. It would be suggested to him what he ought to do. He had only to listen and obey. Who was it that whispered in his ear? Was it even a whisper? Just a thought that came suddenly from nowhere. He crossed the room with the crucifix and, sitting at his desk, with some little exertion removed the ring by which it had hung upon the nail. He turned it upside down and screwed the ring into the foot of the cross. This done, he rose from his chair and hung the crucifix in its new position, head downwards, the figure to the wall.

  It swung into place, and the ivory figure scraped against the plaster. He lifted a lean forefinger and tapped the cross once or twice, so that it moved to and fro like a pendulum, scraping each time against the wall.

  He moved to the middle of the room. It was very dark outside, dark and very hot. He turned and switched off the light. He was ready. He would never be more ready if he lived to the day of judgment.

  Had he not known it would be thus? There came a sudden tap on the door. It swung open behind him, and as he turned he heard a voice which said, “Take up your cloak and come with me.”

  He moved to the bed; his dressing gown was lying across it. It was of black wool, with long pendulous sleeves. He put it on and drew the cord tight about his waist. Then he turned to the door and walked straight out, following his invisible guide.

  The corridor was in darkness, the little lamps in the ceiling had been put out.

  In front of him were soft footfalls and a shadow. He moved slowly down the corridor and felt the beginning of the stairs beneath his feet. It was dark, and yet he descended without faltering, for this darkness was as noon to a vision entranced.

  At the bottom of the great stairs he paused.

  “Go to your right,” whispered the guide, “and then forward nine paces. Then turn to the left, and when the light gleams, raise your arms.”

  He moved forward, counting breathlessly.

  “Nine,” he breathed at last, and turning to the left he stood and waited.

  He did not know how long he waited, for time had ceased.

  Then suddenly the darkness was gray. Gazing straight before him, he raised his arms, as he had been told to do.

  In front of him, some distance away, was the gray stone wall of the room. On it was a monstrous shadow, the shadow of a head with four horns and humped shoulders beneath it. It wavered a moment, then stood still.

  Four horns—that was a little queer. Or perhaps it was not so queer. There were gods with many pairs of arms, and once he had seen the picture of a goddess with a hundred breasts.

  He stood gazing, and thus he would continue to stand till the world grew old. But suddenly he was released from the vision. The light went out.

  “Go back to your room,” said a voice sharply in his ear.

  “And do not leave it again till you are told.”

  He turned and stumbled blindly up the stairs.

  But in his heart there burned an inextinguishable fire.

  IV

  A moment later Constance found herself in an armchair beside the hearth. She had been carried there by Doctor Murchison.

  “Keep quite still,” he was saying. “I will go and get you something to drink.”

  She looked up at him and contrived to smile.

  “No, it’s all right,” she said, putting her hand to her forehead.

  She made to rise from the chair.

  “No, sit down,” he said.

  “But I really am quite all right,” protested Constance. “I—I couldn’t sleep, and I just came down to get a book, and then—” She stopped.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Nothing—the candle fell out of the candlestick, and I was left in the dark.”

  “Was that all?”

  “It was not altogether that,” said Constance. “I thought I heard something.”

  “How long had you been in the room?” said Doctor Murchison.

  “I don’t quite know,” replied Constance. “It might have been twenty minutes perhaps.”

  “And during that time you were choosing something to read?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked at the little shelf of books behind the desk.

  “So that was all,” said Doctor Murchison.

  Constance hesitated.

  “Not quite all,” she confessed. “I was looking at the book on your desk.”

  He looked inquiringly towards the open volume.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, after a short silence. “In our profession one has to face some pretty horrible facts, but that was hardly necessary.”

  Constance flushed.

  “There was a curious picture,” she said, “and somehow I began to be interested.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder.

  “It was my fault,” he said kindly. “I ought not to have left the book where it was.”

  “It was horrible,” she said in a low voice. “Doctor Murchison, why do you read such things?”

  “That book,” he said, “is part of the library of Mr. Godstone.

  I am looking carefully through all his books. I shall have to read them pretty thoroughly if I am ever to understand his case.”

  He looked at her for some moments without speaking.

  “You were frightened by what you read,” he said at last.

  “Not exactly frightened,” she replied.

  “What was it then that startled you?” he insisted.

  Constance tried to speak, but the words would not come.

  “Answer me, please,” he said, and the request was almost a command.

  “There was a shadow,” she began, “a shadow on the wall.”

  “Oh, come,” said Doctor Murchison, as though he were talking to a child. “I can’t have you frightened by a shadow.”

  He walked to the middle of the room and picked up her candle from the floor. Then he lit it and moved to the door.

  “I am going to turn out the lights,” he said. “Look at the wall in front of you.”

  He went to the door and abruptly the light went out. For a moment she was in complete darkness. Then a series of great shadows moved across the wall in front of her. She realized that they came from the door. For a moment they wheeled in confusion; then they steadied. She caught her breath, for, in front of her, on the gray stone wall, moved once again the great head and the humped shoulders, and even as she looked two ho
rns shot out and completed the illusion. Then with a click the electric lights came on again, and she heard Doctor Murchison walk into the room.

  “Was that your shadow?” he asked, and there was a touch of amused contempt in his voice.

  “Yes,” she admitted. “That was what I saw.”

  She heard him busying himself with something behind her. There was a tinkling of glass. Then he stood beside her, a tumbler in his hand.

  “Your nerves, Miss Sedgwick, seem to be a little frayed.

  The work here, perhaps, is too much for you.”

  “Oh, no,” said Constance eagerly. “I am perfectly all right, Doctor. I have not been sleeping well, that is all. It’s really only that.”

  He took a step forward, so that he was standing right over her.

  “Drink this,” he said, holding out the tumbler.

  She took it mechanically.

  “You are not going to scare me away, Doctor?” she said, and on that he smiled suddenly and put his hands upon her shoulders.

  “Not if you do as you are told,” he answered. “I’ve mixed you a sleeping draught. Drink it up, and we will say no more about it.”

  She drained the tumbler.

  “And now,” he said, “you must go to bed,” and he held out his hands. She took them, and he pulled her to her feet. Side by side they walked across the room. She felt of a sudden curiously weak, but happy. She turned to him in the doorway.

  “Good night,” she said. “I’m sorry to have been such a nuisance.”

  He looked at her and smiled suddenly. Then, before she had a chance to protest, he bent down and picked her up as though she were a child, and strode masterfully up the stairs, along the corridor and into her room, where he laid her upon the bed. For a moment his hand rested on her hair. Then he turned abruptly and left her.

  A pleasant drowsiness was stealing over her. She did not trouble to get up and take off her dressing gown. It was still stiflingly hot, but she pulled the sheet up so that it covered her.

  It was only on the threshold of sleep that two things crossed her mind. On the first shadow she had seen there had been two pairs of horns, but on the second only one. Also she had not remembered to ask Doctor Murchison what he said as he had turned on the lights when he found her.

  But these thoughts had no power to keep her awake now. She turned slightly on her left side with a little sigh.

  A moment later she was asleep.

  Chapter Nine

  I

  The Reverend Mark Hickett stirred under the firm dry hand upon his forehead.

  “Look at me,” came the steady voice.

  He sank back a little into the deep armchair in which he was sitting, and gazed, serenely now, into the eyes of Doctor Murchison.

  He was no longer afraid. On the contrary, he was happy and at peace.

  It seemed to him that Doctor Murchison was smiling at him, but he could only see the doctor’s face darkly, as through a mist. He sighed and his thin hands plucked at the padding of the chair.

  Then, abruptly, the face of the doctor disappeared altogether. The room, too, had vanished, with its stone walls and the great bookcases and the sheaves of weapons. He was looking through a window and at his feet was a gleaming sea, green and sapphire, and there, in the offing, was the galleon with its painted sails and its crew singing a chanty as they began to heave on the anchor.

  He would be aboard it soon, to be received by its crew with pikes at the salute, their swarthy faces set in awe beneath their morions of steel as he mounted the companion ladder in his suit of violet and purple, with the great starched ruff.

  Already he was rocking in the little pinnace, while the naked backs of the eight oarsmen swung rhythmically to and fro. He was sitting in the stern sheets, playing with the chain of twisted gold about his neck. For a moment the pinnace rose and fell at the foot of the ladder; then the silver trumpets rang out as he climbed on deck. It all happened as he had foreseen.

  He was pacing now the quarter-deck, and the galleon was under sail. He held the arm of the gray master gunner, who was very proud to be thus engaged. They talked of the Spanish treasure ship, the Madre de Dios, which they had looted two days before, homeward bound from the Caribbean, and of the great gold crucifix, studded with emeralds, which was now being melted down in the lazaret.

  The lookout in the foretop screamed down of a sail that he descried. She was a Moorish galley, and her oars were out. They would have to fight for it. She was making for their starboard quarter.

  He raised his hand. The ruby on his forefinger flamed in the sun, and the first broadside crashed out beneath him.

  The two ships ground together. The air was full of cries and splinters. He was wearing no longer his suit of violet and purple, but golden armor, Milanese plate, chased and scrolled. With his own hand he engaged the Moorish Emir in command of the storming party and ran him through the throat, so that he fell at his feet and rolled to the scuppers, and the deck was crimson.

  The smoke of the guns drifted thickly about them till they were smothered in a white pall. He could no longer see the vessels, not even his own yardarm. The mist was whirling—without shape or form—no, not quite—for there was a face within the murk, a strong face that he knew.

  He heard a voice say sharply, suddenly:

  “What is it, Mr. Deeling?”

  The Reverend Mark Hickett sighed and stirred in his chair. In front of him was Doctor Murchison, and, standing at his elbow, was Mr. Deeling, the apothecary.

  Mr. Deeling and the doctor were talking, but for a moment he could not understand what they were saying.

  But soon the doctor turned to him.

  “Mr. Hickett,” he said, “it would appear that Colonel Rickaby is anxious that the usual ceremony should be performed tomorrow afternoon. It seems that there is every year a service in memory of his wife.”

  “I do not know what he means,” said Mr. Hickett.

  That, of course, was a lie. But he would deny it again if necessary. He would deny it three times, swearing that he did not know.

  Mr. Deeling was speaking now.

  “I am referring, Mr. Hickett, to the ceremony which you are accustomed to perform for Colonel Rickaby each year, who always, you may remember, desires to commemorate his wife on the seventh of August. I have ventured to suggest that you might be willing to take the service tomorrow at 5.30 p.m.”

  There was a short silence, during which Mr. Deeling looked inquiringly at the unhappy parson. What was the matter with the poor fool? He had usually looked forward to this annual ceremony, and prepared for it with the greatest unction. He had, in fact, always been asking for services in the chapel. It was rather odd, then, that he should look so blank? There was another thing. The little gold cross on his watch chain, with which he was always playing, was not there anymore. That also was rather odd.

  The Reverend Mark Hickett passed a thin tongue across his dry lips and shook his head.

  “I swear,” he said, “that I haven’t the least idea of what you are talking about.”

  Mr. Deeling glanced at Doctor Murchison. The doctor was seated in his consulting chair, the desk in front of him, leaning back slightly, looking steadily at Mr. Hickett.

  “Surely,” Mr. Deeling protested, “you remember what happened last year and the year before. You take the service always on August the seventh.”

  “I have never taken it in my life,” said Mr. Hickett.

  Doctor Murchison leaned forward and spoke with authority.

  “That is three times,” he said. “You are permitted to remember it now.”

  The Reverend Mark Hickett looked at the doctor, incredulous, hesitating, with troubled eyes.

  “Very well,” he said at last, “if it is permitted.”

  “You may perform the ceremony, Mr. Hickett,” said Doctor Murchison. “Do not be afraid. I will take full responsibility for your acts.”

  The doctor opened a drawer of the big desk in front of him.

 
“We will hold the ceremony,” he said, “at half-past five tomorrow afternoon. Here is the key of the chapel. You may wish to make your preparations.”

  The Reverend Mark Hickett rose without a word, moved across the great room to the door. He walked as in a dream, holding in his hand the twisted key.

  II

  Mr. Deeling, that afternoon, was sitting in his dispensary. In his hand was an envelope, which he had found upon his desk. That, in itself, was annoying. He had locked the dispensary at 12:15, when he had completed his morning prescriptions, and he had not entered it since, but he was prepared to swear that the envelope had not been there before lunch. That must mean that either Doctor Murchison or Miss Sedgwick had, during his absence, visited the dispensary to which, of course, they had a duplicate key. He did not like people to visit his dispensary. It was his own domain, and Doctor Edwardes had always respected it. Why, he had even had the courtesy invariably to knock before he entered. But Doctor Edwardes was a gentleman.

  Mr. Deeling weighed the envelope for a moment in his hand, and, turning it over, examined it well before he opened it. It was an ordinary envelope of the castle stationery, with the words Château Landry” printed on the flap. He turned it over again. His name was typewritten, he noticed. Then he slid a dry forefinger under the flap, pried it open and pulled out a letter.

  This is what he read:

  Château Landry

  August 6th, 1927.

  DEAR. MR. DEELING,

  I wish to express to you in writing my regret at your unfortunate collapse and subsequent illness which occurred on the second of this month. It brought home to me the fact that you have obviously been compelled considerably to overwork since the departure of Doctor Edwardes. I suppose that to a certain extent that was inevitable. My sudden appearance and many demands upon your time have considerably increased what I have already had occasion to note is almost more than a fair day’s work for any one man. I see by reference to your personal file that you have taken no holiday whatever for the last four years. I cannot but admire your devotion, but I feel that you are submitting yourself to a strain that is for the moment beyond your powers, and I am, therefore, writing to inform you that leave for two months is at your disposal, to be taken at your earliest convenience.