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CHAPTER 1
I
Constance Sedgwick, M.D., aged twenty-six, was staring at herself critically in the long mirror. As a young doctor of medicine, with a degree for which she had worked hard and long, she prided herself on being objective. She was looking at herself, so she said, as she had been taught to look at a bacteriological culture under the lens, very steadily and without prejudice.
"How you strike a contemporary — that's what I want to know," she said, addressing the figure in the glass. "If I saw you in the street, should I turn to look at you again? You appear to be intelligent, and there is clearly no nonsense about you — or not more than is necessary. If I were a woman I think I should dislike you — yes, you are sufficiently attractive for that. If I were a man —"
But here she paused. She had, she assured herself, no very great interest in what she would think of herself if she were a man.
"The really important question," she went on, talking still into the mirror, "is what Doctor Edwardes will think of you? You don't look in the least like a person who is devoting her life to medical science, and you would be a fraud if you did. You failed twice before you even got your degree. You took up medicine because you wanted to be independent, and because it was the only profession in which a woman can hope to do really well for herself.
And you look it. The shape of your head is all wrong — no high, or even a middle brow, but just as low as they are made; a good chin, but that only means that you are obstinate, and one sees at once that your manner at the bedside will probably discourage the cheerful patients, and kill the pessimists. Perhaps it's just as well that they are going to be lunatics."
And here, again, she paused, for now it was time to decide finally what she intended to do. She turned from the looking-glass, and going to her writing table by the window, read again the two letters which she had received from Doctor Edwardes.
"You have now your medical degree," he wrote. "Never mind about experience; I can promise you plenty of that at Château Landry. I suggest that you should come to me for six months on probation and then we shall see."
She owed that, of course, to her father, dead these twenty years. If Doctor Edwardes had not been her father's friend, he would certainly have hesitated to engage a young person who had only just got through the London school by the skin of her teeth. For this was a unique opportunity, which any one of the dozen brilliant young students of her year would have given their heads to secure. Château Landry, House of Rest for the mentally deficient, was famous in the history of mental disease. Specialists in the treatment of insanity in all its forms came from the ends of Europe to visit it and to sit at the feet of its director. Château Landry was no ordinary asylum. Doctor Edwardes chose his patients with care. They were special cases, and no ordinary lunatic need apply. To obtain admission into Château Landry you must first of all be medically interesting, and secondly, as this was a first-class establishment, you must be rich. Fortunately for Doctor Edwardes, lunacy is not confined to the poorer classes, and he had treated in his time more than one poor gentleman who, if he had not been sitting so comfortably in Château Landry, might have been sitting rather less at his ease, though possibly quite as much at home, in the House of Lords.
So much for the first of the letters which she had received from Doctor Edwardes. No girl in her senses would hesitate to jump at such a chance. The second letter, however, was less inviting. Doctor Edwardes had engaged her; but Doctor Edwardes, by the time she arrived, would not be there. The old man, in his zeal for science, had seriously overtaxed his strength, and he had been obliged — no one better qualified to give advice in such a matter — to order himself a rest.
"If I don't take a holiday and that immediately," he wrote, "I shall soon have to consider myself as a suitable patient for my own establishment. I am, therefore, leaving my work for three months. Do not, however, hesitate on that account to come to Château Landry. I have engaged a specialist from England, a Doctor Murchison, in whom I have every confidence. He will be in charge by the time you arrive, and I am leaving him precise instructions as to your duties."
This letter put rather a different complexion on the whole affair, and her friends had not been backward in discouragement. She would be going now to a strange house, a very strange house, if all she had heard of it was true, in the charge of a person unknown, and, though her chin was firm, she felt not perhaps anything quite so definite as hesitation, but certainly a tendency to waver. She had qualms. Yes, that was the word. Qualms. She had them now as, for the last time, she weighed the position all over again.
On the one side were these qualms. On the other was a salary of £150 a year all found, and the beginning of a promising career. There were also the protests of her friends who said that she must on no account set forth upon an adventure so rash and so unmaidenly; observations which made her all the more eager to go.
The struggle was short and decisive. This was a chance which really could not be neglected by anyone who felt in the least capable of looking after herself. She had her living to get. She was twenty-six. She was qualified. She was Constance Sedgwick, M.D., and this was her first job. She would sit at the feet of the master (as soon as he returned). Meanwhile, she would show this Doctor Murchison that she merited all the kind things which Doctor Edwardes had doubtless said in her favor.
And now, having made up her mind, she gave free play to her imagination. Her dissections might be lacking in neatness and precision; there were gaps in her knowledge of the pharmacopoeia, and she knew nothing at all of mental science. But she intended to do well in her profession, and the chances were all in her favor. She was to assist Doctor Edwardes in his investigations, only a secretary perhaps, but what an opportunity! And what a setting for that awful riddle by which her young intelligence was already intrigued — the riddle of human minds, ruined or deformed, in which, nevertheless, a personality, or soul, call it what you please, must somewhere remain intact, and by some means accessible. She had formed already a picture of Chateau Landry; it was, she knew, a castle, in fact as well as in name, which had weathered the Middle Ages, and survived even the destructive zeal of Richelieu.
She saw it as described by Doctor Edwardes, high up among the rocks and pines of Savoy, secluded at the end of a secret valley, with one small village about two miles away, a small collection of châlets, with half a dozen stone houses and a single inn.
There, behind the impenetrable walls, in rooms formerly strewn with rushes and hung with tapestry, she would find, incongruously, every modern comfort and device — modern science in possession of an ancient stronghold.
Modern science, perhaps, dauntless, inquisitive, throwing its feeble ray into the heart of darkness. But where was its victory? Central heating and electric light, a little reasonable care of sick bodies, a little insight into the mechanism of a brain diseased — were these the sum of its achievement in face of the enigma with which it was confronted in that House of Rest?
II
It was a bad crossing, whatever the offensive young man next behind her when she crossed the gangway might maintain. His remark, "Nothing like a good breath of sea air; freshens your face up so," delivered in the tone of one who was a good sailor, or a hearty Christian, or a crashing bore, irritated her almost to the point of comment. Why not, at least, be accurate? Sea air was not good for the complexion, and the rolling of the channel steamer was worse, even though you did not happen to be really ill.
Luckily, however, the ordeal was brief, and soon she was struggling forward to the firm land of France, tightly wedged in the crowd, trying not to be parted from her handbag, despatch case, passport and landing ticket — murmuring below her breath, as though it were of mystical significance, the number 179 stamped in greasy brass on the cap of the Calais porter who had possessed himself of her suitcase while he had gestured with someone else's towards the douanes. Thrust eventually past a shabby French official, redolent of garlic, sweat and sour wine, who glanced at her passport upside down, she found herself, bewildered by the noise and squalor of her surroundings, trying hard to overcome her conviction that the English were a superior people. The neat officials of Dover, its clean customs house, the dignified figure of the English stationmaster in his dark blue uniform, — these were behind her, symbols of the law, order and familiar standards of the land for which she was already homesick. In their place was a seething rabble, unwashed and insolent, yet oh so eager for the hundred sous with which its services must be rewarded.
"Must pull myself together," thought Constance, some minutes later, when she had successfully passed through the customs house without having had to open her bag, "or I shall develop a francophobe complex."
She found her registered luggage, which was opened and very perfunctorily searched. But there again she happened to be unfortunate, for the official fumbling among her silk underclothes shot a glance at her capable of only one interpretation. "Filthy beasts," was her comment, aimed, to be fair, less at the man in front of her than at the sex in general.
Constance had viewed with mingled dislike and pity such young men as had attempted any sentimental advances towards her, but anything in the nature of the purely animal instinct disgusted her. Men were like that, children in the open expression of their impulses, curiously unable to hide their primitive emotions.
The train for a wonder arrived punctually at the Gare du Nord, and at a quarter to seven Constance found herself at the little hotel on the Quai Voltaire where she had stayed on a previous occasion when she had found herself in Paris. Her windows overlooked the Seine, and, as she brushed her hair and got herself ready to dine in one of the little restaurants of the quartier before going to the play, she watched the barges drifting slowly down the Seine between the zinc cases of the second-hand bookstalls and the classic outline of the Louvre on the farther bank. The evening sky to the west was a golden haze, and the city lay like Danaë beneath the shower. The floating dust was of gold, and that golden light on the river was filtered through the thin veils of the poplars beside the water. Through the open window came the noisy riot of Paris, so different from the dull roar of London or the staccato rattle of New York. Each noise was individual, and swiftly identified. The sharp querulous hoot of taxis, the rumbling of a great autobus over the cobbles, with its rear platform packed with humanity like the overgrown garrison of a mediaeval castle as depicted in the margins of illuminated MSS, the slow click-clock of hoofs with the crack and rattle of a cart carrying empty bottles and siphons, and every now and again the beat of waves against the stone parapets as some river steamer bustled on its way to Auteuil.
She dined in a little restaurant in the Rue Jacob where, calling for an evening paper, she saw that a new play of H. R. Lenormand was being performed at the Odéon, near at hand. She was not particularly "up" in the French theater, but she had heard of Lenormand from one of her medical friends in London, who had taken up psycho-analysis. "Pretty useful point of view," he had told her. "He dramatizes the subconscious, you know. It's like a lot of complexes walking about; very chatty they are, too, and most informing."
She bought a fauteuil and was soon watching a performance of "La Dent Rouge." Now and then she wondered at the chance that had brought her to that particular place on that particular evening. For it seemed curiously to fit in with her present adventure. It might even be taken for a gipsy's warning. Was she not on her way to wrestle with just those powers of evil which all through the play were militant and in the end victorious? There too, on the stage, was just that mountain village which lay at the gates of Château Landry. That girl on the stage might be the shadow of herself.
She watched the progress of the play with a curious, intimate excitement. That girl had come back to her native village. She had, in the ordinary sense, been educated. She had outgrown the primitive superstitions which still linger in the remoter Alpine valleys. And that young peasant had married her, drawn towards beauty and freedom, defying the ignorance and cruelty of his kind. Would they not together be able to defeat the suggestions of the credulous folk who through the long winter went softly in fear of the demons of the mountain? But no; inexorably as the winter closed down on them, bringing with it the terrible, intimate seclusion of a primitive community cut off from every form of intelligent life, the demons of the mountain recovered their dominion even over the souls of those who had seemed to elude it. And now the young peasant, for all his proud defiance, was dead, and the girl a sorceress who had slain him with an evil thought.
Constance, that night, slept badly. Most of the time, indeed, she was in a state between waking and dreaming. Pictures and phrases came and went in her tired brain, and she allowed them to pass, occasionally trying to give them form and coherence. Was she dreaming now, or was she really lying under the rafters in an Alpine valley? The old man had died, and, because it was winter, and the ground frozen to the hardness of steel, they were unable to bury him in the earth. Besides, they would not bury him in any case, though she had begged them to do so. It was his right to lie up there, out on the roof, just above her head, rigid and brittle, staring up at the sky. Did they defraud the old man of his right, he would wander in a cold wrath forever among the mountains, or come down among the hamlets, pressing his haunted face against the pane. So he must lie up there till the earth was soft enough to bed him. And now she was explaining all this to Doctor Edwardes, who smiled and pointed to the roof of Château Landry, where, neatly, in long rows, they lay side by side, smiling stiffly up at the stars. "Every modern convenience," he was saying. But she had thought it was only a dormitory.
And there was Doctor Murchison. She looked quickly at his left foot, but it was really human, and he seemed to be quite a pleasant young man, and she asked him whether it might not be insanitary. "No," he said at once, "not till the spring sets in, and then, of course, we shall be obliged to put them in the ground." And suddenly it was spring, and there was a huge fellow who came down from the forest with a gigantic pick slung over his shoulder. He attacked the ground with heavy blows — knocking — knocking.
It was the chambermaid who entered, with coffee and rolls.
III
She traveled all that day, with the exception of an hour spent in the restaurant car, with two American tourists and a French officer on leave. The chatter of the tourists got on her nerves, and she answered abruptly the few questions which they put to her, mostly about the country through which they were passing. The French officer paid no attention to anyone, but sat reading a book whose title stared at her almost pointedly: "Sous le Soleil de Satan."
She arrived at about four in the afternoon at Thonon, having been fortunate enough to catch the connection at Bellegarde.
And now she was on the threshold, and she gazed about her with interest.
Beyond the steep-built town shimmered the Lake of Geneva, a trap for all the rays of the sun; embracing it were the gracious lines of the Jura, while, far away, across the water, the light, striking the windows in houses at Ouchy and Lausanne, signaled meaninglessly across the air.
She went into the station courtyard, dusty and surrounded by shabby houses. There appeared to be no one to meet her, but as she stood, uncertain what to do, a dusty Citroen, with the hood up to protect the driver from the glare of the summer day, came to a stand beside her with a grinding of brakes.
"Pour le Chateau Landry?" said the man at the wheel, who in his linen coat with blue cuffs and flat cap presented a very tolerable imitation of a smart chauffeur.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The House of Dr. Edwardes"
by .
Copyright © 1927 Francis Beeding.
Excerpted by permission of RosettaBooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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