 |
RosettaBooks are available in a number of eBook Formats |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
The House of Dr. Edwardes
 About the Book
|
|
|
|
Preview
CHAPTER ONE
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 any one 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 pharmacopœia, 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 Château 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?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kindle
Sony Reader
Palm Digital
MS Reader
Adobe Reader
Mobipocket