The Mystery Surrounding Hamplock House

by John Tan

  This riveted my attention in an instant. Something definite in the realm of feelings was coming to a head, and I looked out the window, and didn’t like it. There was a thick fog outside that misted the black, twisted shapes of trees. Tonight, there was something about the look of the window that was very pronounced—like a palpable evil hovering about where the curtains were—so that I was transmogrified; and unable to stand it a second longer, and with the hackles in my back standing on end, I unceremoniously left the room; switching off the light outside, and locking up nervously, leaving my books and papers inside. Increasing the length of my stride, I then walked past the dim-lit kitchen whereby I was lucky to have met Milo who was drinking from the water-fountain, and she invited me to her room, where she said, Ovaltine was waiting for her, wanting to share some tidbits and ginger-nuts, and some inconsequential girl-talk.

  Later, when I was more my usual self, I slipped back into my room, and my pills and Doctor Cranston was waiting for me. Doctor Cranston informed me that my roommate, Mrs. Cavendish had an asthma attack while I was absent from my room; and he told me to keep an eye on her, because Mrs. Cavendish’s health had always been frail. Thus ends the first part of Miss –‘s narrative.

  PART TWO: THE STORY CONTINUED BY DOCTOR ROBINSON CRANSTON (of Wicklow Mental Hospital)

  1

  That morning at nine o’ clock when, I, Doctor Cranston went to look in upon Mrs. Cavendish, obliging and cheerful intern, Doctor Liam Alvarez, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, followed.

  The young twenty-three year old inmate,--of whom, after I had informed her a little about the asthmatic’s mental history and chatted for half an hour the night previously, I had added: ‘I wish you happy, Miss, and a kind and restful night,’—was now informing me straight away--even before I wished her good morning, she didn’t sleep one wink the whole night; although cold enough to snow it was!

  Hearing this, the intern took a step closer. ‘Was something bothering you, Miss? Do you know that I often listen to tape-recordings of famous sermons to put me nicely to sleep? Maybe you should try it. I for my part don’t doubt you trust in God and in goodness as you have a great positive relationship with us professional health practioners.’

  The girl replied, ‘Mrs. Cavendish reminds me of my deceased mother—you can never guess how many tears fell on my pillow, as though it was my own mother’s grave.’

  ‘You have taken to crying in the night?’ said I, trying to weigh her words.

  ‘Yes, I was crying because I was thinking of possibilities and impossibilities.’

  ‘You listen to your own sighs and sobs?’

  ‘Yes, I listened in the deep silence of my heart when the sobs had quieted down.’

  ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘A silence that was pregnant with something indefinite, a strange stillness in which no action and no thought is forced—thoughts come when they are ready to come, of their own accord, and I was on hand to receive them. I heard the wild wind moaning low outside: Howling mournfully, sirs.

  ‘Was that because you have been emptying yourself?’

  ‘Yes, I waited—until from the depth of my being something is called forth, rising to the surface of my consciousness with each particle of breath that was expelled.’

  Thus, as I looked at her sitting on her bed, so too she sat comfortably in my mind despite what she said about how she had passed the entire night sleepless. There was nothing whatsoever about her that would indicate or betray the fact that she was not a top-notch, model patient. The soul is many fathoms deep, and few has plumbed its sheer depths, or stick in a thumb to pull out its secret plum—things that had filled her moment’s happiness with its bright flame, her hopeful, cherished dreams—also, her wounded-ness and isolation that she has to endure, till her wounds cicatrize.

  Due to the request put to me by Miss --, whose case was under my care, and who asked me to augment some of the gaps in the foregoing narrative, I proceed:

  That night when Mrs. Cavendish had had breathing troubles, I had put on her the oxygen mask, and I watched over her, until she dropped off to untroubled sleep. Then, the young girl, Mrs. Cavendish’s roommate, came in; and as we had lost Mrs. Elkland in the middle of the night, some months ago, in the same room, I didn’t want the same occurrence and so, I asked Miss to keep an eye on her and inform the nighttime nurse if anything untoward happened. I had thought, her opportunity to look after someone was therapeutic, also, I was trying to fill the missing pieces about her, and that jigsaw puzzle was far from being complete.

  There were—so to speak—gaps inside her story. Because, she had been laboring to think from the deep, her breathing had been self-conscious last night; and, this made me reflect now, what I had related to her when Mrs. Cavendish was sleeping; because I had seen it fit to gain her assent by taking her into my confidence about Mrs. Cavendish’s past, especially, the old woman’s mental condition which was still improving; so as to provide her food for thought. I began by talking about our professional relationship with the inmates and our mental patients, and how well most of the inmates here are coping right now, not failing to mention her frank openness with us, doctors, and the interest she had taken of the people in Hamplock House, and how well she fitted into our system ever since she came here.

  ‘Mrs. Cavendish has never been said at any time in her life to be robust, you know,’ I interjected.

  ‘Why is that?’ she answered. ‘What is she at Hamplock for?”

  ‘We needn’t go into why Mrs. Cavendish is frail, but she has been in Hamplock House for a long time, more than ten years.’

  ‘Well, can’t you just tell me what her problem is? Or is that confidential, as well? It’s nice to know her, that’s all.’

  ‘Mrs. Cavendish had a hard life, without me to specify. She will be seventy-one in two weeks’ time. She has been mentally ill for more than half her life. If you ask me generally what is wrong with her, I would hesitate to say there is anything seriously wrong with her. Except, she sees things. And, she is given to bouts of depression on and off.’

  ‘What things does she see?’

  ‘Let me explain it this way: to be mentally ill or to have mental illness, to put it simply, is to be out of context.’

  ‘Now, Doctor Cranston, what the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘What is the context, or context, eh? Before you have relationships you must have context; and therefore every relationship that are interlinked and mutually influencing—they are what they are because of simply this—context! We have the small context fitting into the big context. In other words, God is the context, and God exists because context, our senses tell us, exist. Because context exists, God exist! Even before the beginning, before chaos, before the void, before creation, or time and space, there was context. There was context before the Word was begotten, at any rate, a kind of context! This context cannot be changed, nor can we create a new context. It always was, and will ever shall be, do you know what I mean? Our mind fits into this context that always is, and when bad things befall us, and we become mentally ill, it is because we have gotten somehow out of context. Now, about Mrs. Cavendish. She has something that is almost like Charles Bonnett Syndrome, but I think her case is not simply having hallucinations of that sort. She sees patterns that are frightening with noses, mouths and eyes—and that is her pre gyrus being excited. My way of putting it, maybe, would be, she sees some things in her visual field that is out of context. These don’t fit in with the things she is generally seeing, and it frightens her because she doesn’t understand the reason for it; and it gives her an odd, distracted look you might have noticed yourself. And she can’t stop thinking about it, and every day, it’s the same thing; and Mrs. Cavendish’s eyes protrude, because her organ of sight is highly sensitized by her condition; she is fearful, and she dislikes it when people don’t keep their mouth shut as they should and bandy opinions about her. That is why she has stayed in Hamplock House because her peers don’t scrutinize her
here.’

  That occurred last night.

  This morning, I said to the girl, ‘How did your roommate spend the night—well enough, I take it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good, she is still sleeping. Let her sleep a little more. Meantime, we can talk.’

  ‘What do you want to talk to me about?’

  ‘About you. As things stand, how fulfilled or unfulfilled do you consider yourself to be right now—this fine morning? Tell me, are you fulfilled or unfulfilled?’

  She hesitated, then, in reply to my point-blank question, she trembled, and her left hand crept up to touch her heart.

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir. Don’t ask me this now—I am not holding anything back, and no offence to you, sir—but I can’t say right now.’

  ‘Then, can me show me something—something you have written or jotted down, that might indicate to me how you might be feeling in regard to that--’

  ‘That?’

  ‘Yes, that--’

  She hesitated again. Then, instinctively, she turned the pages of her diary and showed me the words written in blue ink: ‘She had dwelt upon the thought of his beauty, and she has added to herself, he is beautiful with the beauty of her love. A wonder like him, she shall never say good-bye to; finding him again, will mean her troubles are over.’

  I read the words, with her watching me intently, and I saw the momentary happiness in her eyes paled and faded out, when I finished; and turned to her with a dead-panned look.

  ‘You are writing about—him?’ I said, still unsmiling.

  She hesitated for a third time: ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Well, that encapsulates your spirit—in a nutshell. Do you remember me asking you are you fulfilled? The reason is this; we are of us, have an innate idea how our life is going to be, from a very early age, this idea has been with us. As we grow older we work out for ourselves our idea of how life is supposed to be. It’s like, to use an analogy, before we begin to paint a picture, we have a mental picture how the completed picture is going to look like. If our finished painting matches our conception before we begin the painting, we are satisfied. If it does not, we are unhappy, because life, one oughtn’t to forget, follows a preconceived idea or pattern. Not everyone wants the same things from life, precisely because nobody’s idea of a perfect or at least a good picture is the same; because we are all individuals, and they are many variations to the theme. Or themes! Some people go after the things they want wholeheartedly, innocently, without any reserve. And sometimes we get hurt. Maybe, we can modify our dream, so that moving inside us something gets renewed in the deep spaces inside our hearts.’

  ‘Yes, there are places to go, and things to do, once I am well enough, but not now. What is the meaning behind your long-windedness this morning, Doctor Cranston? Did you have news from him?’

  ‘Your mutual friend? Yes. He posted to me this and I would like you to see it; I must say, he writes very well, by the way.’

  ‘He has a degree in English Literature from Yale,’ she said. ‘Now, show me what he wrote.’

  These are the few pages he had written that I showed to her:

  “la pazienza,--bambina!

  An Artist at Work:

  --IT sounded low and whistling like unto the wind—riding astride the rows of graves and the white headstones, in particular, that newly dug “narrow house” with its still mordant issues—in the middle of the night; but, the surviving twenty-three year old sister’s body, under the tutelage of her doctor’s drugs, had begun to heal, and soon rosy-cheeked health returned and she regained her happiness, under the care of the mutual friend. A week later, one night, he listened intently from the parlor to her playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata—after such a long interval—he was moved to write; regarding the wigged and clean-shaven German Composer, who was famous for wearing his frilled collars very high up.

  ‘Later, I added on it, of course,’ he said ruefully afterwards, when he went upstairs to have a chat with her, the convalescent J--; flashing her smile as he sat down. ‘And what did I write about; you want to know, eh?’

  He looked at her looking quizzically back at him, concerning his amusing young lady friends. His affinity with certain female-types, in passing, was such that when things go sour between them, it went very sour indeed. The twenty-three old Butterfly Moon-Girl, as he called her, listened gravely as he read, finally, she interrupted him, saying, ‘Okay—an explanation to explain the explanation.’

  He dropped his pen upon his knee and folded up the paper neatly. ‘As I was saying, the neighbor of that thought of his was in anticipation of further wrangling, trouble, and furor, with himself; which caused him to be—or bound him—in a querulous and peevish disposition—like a warthog disturbed in its profound sleep by a hunter prodding near its hole in the early morning—as was its wont. The pale complexion of his latest work he realized now, sorely irritated him. Oh, but how faintly it reflected his true genius! He stabbed his pen into the ink-pot; pressed his fingers and perfumed napkin upon his ponderous temples, while, with the other hand, he tossed the crumpled unfinished music into the wicker wastepaper basket. Re-opening one severe eye, he stared out the French window at the checkered shadows of the leaves of elms, the trunks of spruce and larch, and then yawned, elaborately, and stupidly.

  ‘An organ of knowledge was in sore need to be ever so composed,’ he sighed, ‘which requires a vigorous vesicle containing intellectual wisdom to govern and to rule my unbridled, unabashed spontaneity—by application, rather than merely adding fuel to my fiery enthusiasm. I need to stand back and reexamine what has been done by me so far—putting the various parts into proper perspective—is needed,’ as he went over the good revised bits remaining still on two sheets, and checking his golden hoard of music against the original conception of his design,--mumbling, ‘the architecture—the structure, the structure of the whole—as conceived in the form of THE SUPREME IDEA—by my structured, musical soul.’

  After crossing out two crochets here—and adding a count of four beats, changing f to descant mf, etc., there, he flung himself down on the horsehair sofa, scanned his latest corrections—looking at it with judicious eyes, and a square jaw; oblivious to everything in his surroundings. ‘The measure of a great artist is he writes just exactly as he feels going upon a particular train of thought, and the exacter he approaches this ideal, the greater he is,’ Herr Ludwig von Beethoven, the illustrious German composer declared.”

  When she had finished, I said softly, ‘Do you know what that is all about?’

  2

  There was a long pause.

  ‘It is to bring home to me, sir, that LIFE, which is walking down a winding path which is never easy or smooth, is the same as ART; or—at any rate—can be thus compared, so that any discerning person can derive profit from such a comparison—illustrated by that particular story. I suppose, I am Butterfly Moon-girl, and the writer of the piece, my most true and forthright friend. Oh, by the way, and this is concerning an entirely different matter—I had a nasty experience before I met you last night.’

  ‘Where were you last night, then, Miss?’

  ‘As soon as dinner was over and I had finished my short after-dinner ten-minute brisk walk, I went to the library, as the librarian has given to my care one of the keys to the place, from her office;--you know?—so that I might come and go as I please, since I was the only person that ever made use of the moldy old library, and—she considered I was a trustworthy enough person to be so entrusted. I had told her I need a place to read and look at the books there.’

  ‘So you were browsing through our meager collection of old books and magazines, or some old series, there, I suppose?’

  ‘I was reading and looking through the late Mrs. Alice Elkland’s diary and some of her stuff in that stuffy room that made everything in it smelled so strongly of mothballs.’

  ‘I suppose they made an excellent read, and had you engrossed while you were there?’

  �
�Yes, for the first few minutes—but it didn’t go well for me--not in the end.’

  ‘What?’ I declared, returning her look with which she clung to mine with her eyes; and I caught a passing shade—of returning terror that had abated somewhat. ‘Has something not frightened you?’ I asked, solicitously. ‘Or someone?’

  ‘This you shall soon hear: I was not at all engrossed, not last night; if you must know. Rather, after a while—I got rather sleepy—due to my purchasing and eating something from the canteen, some baby-burgers earlier, and polishing off my baked beans with tomatoes at dinner time— so that, in fact, when I got there, my mind was cloudy, if not positively stupid when I sat down on one of the chairs to draw myself up close to the only table therein. Afterwards, I got up and went to fetch myself hot coffee in a foam cup from the kitchen; but, my mind seemed to be slipping away, and could not hold two ideas successfully for two seconds—like water sluicing away, or conducted away into certain unknown or some unknowable channels.’

  ‘Were you going to sleep in the library?’

  ‘Oh—how the words swam in the page I was reading, but I refused to give up the attempt--because the hour was still too early for bedtime. Something was trying to break inside me: I fell into a swoon, and thought sardonically I was being shipped off to never-neverland! Pronto and chop-chop, you know?’

  ‘When this was happening, did you notice anything strange, then, Miss?’

  ‘As I was nodding over a page of Mrs. Elkland’s letter, I thought I saw the white silhouette of a human figure that was unmoving, a small human shape, some kind of miniature; about an inch in height or an inch-and-half, and it was in the middle of the typewritten letter, a kind of grey notepaper of the kind that had a scent of flowers. I daren’t sleep in the library, sir, BECAUSE SOMETHING WAS TRYING ITS LEVEL BEST TO ENCLOSE ME IN, IN ITS NARRATIVE IN HERE (tapping her forehead, significantly), and I sensed deeply with apprehension or loathing, something was trying to tell me its story that I didn’t care for, or that, I didn’t care to know about. This thing was trying to suggest, I think, ‘we’—it has the temerity to use this very pronoun—have SOMETHING IN COMMON that we don’t find every day; an affinity of sorts!’