‘Yes,’ she said, with a weary contempt. ‘It’s dull enough of me not to understand you by this time. – Send word upstairs, when I am wanted.’ She left him, and went back to her room.
Two o’clock came; and in a quarter of an hour afterwards the Visitors had arrived. Short as the notice had been, cheerless as the Sanatorium looked to spectators from without, the doctor’s invitations had been largely accepted nevertheless by the female members of the families whom he had addressed. In the miserable monotony of the lives led by a large section of the middle classes of England, anything is welcome to the women which offers them any sort of harmless refuge from the established tyranny of the principle that all human happiness begins and ends at home. While the imperious needs of a commercial country limited the representatives of the male sex, among the doctor’s visitors, to one feeble old man and one sleepy little boy, the women, poor souls, to the number of no less than sixteen – old and young, married and single – had seized the golden opportunity of a plunge into public life. Harmoniously united by the two common objects which they all had in view – in the first place, to look at each other, and in the second place, to look at the Sanatorium – they streamed in neatly dressed procession through the doctor’s dreary iron gates, with a thin varnish over them of assumed superiority to all unlady-like excitement, most significant and most pitiable to see!
The proprietor of the Sanatorium received his visitors in the hall with Miss Gwilt on his arm. The hungry eyes of every woman in the company overlooked the doctor as if no such person had existed; and, fixing on the strange lady, devoured her from head to foot in an instant.
‘My First Inmate,’ said the doctor, presenting Miss Gwilt. ‘This lady only arrived late last night; and she takes the present opportunity (the only one my morning’s engagements have allowed me to give her) of going over the Sanatorium. – Allow me, ma’am,’ he went on, releasing Miss Gwilt, and giving his arm to the eldest lady among the visitors. ‘Shattered nerves – domestic anxiety,’ he whispered confidentially. ‘Sweet woman! sad case!’ He sighed softly, and led the old lady across the hall.
The flock of visitors followed; Miss Gwilt accompanying them in silence, and walking alone – among them, but not of them – the last of all.
‘The grounds, ladies and gentlemen,’ said the doctor, wheeling round and addressing his audience, from the foot of the stairs, ‘are, as you have seen, in a partially unfinished condition. Under any circumstances, I should lay little stress on the grounds, having Hampstead Heath so near at hand, and carriage-exercise and horse-exercise being parts of my System. In a lesser degree it is also necessary for me to ask your indulgence for the basement floor, on which we now stand. The waiting-room and study on that side, and the Dispensary on the other (to which I shall presently ask your attention), are completed. But the large drawing-room is still in the decorator’s hands. In that room (when the walls are dry – not a moment before) my inmates will assemble for cheerful society. Nothing will be spared that can improve, elevate, and adorn life, at these happy little gatherings. Every evening, for example, there will be music for those who like it.’
At this point there was a faint stir among the visitors. A mother of a family interrupted the doctor. She begged to know whether music ‘every evening’ included Sunday evening; and, if so, what music was performed?
‘Sacred music, of course, ma’am,’ said the doctor. ‘Handel on Sunday evening – and Haydn occasionally, when not too cheerful. But, as I was about to say, music is not the only entertainment offered to my nervous inmates. Amusing reading is provided for those who prefer books.’
There was another stir among the visitors. Another mother of a family wished to know whether amusing reading meant novels.
‘Only such novels as I have selected and perused myself, in the first instance,’ said the doctor. ‘Nothing painful, ma’am! There may be plenty that is painful in real life – but, for that very reason, we don’t want it in books. The English novelist1 who enters my house (no foreign novelist will be admitted) must understand his art as the healthy minded English reader understands it in our time. He must know that our purer modern taste, our higher modern morality, limits him to doing exactly two things for us, when he writes us a book. All we want of him is – occasionally to make us laugh; and invariably to make us comfortable.’
There was a third stir among the visitors – caused plainly this time, by approval of the sentiments which they had just heard. The doctor, wisely cautious of disturbing the favourable impression that he had produced, dropped the subject of the drawing-room, and led the way upstairs. As before, the company followed – and, as before, Miss Gwilt walked silently behind them, last of all. One after another, the ladies looked at her with the idea of speaking, and saw something in her face, utterly unintelligible to them, which checked the well-meant words on their lips. The prevalent impression was, that the Principal of the Sanatorium had been delicately concealing the truth, and that his first inmate was mad.
The doctor led the way – with intervals of breathing-time accorded to the old lady on his arm – straight to the top of the house. Having collected his visitors in the corridor, and having waved his hand indicatively at the numbered doors opening out of it on either side, he invited the company to look into any or all of the rooms at their own pleasure.
‘Numbers one to four, ladies and gentlemen,’ said the doctor, ‘include the dormitories of the attendants. Numbers four to eight are rooms intended for the accommodation of the poorer class of patients whom I receive on terms which simply cover my expenditure – nothing more. In the cases of these poorer persons among my suffering fellow-creatures, personal piety and the recommendation of two clergymen are indispensable to admission. Those are the only conditions I make; but those I insist on. Pray observe that the rooms are all ventilated, and the bedsteads all iron; and kindly notice as we descend again to the second floor, that there is a door shutting off all communication between the second story and the top story, when necessary. The rooms on the second floor, which we have now reached, are (with the exception of my own room) entirely devoted to the reception of lady-inmates – experience having convinced me that the greater sensitiveness of the female constitution necessitates the higher position of the sleeping apartment, with a view to the greater purity and freer circulation of the air. Here the ladies are established immediately under my care, while my assistant-physician (whom I expect to arrive in a week’s time) looks after the gentlemen on the floor beneath. Observe, again, as we descend to this lower, or first floor, a second door, closing all communication at night between the two stories to every one but the assistant-physician and myself. And now that we have reached the gentlemen’s part of the house, and that you have observed for yourselves the regulations of the establishement, permit me to introduce you to a specimen of my system of treatment next. I can exemplify it practically, by introducing you to a room fitted up, under my own directions, for the accommodation of the most complicated cases of nervous suffering and nervous delusion that can come under my care.’
He threw open the door of a room at one extremity of the corridor, numbered Four. ‘Look in, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said; ‘and, if you see anything remarkable, pray mention it.’
The room was not very large, but it was well lit by one broad window. Comfortably furnished as a bedroom, it was only remarkable among other rooms of the same sort, in one way. It had no fireplace. The visitors having noticed this, were informed that the room was warmed in winter by means of hot-water; and were then invited back again into the corridor, to make the discoveries, under professional direction, which they were unable to make for themselves.
‘A word, ladies and gentlemen,’ said the doctor; ‘literally a word, on nervous derangement first. What is the process of treatment, when, let us say, mental anxiety has broken you down, and you apply to your doctor? He sees you, hears you, and gives you two prescriptions. One is written on paper, and made up at the chemist’s. The other
is administered by word of mouth, at the propitious moment when the fee is ready; and consists in a general recommendation to you to keep your mind easy. That excellent advice given, your doctor leaves you to spare yourself all earthly annoyances by your own unaided efforts, until he calls again. Here, my System steps in, and helps you! When I see the necessity of keeping your mind easy, I take the bull by the horns and do it for you. I place you in a sphere of action in which the ten thousand trifles which must, and do, irritate nervous people at home, are expressly considered and provided against. I throw up impregnable moral entrenchments between Worry and You. Find a door banging in this house, if you can! Catch a servant in this house, rattling the tea-things when he takes away the tray! Discover barking dogs, crowing cocks, hammering workmen, screeching children here – and I engage to close My Sanatorium to-morrow! Are these nuisances laughing matters to nervous people? Ask them! Can they escape these nuisances at home? Ask them! Will ten minutes’ irritation from a barking dog or a screeching child, undo every atom of good done to a nervous sufferer by a month’s medical treatment? There isn’t a competent doctor in England who will venture to deny it! On those plain grounds my System is based. I assert the medical treatment of nervous suffering to be entirely subsidiary to the moral treatment of it. That moral treatment of it, you find here. That moral treatment, sedulously pursued throughout the day, follows the sufferer into his room at night; and soothes, helps, and cures him, without his own knowledge – you shall see how.’
The doctor paused to take breath; and looked for the first time since the visitors had entered the house, at Miss Gwilt. For the first time, on her side, she stepped forward among the audience, and looked at him in return. After a momentary obstruction in the shape of a cough, the doctor went on.
‘Say, ladies and gentlemen,’ he proceeded, ‘that my patient has just come in. His mind is one mass of nervous fancies and caprices, which his friends (with the best possible intentions) have been ignorantly irritating at home. They have been afraid of him, for instance, at night. They have forced him to have somebody to sleep in the room with him, or, they have forbidden him, in case of accidents, to lock his door. He comes to me the first night, and says, “Mind, I won’t have anybody in my room!” – “Certainly not!” – “I insist on locking my door.” – “By all means!” In he goes, and locks his door; and there he is, soothed and quieted, predisposed to confidence, predisposed to sleep, by having his own way. “This is all very well,” you may say; “but suppose something happens, suppose he has a fit in the night, what then?” You shall see! Hullo, my young friend!’ cried the doctor, suddenly addressing the sleepy little boy. ‘Let’s have a game. You shall be the poor sick man, and I’ll be the good doctor. Go into that room, and lock the door. There’s a brave boy! Have you locked it? Very good. Do you think I can’t get at you if I like? I wait till you’re asleep, – I press this little white button, hidden here in the stencilled pattern of the outer wall – the mortice of the lock inside falls back silently against the door-post – and I walk into the room whenever I like. The same plan is pursued with the window. My capricious patient won’t open it at night, when he ought. I humour him again. “Shut it, dear sir, by all means!” As soon as he is asleep, I pull the black handle hidden here, in the corner of the wall. The window of the room inside noiselessly opens, as you see. Say the patient’s caprice is the other way – he persists in opening the window when he ought to shut it. Let him! by all means let him! I pull a second handle when he is snug in his bed, and the window noiselessly closes in a moment. Nothing to irritate him, ladies and gentlemen – absolutely nothing to irritate him! But I haven’t done with him yet. Epidemic disease, in spite of all my precautions, may enter this Sanatorium, and may render the purifying of the sick-room necessary. Or the patient’s case may be complicated by other than nervous malady – say, for instance, asthmatic difficulty of breathing. In the one case, fumigation is necessary: in the other, additional oxygen in the air will give relief. The epidemic nervous patient says, “I won’t be smoked under my own nose!” The asthmatic nervous patient gasps with terror at the idea of a chemical explosion in his room. I noiselessly fumigate one of them; I noiselessly oxygenize the other, by means of a simple Apparatus fixed outside in the corner here. It is protected by this wooden casing; it is locked with my own key; and it communicates by means of a tube with the interior of the room. Look at it!’
With a preliminary glance at Miss Gwilt, the doctor unlocked the lid of the wooden casing, and disclosed inside nothing more remarkable than a large stone jar, having a glass funnel, and a pipe communicating with the wall, inserted in the cork which closed the mouth of it. With another look at Miss Gwilt, the doctor locked the lid again, and asked in the blandest manner, whether his System was intelligible now?
‘I might introduce you to all sorts of other contrivances of the same kind,’ he resumed, leading the way downstairs – ‘but it would be only the same thing over and over again. A nervous patient who always has his own way, is a nervous patient who is never worried – and a nervous patient who is never worried, is a nervous patient cured. There it is in a nutshell! – Come and see the Dispensary, ladies; the Dispensary and the kitchen next!’
Once more, Miss Gwilt dropped behind the visitors, and waited alone – looking steadfastly at the Room which the doctor had opened, and at the Apparatus which the doctor had unlocked. Again, without a word passing between them, she had understood him. She knew as well as if he had confessed it, that he was craftily putting the necessary temptation in her way, before witnesses who could speak to the superficially-innocent acts which they had seen, if anything serious happened. The Apparatus, originally constructed to serve the purpose of the doctor’s medical crotchets, was evidently to be put to some other use, of which the doctor himself had probably never dreamed till now. And the chances were that before the day was over, that other use would be privately revealed to her at the right moment, in the presence of the right witness. ‘Armadale will die this time,’ she said to herself as she went slowly down the stairs. ‘The doctor will kill him, by my hands.’
The visitors were in the Dispensary when she joined them. All the ladies were admiring the beauty of the antique cabinet; and, as a necessary consequence, all the ladies were desirous of seeing what was inside. The doctor – after a preliminary look at Miss Gwilt – good-humouredly shook his head. ‘There is nothing to interest you inside,’ he said. ‘Nothing but rows of little shabby bottles containing the poisons used in medicine which I keep under lock and key. Come to the kitchen, ladies, and honour me with your advice on domestic matters below stairs.’ He glanced again at Miss Gwilt as the company crossed the hall, with a look which said plainly, ‘Wait here.’
In another quarter-of-an-hour, the doctor had expounded his views on cookery and diet, and the visitors (duly furnished with prospectuses) were taking leave of him at the door. ‘Quite an intellectual treat!’ they said to each other, as they streamed out again in neatly-dressed procession through the iron gates. ‘And what a very superior man!’
The doctor turned back to the Dispensary, humming absently to himself, and failing entirely to observe the corner of the hall in which Miss Gwilt stood retired. After an instant’s hesitation, she followed him. The assistant was in the room when she entered it – summoned by his employer the moment before.
‘Doctor,’ she said, coldly and mechanically, as if she was repeating a lesson; ‘I am as curious as the other ladies about that pretty cabinet of yours. Now they are all gone, won’t you show the inside of it to me?’
The doctor laughed in his pleasantest manner.
‘The old story,’ he said. ‘Blue-Beard’s locked chamber, and female curiosity! (Don’t go, Benjamin, don’t go.) My dear lady, what interest can you possibly have in looking at a medical bottle, simply because it happens to be a bottle of poison?’
She repeated her lesson for the second time.
‘I have the interest of looking at it,’ she said, ‘
and of thinking if it got into some people’s hands, of the terrible things it might do.’
The doctor glanced at his assistant with a compassionate smile.
‘Curious, Benjamin,’ he said; ‘the romantic view taken of these drugs of ours by the unscientific mind. My dear lady,’ he added, turning again to Miss Gwilt, ‘if that is the interest you attach to looking at poisons, you needn’t ask me to unlock my cabinet – you need only look about you round the shelves of this room. There are all sorts of medical liquids and substances in those bottles – most innocent, most useful in themselves – which, in combination with other substances and other liquids, become poisons as terrible and as deadly as any that I have in my cabinet under lock and key.’
She looked at him for a moment, and crossed to the opposite side of the room.
‘The doctor is quite right, ma’am,’ he said, addressing Miss Gwilt, with his best bow, ‘the production of the gas, extended over half an hour, would be quite gradual enough. And,’ added the Dispenser, silently appealing to his employer to let him exhibit a little chemical knowledge on his own account, ‘the volume of the gas would be sufficient at the end of the time – if I am not mistaken, sir? – to be fatal to any person entering the room, in less than five minutes.’
‘Unquestionably, Benjamin,’ rejoined the doctor. ‘But I think we have had enough of chemistry for the present,’ he added, turning to Miss Gwilt. ‘With every desire, my dear lady, to gratify every passing wish you may form, I venture to propose trying a more cheerful subject. Suppose we leave the Dispensary, before it suggests any more inquiries to that active mind of yours? No? You want to see an experiment? You want to see how the little bubbles are made? Well, well! there is no harm in that. We will let Mrs Armadale see the bubbles,’ continued the doctor, in the tone of a parent humouring a spoilt child. ‘Try if you can find a few of those fragments that we want, Benjamin. I daresay the workmen (slovenly fellows!) have left something of the sort about the house or the grounds.’
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