The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (37 page)

"No, I don't," said John. "He has been mad as a March hare
ever since I can remember, and ought to have been locked up
before he got big enough to be dangerous."

"Yes, I am afraid we have not acted rightly by him," said the
Countess, taking refuge in her handkerchief again. `We should
have had him certified long ago."

"Certification is not a form of treatment," said Taverner
drily.

The Honourable John darted a somewhat unpleasant look at
my colleague, opened his mouth as if to speak, thought better of
it, and shut it again.

"The time has come," said the Countess, "when we have got
to face it. I must part with my poor darling for the sake of my
other children."

We bowed sympathetically.

"Would you like to see him?" she asked.

We bowed again.

Up the heavily carpeted stairs we went, and along a far wing
to a bedroom which I should imagine the owner had occupied as
a boy. We crossed the worn oilcloth on the floor, and saw before
us, lying insensible upon a narrow iron bedstead, the man whom
we had nearly run over at the park gates, and whom I had set
down as the son or grandson of the old cleric in the
neighbouring village.

Taverner stood gazing down upon the unconscious form for
some time without speaking, while the Countess and her son
watched him closely and with increasing uneasiness as the
moments lengthened out.

At last he said, "I cannot certify a man because I find him
unconscious."

"We can tell you all his symptoms, if that is what you want,"
said the Honourable John.

"Neither would that be enough," said Taverner, "I must see
for myself."

"Then you doubt our word?" said John, looking ugly.

"Not at all," said Taverner, "but I must fulfil the re-
quirements of the law and certify from observation, not
hearsay."

He turned suddenly to the Countess. "Who is your usual
medical man?" he demanded.

She hesitated a moment. "Dr. Parkes," she said reluctantly.

"What does he say about the case?"

"We are not satisfied with his treatment. We--we don't think
he is sufficiently careful."

I thought to myself that Dr. Parkes had probably also been
asked to certify, and had also declined.

"If you want to see," said the Honourable John, "we can soon
show you," and he dipped the fringe of a towel in the water-jug,
tore open the pajama jacket, and began to flick the chest of the
unconscious man. His action revealed a body wasted to skeleton
thinness on which angry red weals sprang up at each blow of the
knotted threads. The end of a fringed towel, weighted with
water, is a cruel weapon, as I well knew from my school days,
and it was all I could do to keep myself from interfering; but
Taverner remained immobile, watching, and I let myself be
guided by his example.

This drastic method of resuscitation soon produced
twitchings of the unconscious form, and then spasmodic
movements of the limbs, which finally co-ordinated themselves
into definite attempts at self-defence. It was like the struggles of
a sleeper fighting in nightmare, and when the eyes at last
opened, they had the dazed, bewildered look of a man suddenly
roused from deep sleep in strange surroundings. He plainly did
not know where he was; neither did he recognize the people
standing around him, and he was evidently prepared to resist to
the limits of his strength all efforts to control him. Those limits
were soon reached, however, and he lay immobile in the
powerful hands of his brother, watching us with strange, filmy
eyes and uttering neither word nor sound.

"You see for yourself," said John triumphantly. Lady Cullan
dabbed her eyes with a wisp of a lace handkerchief.

"I am afraid it is hopeless," she said. "We cannot keep him at
home any longer. Where would you advise us to send him,
Doctor Taverner?"

"I would be prepared to take charge of him," said Taverner,
"if you would be willing to entrust him to me."

The Countess clasped her hands. "Oh, what a relief!" she
cried. "What a blessed relief from the anxiety that has burdened
us for so many years!"

"You will get the formalities through as soon as possible,
won't you Doctor?" said the Honourable John. "There are a lot
of business matters that want attending to, and we shall need
your certificate in order to take them over."

Taverner dry-washed his hands and bowed unctuously.

II

I, meanwhile, had been watching the man on the bed, whom
every one else seemed to have forgotten. I could see that he was
gathering together his scattered wits and was attuned to the
position in which he found himself. He looked at Taverner and
myself as if taking our measure, and then lay still, listening to
the conversation.

I bent over him.

"My name is Rhodes," I said, "Dr. Rhodes, and that is Dr.
Taverner. Lady Cullan was alarmed at your illness and sent over
to the nursing home for us."

He looked me straight in the face, and his eyes had a
keenness that seemed to go right through me.

"It appears to me," he said, "that you are engaged in cer-
tifying me as insane."

I shrugged my shoulders. "I should need to know a great deal
more about a case than I know about you," I replied, "before I
should be willing to put my name to a certificate."

"But do you not deny that you have been called in for the
purpose of certifying me?"

"No," I said, "I don't see why I should deny it, for it is a fact
that we have."

"Good God," he exclaimed, "have I not got the right to live
my own life in my own way without being certified insane and
having my liberty taken from me? What harm have I ever done
to anyone? Who has any complaint against me except my
brother? And why should I sell my land to pay his debts and turn
better men than he out of their holdings? I tell you, I will not sell
the land. To me, land is sacred."

He stopped abruptly, as if afraid that he had said too much,
and eyed me uneasily to see how I had taken this last statement.
Then he continued.

"If I am deprived of my liberty I shall not live. I do not want
the money. What I have, I give them already, but I will not part
with the land. I draw my life from it. Take the land from me,
take me from the land, and I tell you that it will not live--and
neither shall I!"

He raised his voice in his excitement, and attracted the
attention of the group at the other side of the room. The face of
the Honourable John was wreathed in a smile of triumphant
satisfaction at this outburst, and the Countess had again occasion
to apply her handkerchief to her eyes and weep crocodile tears
into it.

Taverner crossed the room and stood before me, looking
down at the man on the bed without speaking. Then, raising his
voice so that those on the other side of the room might hear, he
said, "I have been called in by Lady Cullan, who wanted my
advice as to your health, which has been causing her anxiety."

The Countess nudged her younger son to induce silence; she
was quite satisfied as to her power over Taverner, but the
Honourable John, having better brains, was not quite so sure of
this man.

"I do not consider," continued Taverner, speaking slowly and
weighing each word, "that it is wise for you to remain here, and I
suggest that you should come to my nursing-home, and come
now. In fact, I suggest that we should leave the house together."

I could see what Taverner's game was. Lady Cullan meant to
have her eldest son certified, and his behaviour was sufficiently
eccentric to make it very likely that she would succeed; if,
however, he were at our nursing-home, no other medical man
would interfere; Taverner and I could use our own discretion
whether we certified him or not, and we certainly should not do
so unless it were in his interest as well as his family's. It was
quite likely that Taverner would be able to put him on his feet
and there would be no need to certify him at all; but that would
not suit Lady Cullan's book, and if she had the least suspicion
that we intended to do other than help her to lock the wretched
man up for life, then we also should be discharged as `not
sufficiently careful'; some man with a licensed mental home
would be called in, and Marius, Earl of Cullan, would speedily
be under lock and key. It was for this reason that Taverner
wanted to take him away then and there. But could he be
induced to come? We could not constrain him unless we
certified him. Would he, hounded as he had probably been all
his life, trust anyone sufficiently to place himself in their hands?
Would Taverner's personality sway him, or would he slip
through our fingers into hands less clean? I felt as I used to feel
in my student days when I saw dogs being taken up to the
physiology laboratory.

But this man was as intuitive as a dog, and he sensed my
feeling. He looked at me, and a faint smile curled his lips. Then
he looked at Taverner.

"How do I know I can trust you?" he asked.

"You have got to trust somebody," said Taverner. "Look
here, my dear fellow, you are in an uncommonly tight corner."

"I know it very well," said Lord Cullan, "but I am not sure I
should not be in an even tighter corner if I trusted you."

It was a difficult situation. The poor chap was practically a
prisoner in the hands of the most unpleasant and unscrupulous
family, and unless we could protect him, he would be a prisoner
in good earnest behind asylum bars. And whatever he was now,
he would be most indubitably mad after a short course of asylum
conditions. He was probably quite right when he said that he
would die if deprived of his liberty, for he was of a type that
easily become tubercular. Yet how were we to get him to trust us
so that we could protect him?

Taverner joined me at the bedside, our two broad backs (we
are both burly individuals) completely blocking out the rest of
the party. He looked steadily at the man on the bed for a
moment, then he said in a low voice, as if uttering a password:

"I am a friend of your people."

The dark eyes took on again their curious filmy look.

"What are my people like?"

"They are very beautiful," replied Taverner.

A snigger from the other end of the room showed how the
rest of the family summed up the situation, but to my mind came
the words of a seer--"How beautiful are they-- the Lordly
Ones, in the hills, in the hollow hills--"

"How do you know about my people?" said the man on the
bed.

"Should I not know my own kind?" said Taverner.

I looked at him in amazement. I knew he never lied to a
patient, yet what had he--cultured, urbane, eminent--in
common with the wretched man lying on the bed, an outcast, for
all his rank? And then I thought of the solitariness and secrecy
of Taverner's soul; none knew him, not even I who worked with
him day and night; and I remembered also the sympathy he had
with the abnormal, the subhuman, and the pariah. Whatever
mask he might elect to wear before his fellow men, there was
some trait in Taverner's nature that gave him the right of way
across the threshold into that strange hinterland of existence
where dwell the lunatic and the genius; the former in its slums,
and the latter in its palaces.