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! Hallo, 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 mortise 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 humor 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 Sanitarium, 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-humoredly 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 honor 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
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 to Miss Gwilt, 'if
She looked at him for a moment, and creased to the opposite side of the room.
'Show me one,' she said,
Still smiling as good-humoredly as ever, the doctor humored his nervous patient. He pointed to the bottle from which he had privately removed the yellow liquid on the previous day, and which he had filled up again with a carefully-colored imitation in the shape of a mixture of his own.
