The Asylum

by John Harwood

  Some weeks after my arrival in the women’s ward, I was standing by the library window, which, like that of my room above, looked out upon the stable yard. It had rained earlier that morning, and water was still dripping from the eaves of the stable building opposite. A wagon drawn by a pair of horses rumbled into view, and I saw that the driver was George Baker. He pulled up on the gravel nearby, and was warmly greeted by two stable hands who came out to help him unload. If only, I thought, I had gone anywhere but Gresham’s Yard that night; I could have got out at Plymouth and begged shelter from the woman who had helped me at the station. Tears sprang to my eyes; I bit my lip and pressed my face against the bars to prevent anyone from noticing.

  “Miss Ashton.” Frederic Mordaunt’s voice, low and hesitant, spoke almost at my ear. I had time to register, as I turned to face him, that he looked flushed, and ill, and wretchedly unhappy.

  Then I heard myself say, with cold, bitter contempt, “You broke your word. You betrayed my trust. You should be ashamed to call yourself a gentleman.”

  Every vestige of colour drained from his face. I heard a gasp from somewhere in the room. His lips parted, but my feet had carried me past him before he could utter a sound. Watching from the doorway, with his habitual air of ironic detachment, was Dr. Straker. A moment later, he slipped away, and by the time I emerged into the corridor, trembling from the reaction, he was nowhere to be seen.

  As the winter closed in, I felt myself sinking further and further into a dull, listless apathy. At times I still raged against my confinement, but I could no longer sustain the pitch of emotion that had helped me to endure those first terrible weeks. I had often rejected sedatives; now I was taking every draught that was offered and dozing even during the few short hours of daylight. Christmas came and went in a ghastly pretence of celebration, and after that the weather was too cold and wet—or so I listlessly told myself—to walk in the garden. Separated from anyone who cared for me, from anyone who could even recognise me, I came to realise that my life, which had seemed so unshakably real, consisted only of memories, which, according to Dr. Straker, did not even belong to me. There were times when I actually strove to remember something of Lucy Ashton’s past, but nothing would come. Even more fearful than the prospect that I might wake up one morning as Lucy Ashton, a stranger in my own body, was the feeling that I was becoming no one at all: not even a stranger, but a ghost in a body that no longer belonged to anyone.

  On a still, clear afternoon, late in March, I set foot in the garden for the first time in months, wrapped in my cloak and moving much more slowly than before. Within the shadow of the building, the air was chill and damp, but sunlight was falling upon a bench in the far corner, and after a couple of turns around the path I sat down to rest. The warmth of the sun on my face seemed to release something within me, and I began to weep, not hysterically, as I had so often, but quietly, naturally, the salt tears welling up and overflowing through my fingers, until I became aware of someone hovering nearby. I looked up and saw that it was Frederic Mordaunt, looking even thinner and more wretched than when I had seen him last, and regarding me with evident distress.

  “Please allow me to speak,” he said. “I do not seek—or deserve—your forgiveness, but I have something to say to you.”

  He stood before me like a prisoner awaiting sentence, twisting his hat in his hands.

  “If you insist on speaking, sir, I cannot prevent you.”

  He flinched at “sir,” but stood his ground.

  “I ask only that you hear me out.”

  If he had called me Miss Ashton, I would have turned my back on him.

  “Very well, sir; I will listen. You may as well sit down,” I added, moving to one end of the bench and indicating the other. I did not want him standing over me.

  “Thank you. When Dr. Straker returned that Sunday night, after we . . . well, when he told me that he had met Georgina Ferrars in London, I did not at first believe him. But when I learnt that the maidservant, as well as Josiah Ferrars, had been present, and still more when I heard the story of Lucia Ardent, and how she had left Gresham’s Yard two days before you arrived here, I had no choice but to believe him. And yet my heart rebelled; it simply did not square with—with everything I knew of you. I could not see how you could be—so deluded, and yet seem so entirely sane.

  “He replied—I’m sure he has said this to you—that the reason you are so certain you are Georgina Ferrars is because the personality you have assumed is all that you experience, so that you are utterly sincere in your belief. But I was still deeply troubled; I even put it to him that the woman he had met in London was Lucia Ardent, and that she had somehow tricked you into coming here.”

  “And what did he say to that?”

  “He looked at me pityingly and said that it was the first thing that had occurred to him. And that he had spoken privately to the maid, who had assured him that Miss Ferrars had been at Gresham’s Yard throughout the time that—that you and I were conversing here. And—that I had allowed my emotions to get the better of my judgement.”

  He was speaking with his eyes fixed on the gravel at his feet, his hands clasped so tightly that the knuckles had turned white.

  “I told him,” he continued, “that I had assured you, on my word of honour, that you could leave whenever you chose, and that I was bound to see you the following morning, as I had promised.

  “At that, he grew angry. He said I had allowed myself to succumb to a foolish infatuation for a woman who was dangerously ill, and imperilled your sanity by encouraging your delusion that you were Georgina Ferrars; and that your eventual recovery, perhaps even your life, depended upon my not seeing you.

  “It ended with his ordering me to keep away from you. I felt I had to obey; your health was at stake, and—I doubted my own motives.”

  “And why are you telling me this now, after all these months?” I asked bitterly. “Has your conscience been troubling you?”

  “I tried to speak to you before, in the library, but you did not want to . . . and Dr. Straker rebuked me for distressing you; and after that I was ill, though that is of no consequence. The thing is—the reason I am here . . .”

  I had not wanted to show him any emotion beyond contempt, but his hangdog air provoked me beyond endurance.

  “And why should you imagine, sir, that your feelings are of the slightest interest to me? You deceived me; you betrayed me; it is because of your treachery that I am a prisoner here, and will probably die here; and you think I should care for your excuses? You say you are heir to this place; if you are not lying about that as well, it is your duty as a gentleman to order Dr. Straker to release me at once, as you promised he would.”

  His reaction was not what I expected. He took a deep breath, lifted his head, and met my gaze for the first time.

  “Believe me, Miss Ashton—you disown the name, but I must call you something—if I did not know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are not Georgina Ferrars, you would have been released long before this. But I would rather see you here than in the county asylum, or in prison, and they are the only alternatives. If we released you now, you would go straight to Gresham’s Yard—would you not?—and Miss Ferrars would have you arrested.”

  “And suppose your master is—” I wanted to say lying, but my nerve failed me. “Suppose he is mistaken, and she is the imposter?”

  “I fear that is impossible. Dr. Straker would never have certified you if he had the slightest shadow of a doubt: he would be risking his reputation, even his livelihood. And if I were to order him, as you put it, to lift the certificate, he would ignore me. He is the superintendent, and his word, in every sense, is law.”

  “If his word is law, sir,” I said, clinging to my anger, “and he has forbidden you to speak to me, are you not afraid of another rebuke?”

  “Well, no,” he said uncomfortably, “he seems to have changed his mind. He said to me the other day that since you seem disinclined to trust him, it might help
you to see that I agree that you cannot be Miss Ferrars. I said I would only attempt to speak to you if I could be the bearer of good tidings as well as . . . Well, at any rate, he agreed.”

  “Do you mean—to release me after all?”

  “No, I’m afraid not—not yet, that is. But when Dr. Straker discovers your true identity, it may turn out that you have no money of your own, and—I wanted to assure you that when you are released, you will be provided for.”

  “By whom?” I asked.

  “Well . . . by me,” he murmured, addressing the gravel at his feet.

  “And why, sir, would you wish to provide for a lunatic who does not even know her own name?”

  “Because I gave you my word, and because . . . I care about what becomes of you, regardless of your name,” he added, in a voice so low that the words were barely audible.

  Again I saw myself standing beside him at the sitting-room window above, looking down upon the bench where we now sat, and saying, “Yours is a loving spirit; it should not die with you.” Was it possible that he was in love with me, a haggard and desperate madwoman, as he must see me—as perhaps I was? The thought was swept aside by another wave of indignation.

  “Your word, sir, is worthless; I am here because you broke it, and I would sooner starve than accept a farthing of your money.”

  “I feared as much,” he said, rising to his feet. “I meant what I said: I do not hope for your forgiveness. I will trouble you no more, but I will not see you starve, however much you despise me.”

  He made me a miserable sketch of a bow, and walked away without looking back.

  I remained on the bench, shaking with emotion and realising, as my anger subsided, how foolishly I had behaved. Extraordinary as it seemed, he evidently felt something for me, and I ought to have kept my temper and played upon that feeling, instead of driving him away. I rose, shivering, and was walking toward the building when I became aware of a face peering down at me from the end window on the first floor: a large, flat, porcine face that contorted in alarm as our eyes met, and turned quickly away.

  If it had not been for her reaction, I would have assumed it was simply a woman who looked remarkably like Hodges. But the flash of recognition had been unmistakable.

  I remained staring up at the window until it struck me that there might be an advantage in pretending that I had not recognised her. I lowered my gaze, shook my head as if in disbelief, and set off at a slow, mechanical pace, keeping my eyes fixed on the path, continuing on up the stairs in the same abstracted fashion, and along the corridor to my room, where I closed the observation slide and sank down upon the bed, struggling to comprehend what I had seen.

  If she really had taken a bribe, and helped a patient to escape, Hodges could not possibly have been reinstated. I remembered the attendants I had passed on my way out, all turning to look at me, but none of them raising the alarm; the asylum gate standing conveniently open, with the gatekeeper nowhere to be seen; George Baker appearing so fortuitously on the road; and Dr. Straker waiting for me in Gresham’s Yard.

  They had meant me to escape, or rather, to believe I was escaping. I had been led, every step of the way. Everyone—Hodges, the attendants, George Baker, perhaps even the motherly woman with the basket in Liskeard station, and, unwittingly, I myself—had played the parts assigned to them. In a play designed to convince me that I had met the real Georgina Ferrars in Gresham’s Yard. Just as Gadd, the monomaniac, had been brought face to face with the man he believed to be Gladstone.

  I remembered Frederic saying that if they hadn’t found an attendant to impersonate Gladstone, Dr. Straker would have engaged an actor.

  The woman in Gresham’s Yard had been an actress. She could have spent hours studying me through the observation slot in the infirmary.

  A faint sound from the passage had me glancing fearfully at the slide. Had it moved a fraction? I dared not go close enough to check. Instead, I walked over to the window, where at least no one could see my face, and stood looking down into the darkening yard where the stable hands had greeted George Baker with such familiarity.

  Had George Baker brought me here in the first place? I had woken from the seizure on a Thursday, so I must have arrived on a Wednesday . . .

  But that was no more likely to be true than the story of Lucia Ardent.

  I had been told so often, and by so many people, that I had arrived here as Lucy Ashton, voluntary patient from Plymouth, that I had come to picture it scene by scene: being admitted by Frederic; wandering restlessly about the grounds in the afternoon; being found, unconscious, early the following morning.

  Dr. Straker had said that Lucy Ashton was “a disturbing choice of alias for a troubled young woman presenting herself for treatment at a private asylum.” Perhaps it was meant to be disturbing; perhaps he had chosen it himself.

  Just as he had chosen to tell me that I had suffered a seizure. I might have been lying in a drugged stupor for weeks, not days, before I woke in the infirmary.

  The more I thought about it, the more certain I felt that it was all Dr. Straker’s invention.

  In which case Frederic had deceived me—about everything. That shy, earnest, sensitive demeanor; those heartfelt tears; perhaps it had all been an act. Perhaps he already had a wife, or a mistress, or both. He had even told me the story of Isaiah Gadd, confident that I was far too naïve to see the application to myself. Remembering how easily he had won my heart, I blushed with shame and mortification.

  And if Bella, who had seemed so childlike and innocent—if she, too, had been deceiving me on Dr. Straker’s orders, then I could trust nothing beyond the evidence of my own eyes. And perhaps not even that.

  I found that I was gripping the windowsill as tightly as I had clutched at the gorse on the cliff-face, staring into the abyss.

  Everything they had done had been aimed at driving me out of my mind, in the most literal sense, by confronting me with irrefutable proof that I was not myself.

  But why? Dr. Straker, at least, was risking disgrace and imprisonment. Supposing I had gone to Liskeard police station, instead of straight to Gresham’s Yard, and the police had believed me? Supposing my uncle had appeared at the wrong moment? Dr. Straker knew that I had very little money, and no expectations. Why choose a perfectly sane young woman when he had a whole asylum full of lunatics at his disposal? There was nothing at all unusual or interesting about me.

  Only that, except for a half-blind uncle, no one would care, or even know, if I vanished from the world.

  I remembered Frederic saying—again, supremely confident that I would miss the implication—that one of Dr. Straker’s interests was grafting fruit trees.

  They had chosen me for an experiment.

  Which was why I had received no treatment. Dr. Straker was waiting patiently for my mind to disintegrate, while he combed the records of missing persons for another young, friendless woman who had vanished from the world—a woman whose lost soul he intended to resurrect in my body.

  And after that? He could not afford to release me—assuming he intended to let me go at all—until he was absolutely certain that every last trace of Georgina Ferrars had been expunged from my consciousness. For a man of his powers, it would be easy to arrange apparent proof that the real Georgina Ferrars was already dead: a mangled corpse fished out of the Thames, dressed in my clothes and wearing my brooch.

  The experiment might end with my being hanged for murdering myself.

  Each morning after breakfast, Mrs. Pearce would read out the names of patients whom the doctors wished to see, and tell them to return to their rooms and wait. I had not seen Dr. Straker for several days, but when my name was called the following morning, I felt as if the blood had drained from my body. It was all I could do to climb the stairs without fainting.

  The wait, I knew, might be anything from five minutes to an hour or more. Telling myself that I must not show fear only made my trembling worse; I knew, too, that I would not be able to look at him withou
t horror and loathing. Even if Hodges had not confessed, he would sense that something was wrong; and then he would press and press until he found out.

  I could pretend to be ill, but when he found that I had no fever, he would know that I was pretending, and that would make me fear him even more. No; I would have to admit that I was afraid—as I had been, often enough, before—but somehow conceal that I was now mortally afraid of him. I sat down on the upright chair, with my back to the window, trying to decide what I should say.

  When I heard his footsteps approaching, I buried my face in my hands and began to sob, which was easy enough to do in earnest, and when the door opened, I did not even look up.

  “Good morning, Miss Ashton. I am sorry to see you distressed.”

  I drew a long, sobbing breath and slowly raised my head. His tone, as ever, was calm and courteous, but the gleam in his eyes, which I had once taken for amusement, now seemed as cold as ice.

  “It should not surprise you, sir,” I said. “I am a prisoner here; I will die here; there is no hope for me.”

  “Come now, Miss Ashton; any day now, we are bound to discover your identity.”

  “You have been saying that for months, sir—an eternity of torment—and nothing has changed.”