The Asylum

by John Harwood

  I have read Rosina Wentworth’s letters over and over, as my mother must have done before me: some of the folds have worn completely through. This is why I called my imaginary sister Rosina—I must have overheard Mama and Aunt Vida talking about her before I was old enough to understand what they were saying. But why did they never mention her in front of me? Did Rosina escape with Felix Mordaunt, or did her father catch her and lock her away—or even murder her, as I fear he murdered her sister? And if Mama wanted me to have the letters when I grew up, wouldn’t she have left a note explaining why?

  Perhaps she meant to, but her heart gave out too soon—she sent the packet to Mr. Wetherell only weeks before she died. Did she send it to him because she knew she was dying? Anything she left with Aunt Vida would have been lost with the house.

  Uncle Josiah, of course, says he has never heard of Rosina Wentworth or Felix Mordaunt, “but it was all a long time ago, my dear, and I may well have forgotten . . . unless you mean Dr. Mordaunt of Aylesbury—the Jacobean divine, you know—I have an incomplete set of him in the back room . . .” He did not even ask to see the letters.

  This afternoon I walked round to Portland Place and wandered up and down, looking at the grand houses and wondering where she might have lived. There is one in particular, with a dark, unfriendly look to it that strikes a chord, but I have no way of telling.

  Eleven o’clock has struck, and the house is completely silent. I feel as if I have been sleepwalking through my days, and Rosina’s letters have awakened me. I must find out what became of her. But how?

  Tuesday, 3 October

  This morning I wrote to ask Mr. Lovell if he could tell me anything of Rosina Wentworth or Felix Mordaunt. I had scarcely returned from the post when a most peculiar letter arrived from him. He says: “If you have not already opened the packet I enclosed with yesterday’s commn, I most urgently request you to return it to me unopened at your earliest convenience. Even if you have examined the contents, I should be most grateful for their return.” It seems that Rosina’s letters should have been kept with another sealed packet that Mama had subsequently sent for safekeeping, and that “according to your late mother’s instruction, this packet is to be made available to you if and only if a certain condition is fulfilled”—but he does not say what condition.

  Mr. Lovell—Henry Lovell is his name—sounds quite young, despite all the circumlocutions. He sends his “most abject apologies,” which does not sound like a grizzled old lawyer. Reading between the lines, I should say that Mr. Wetherell came into the office unexpectedly, discovered what Mr. Lovell had done, and berated him soundly. But what can it mean? I wrote back at once, saying that I should like to keep the letters unless the law positively forbids it, and asking him to explain exactly what I need to do to see the rest of the papers. I have copied all of Rosina’s letters into the back of this journal, just in case.

  Thursday, 5 October

  Mr. Lovell’s reply is even stranger. “I regret that your late mother’s instructions explicitly prohibit us from disclosing the terms upon which the packet in question may be forwarded to you. We are likewise prohibited from answering any enquiry relating to the contents of the package, and I am therefore unable to respond to the questions in your previous letter of the 2nd inst.” He says that since I have read the letters, I may keep them if I wish, and sincerely regrets that he is unable to enter into any further correspondence upon the subject.

  It makes no sense—unless the condition is that I may not see the papers until I am twenty-five, say, in which case why not tell me so? Did Mama not want me to have them until (or unless) I was married?—because of something improper, or shocking? But what sort of thing, and why would she want me to know it at all? And how will Mr. Lovell know, if I am not supposed to write to him, whether I have fulfilled the condition or not?

  Rosina’s fate is at the heart of the mystery: of that, at least, I feel sure. Mama plainly loved her; I know I would have loved her, too, if only we could have met . . . but supposing she is not dead?

  Well, since the lawyers will not help me, I must find some other way. But how? Looking through my uncle’s directories in the shop this afternoon, I found dozens of Wentworths in London alone, but not a single Mordaunt. What if I were to advertise in the personal column of The Times? Mama and Rosina were cousins, so I am Rosina’s cousin once removed; and Rosina must have been born in 1839 . . . I could say, “Relative anxious to trace Rosina Wentworth (b. 1839), last known address Portland Place (1859–60); please communicate with Miss G. Ferrars at Mr. Radford’s bookshop, Gresham’s Yard, Bloomsbury.” I need not tell Uncle Josiah unless he happens to notice the advertisement.

  But what if Rosina’s father is still alive? Might I be putting her—or for that matter myself—in danger? Surely not: he would be an old man now, and the worst he could do would be to come into the shop and make a scene (though that would be quite bad enough). And if Rosina has managed to evade him all this time . . . it is my best chance of finding her. I shall walk down to Fleet Street in the morning and place my advertisement.

  Monday, 9 October

  No replies. I suppose it was foolish to hope for any. I found a tattered London directory for 1862 in the back room this afternoon, and looked up the residents of Portland Place. But no Wentworth is listed there. And no Mordaunts in The Upper Ten Thousand. What am I to do?

  Wednesday, 11 October

  My prayers have been answered! I was alone in the shop yesterday afternoon—my uncle had been gone only about a quarter of an hour—when a young woman appeared in the doorway. She was beautifully dressed, in a gown of peacock blue, trimmed in cream, and a bonnet to match, the colours wonderfully rich and vibrant in the gloom. I was seated behind the desk, and must have gazed at her for several seconds before she caught sight of me. She looked strangely familiar—about my own height and figure, her hair a similar shade of brown—and yet I knew I had never seen her before. Our eyes met with—or so I felt—a flash of recognition on her side, fading to a tentative smile.

  “Pray excuse me,” she said. “I hope I am not intruding, but are you Miss Ferrars?” Her voice was low and vibrant, with a slight foreign intonation.

  “Yes, I am Miss Ferrars. Won’t you come in?”

  I rose to greet her, my pulse accelerating. Something in the shape and set of her eyes—a luminous hazel—heightened the sense of familiarity. Her gloved hand trembled faintly in mine, a subtle, quivering vibration, like a current passing between us.

  “My name is Lucia Ardent”—she pronounced “Ardent” in what I took to be the French fashion—“and I am here because of your advertisement . . . except that I have come in the hope that you can help me. You see, I know the name Rosina Wentworth—I heard it when I was a little child—but I do not know who she was; or why my heart insisted, when I saw that name in the newspaper, that I must not lose the chance.”

  “That is so strange—won’t you sit down? I am sorry it is so gloomy in here, but I must stay until my uncle returns—because it is exactly my own case. But before I say more, will you tell me, Miss Ardent, how you came to hear of Rosina Wentworth, and why you think she may be important to you?”

  “Of course. You should know, Miss Ferrars, that I am an only child. I have lived all my life on the Continent; this is my first visit to England. My father, Jules Ardent, was French, and much older than my mother—he died before I can remember—but my mother grew up in England. I lost her only a year ago.”

  “I am very sorry to hear it.”

  “Strange to tell,” she continued, “I know absolutely nothing of my family on either side. My mother always refused to speak of her past; you would have thought her life had begun on the same day as mine. All she would ever say was that her life in England had been so unhappy that she would never return, and that she wished only to forget. No matter how I coaxed and pleaded, she would not be drawn. She was cultivated, and read a great deal—mostly English books; Mama and I always spoke English when we were alo
ne. I think her family must have had money—perhaps a great deal of it—but we had only a small income from my father. Here it would be worth no more than two hundred a year, but you can live much more cheaply on the Continent. We had no settled home, and we were always moving from place to place—I have lived in Rome, Florence, Paris, Madrid—”

  “How wonderful!”

  “You would not say so if you had spent your life in pensions and furnished rooms, always packing and unpacking, saying farewell to people just as you begin to like them. When you have seen as many great monuments as I have, you begin to think that one is very like another. If I had had a sister, we would have been company for each other—but you were asking me about Rosina Wentworth.

  “All I can tell you is that when I was about seven years old—I am not even sure where we were staying, but I think it might have been Rouen—my mother had a visitor. We were living in a house; I remember that—there was a garden, which was always a great treat for me, with a lake at the foot of it. I was playing at hide-and-seek, pretending that an ogre was hunting me, and had crawled under a tree whose branches came right to the ground, when I heard voices. I peeped out and saw Mama and a tall, grey-faced man, very thin and stooped, approaching. As they came nearer, I realised they were speaking in English. I heard him say, ‘I have kept your secret,’ and then—it might have been ‘but she cannot stay there,’ or ‘but you cannot stay there.’ I could not catch Mama’s reply, but as they passed my hiding place, he said something about ‘Rosina Wentworth.’ I heard only the name, and a sharp exclamation from my mother, before their voices faded.

  “By the time I came indoors, the visitor had gone, and Mama was standing at the window, staring absently at the trees; she spun round as I approached, and then tried to pretend I had not startled her. When I asked who the man with the grey face had been, she replied, ‘What man? You must have dreamt him.’ Even after I told her where I had been hiding, she tried to persuade me that I must have fallen asleep, until I said, ‘Mama, who is Rosina Wentworth?’ She turned white to the lips, and cried, ‘What else did you hear?’ She said it so fiercely that I was frightened. I repeated the words I had overheard and assured her that I had not meant to spy on her—Mama was always very stern about not listening at doors—and after a little she began to comfort me, and tried once more to persuade me that it must have been a dream. And the very next day we left that house.

  “I never asked about Rosina Wentworth again, but the name is engraved upon my memory, and when I saw your advertisement, I knew I must come to you.”

  “That is quite extraordinary,” I said, and launched at once upon the tale of the mirror, and my imaginary sister, Rosina. I had meant to go straight on to the letters, but Lucia—as she had already invited me to call her—was so fascinated by my childhood, and asked so many questions, that I ended by relating my entire history. I tried several times to turn the conversation back to her—my life seemed so commonplace and uneventful compared to hers—but she would not have it. “You cannot imagine,” she kept saying, “what a delight it is to find someone who has lived exactly the life I always yearned for, settled and tranquil, and bound by ties of deep affection.” Often as I talked I was aware of her gaze, drinking in every detail of my appearance; a little disconcerting at first, but very flattering. No one had paid me such attention since Mama died. When I came to the loss of the cottage, and my ordeal with Aunt Vida on the cliff-top, she turned ashen pale and slumped forward in her chair: I sprang forward and threw my arms around her, thinking she was going to faint.

  I was shaken to realise how long it had been since I had embraced anyone, and how much I had missed that intimacy. I remained kneeling before Lucia’s chair, with her head resting upon my shoulder and her cheek against mine until she disengaged herself—reluctantly, I felt—and sat up again. We both began to apologise at once; she for being so affected and I for distressing her, each reassuring the other until she confessed that she had eaten nothing all day except a square of toast and a cup of tea at breakfast.

  “But where are you living?” I asked.

  “In a temperance hotel in Marylebone. I have only a hundred a year, apart from a little capital, but I am determined to stay in England. My clothes are an extravagance, I know, but I must be well turned out; as I have no friends, no family, and no one to recommend me. I think I must go on the stage, but I wanted to see something of London first.”

  “I should very much like to be your friend,” I said. “And I shall certainly not let you starve; you must come upstairs with me and have something to eat, and then I will show you Rosina Wentworth’s letters.”

  She looked up at me, startled.

  “But how can you have her letters, when you lost everything with your house?”

  “My mother left them—and some other papers I am not allowed to see—with our solicitor; I shall tell you all about it in a moment.”

  I closed the shop without a second thought and drew her to her feet, relieved to see the colour stealing back into her face.

  After she had eaten—she wanted only tea and bread and butter, and did not seem very hungry, in spite of her fast—we went on up to my own small sitting room, where I told her about my mother’s perplexing bequest, and sat beside her on the sofa whilst she read through the letters with rapt attention. Pale sunlight slanted through the dusty pane, heightening the rich colours of her gown and sending tiny sparks through her hair, which she wore pinned up in a fashion very like my own. After she had finished, she was silent for some time, turning the letters in her hands as if she could not quite believe she was holding them.

  “It is strange,” she said at last, “but I feel as if I know her already. Mama loved the piano, too, and she would play, very beautifully, whenever there was an instrument . . .”

  We looked at each other, and I saw my own presentiment mirrored in her face.

  “Lucia—may I ask how old you are?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “And when is your birthday?”

  “The—the fourteenth of February.”

  “Just a month before mine—and a little more than nine months after Rosina’s last letter. And your mother loved the piano, and would never talk about her past.”

  The papers rattled in her grasp; she set them aside and turned to me slowly, like someone waking from a dream.

  “It explains everything,” she said. “Why we could never stay . . . why Mama never told anyone where we were going next . . . why I was drawn to you, here, today. It is fate, as you said . . . That is what the grey-faced man meant, that day in the garden: he had kept her secret, but someone had found out that Rosina Wentworth was in Rouen . . . and so we fled the very next day.”

  Her hands trembled in her lap; a hectic spot of colour appeared on her cheek.

  “Of course it means that I am a . . . that Mama was not married when she . . .”

  “We don’t know that,” I said, placing my hand on hers, which were icy cold. “Perhaps Felix Mordaunt did marry her, and then—something happened to him.”

  “No, I am certain he seduced and abandoned her, just as the maid Lily feared he would. Mama always warned me: ‘When you are in love,’ she would say, ‘you must never trust your heart, only your head. A man will say anything, promise anything—and mean it quite sincerely—to seduce you, but once you have given yourself, the chase is over: he will cast you aside without a backward glance.’ I knew she spoke from bitter experience, though she would never admit it.”

  “Even if you are right,” I said, “your father—Jules Ardent, I mean—took pity upon her. You are his child according to law,” I added, wishing I felt more confident than I sounded.

  “Perhaps there never was a Jules Ardent. Would an elderly Frenchman really have married a penniless English girl, disowned by her father, who was bearing another man’s child? I think Mama invented him for the sake of respectability.”

  “What did your mother call herself?” I asked. “I mean, her Christian name?” />
  “She called herself Madeleine.”

  “And—when was her birthday?”

  “The twenty-seventh of July—she never told me her age. When I was small, I often thought how young and beautiful she looked. But then the lines crept over her face, and year by year she grew thinner . . . Of course, it was fear that aged her . . .”

  “And—what did she die of?”

  “Her heart gave out—just like your own mother’s. We were climbing the stairs in a pension—last December, it was, in Paris—she gave a little cough, and then a sigh, and her knees gave way. I caught her, thinking it was a faint, but she died in my arms.”

  “I am so sorry,” I said, chafing her cold hands. “How strange, that our mothers should both . . . not so strange, perhaps, if they were cousins . . . though of course we cannot be sure.”

  I had a momentary pang of doubt: was this no more than an extraordinary coincidence? If Rosina had become Madeleine Ardent, surely she would have gone on writing to my mother? But perhaps she had; perhaps those were the letters Mr. Wetherell was keeping from me.

  “I am already sure,” said Lucia, regarding me with luminous eyes. Perched on the sofa beside me, she looked like some exotic bird of paradise come to earth. “It is blood that tells. You and I, we look alike, we think alike; already I feel I have always known you.”

  “And I also,” I said, embracing her. “If only those letters had come to me while Rosina—your mother—was still alive; I should so love to have met her—and to have known you sooner.”

  “I wish you had, too. But even if Mama had seen your advertisement, she would not have replied.”