The Asylum by John Harwood Read Free Book Online Page A

us, the groaning of the cow in its birth throes came back to me, and with it a dreadful suspicion that I knew why my mother had died so young.
    “That was why Mama always changed the subject,” I said, my previous question forgotten, “and why you will not speak of it—of Nettleford. It was giving birth to me that strained her heart.”
    My aunt turned on me, her face white with shock and fury. I recoiled, thinking she meant to strike me, until I saw that she was furious not with me, but with herself. She seized my shoulders and fixed me with blazing eyes.
    “Never think that, never! Not a jottle of truth in it—none at all. Always remember— only remember—she loved you best. You were her joy, her happiness: hold to that, and ask no more!”
    She drew me close and held me in a rare and crushing embrace while I wept.
     
    The memory faded at the sound of Frederic Mordaunt’s voice.
    “I do beg your pardon, Miss Ferrars; I did not mean to distress you.”
    “It is not that,” I said. “I grieved dreadfully for my mother, but—” I did not know what else to say. He rose and added more coals to the fire. We had long since finished our luncheon, but he seemed in no hurry to leave.
    “Were you ever sent to school?” he asked, settling himself again. “After you lost your mother, I mean.”
    “No; my aunt used to say that if you could read and do sums, you could give yourself an education.”
    “And did you—do you have friends there still, at Niton?”
    “I fear not. Most of our neighbours were retired army men; the families all knew one another, and we didn’t fit in. We used to converse with the men, if we met them out walking, but we were too unfashionable, and too eccentric—my aunt, I mean—for the women. The farming people would remember me.”
    “Was it a lonely life?”
    “I suppose it was, though I did not feel it at the time; my life in London has been far more solitary. And you, Mr. Mordaunt? You must have been very much alone here.”
    “I was, yes. I had a series of governesses, because none of them would stay very long; they didn’t like living in a madhouse. Like you, I found solace in walking, once I was old enough to be let out on my own. I used to roam all over the moor; there are some wonderfully wild places, and huge clusters of standing stones, left by the Druids. The wind has a strange, thrumming note when it blows amongst them; you always feel that something uncanny is about to happen. I used to stand by Dozmary Pool—where Sir Bedivere is supposed to have thrown Excalibur—and hope that the Lady of the Lake would show herself.
    “And of course the house—the original part, where I grew up—was built nearly eight hundred years ago. Nobody lives there anymore. I would find it oppressive, even now; to a small boy it was profoundly so.”
    I shuddered, imagining lunatics shrieking and clashing their chains in the night.
    “Oh, it was not the patients,” he said, seeming to read my thought. “They were never kept in the old house. The voluntary patients have always lived in the middle wing, where we are now—it was added early in the seventeenth century—and those confined under a certificate are all in the new building, farthest away from the original house. No, it was—well, I suffered very badly from night terrors, and the housekeeper we had then—Mrs. Blazeby, her name was—used to play upon my fears, telling me bloodcurdling stories of ghosts until I did not know whether I was more afraid of falling asleep or staying awake. A house as old as that is never entirely still, even in the dead of night, with a myriad of tiny creatures gnawing away at the fabric, not to mention—”
    He stopped abruptly, colouring.
    “I do beg your pardon, Miss Ferrars—most inconsiderate of me.”
    “You needn’t apologise; I am not afraid of mice, or rats, if that is what you mean. But did you ever—have you ever seen a ghost?”
    His reply was forestalled by Bella coming to remove