The Asylum by John Harwood

to say, “Another mad Mordaunt.” The following day he tried again, asking one of the undergardeners to inspect the brickwork with him; again the sound did not come, and he felt that this man, too, was regarding him strangely. But the very next time he approached the stables alone, he was greeted by a fierce volley of sounds from within—hard, and menacing, and too fast, surely, for human hands wielding a pick—and he could not summon the courage to enter.
    “And what happened after that?” I asked, when he did not immediately continue.
    “I knew what I ought to do: confide in Dr. Straker and ask him to investigate. But I feared it might be a symptom of—something worse than melancholia, and if it turned out that I could hear the noise, but he could not . . . So I have simply avoided the place ever since, hoping that whatever I disturbed, whether it was in the stables, or in my head—or, as I sometimes suspect, in both, will stay quiet as long as I keep away.”
    “It cannot be good for you,” I said, “living here, in the shadow of so much anguish. Do you not think you might be happier—and healthier—away from this place?” I remembered asking him this the day before, but I could not recall his reply.
    He hesitated for a long time before he spoke, keeping his eyes fixed upon the flames.
    “I think of it all the time, Miss Ferrars. But as I may have said yesterday, my uncle and I are the last of our line. Uncle Edmund has never married, because he believes that the only way to eradicate the dark strain in the Mordaunt blood is to let it die out. And he expects me to follow his example.”
    He took a long, uneven breath, as if to say, There; I have said it .
    “And—does Dr. Straker agree with your uncle?”
    “Yes, he does. He says that hereditary madness cannot be cured, only bred out—as we do with defects in every other species.”
    “But is it absolutely certain,” I said, “that if you were to marry a woman who was—perfectly well, your children would be afflicted?”
    “No, it isn’t, and there’s the rub. They might—especially if they were girls; it comes out mostly on the male side—they might be quite untouched. But the dark strain would still be there, and it might reappear in the next generation, or the one after that, in all its old virulence.”
    “But that is like saying that it would be better if you had never existed. I have only known you a day, Frederic, and I do not think the world would be better without you—”
    He took another long, shuddering breath and rose from his chair, still not looking at me. I thought he was about to walk out of the room; instead, he walked over to the window and stood with his back to me and his shoulders shaking. I rose, stiffly after all the hours of sitting, went over, and stood beside him. Racked by harsh, choking sobs, his face wet with tears, he struggled to regain his self-control. I placed my hand on his cold fingers and stroked them gently. No one,I thought, in his entire lonely existence, has ever said that they were glad he had been born. The uncle sounded like a cold fish; to Dr. Straker he was a useful part of the machinery of the asylum, and therefore to be encouraged and got out of bed in the mornings so that he could keep up the paperwork. But no one had ever told Frederic that they loved him.
    Strangely, I had quite lost my self-consciousness. I was not, I realised, actually shocked at my boldness at calling him Frederic; nor did I repent of it; nor did I fear that he would think me immodest. Nor, strangest of all, did I think that I was falling in love with him. I did not think of myself at all: my heart had opened itself to him, whether I would or no. If I had a brother, I thought, a brother in terrible distress and anguish of mind, this is how I would feel.
    Gradually his breathing steadied, and he turned to me with a wan smile.
    “Thank you,” he said, “thank you. No one has ever—”
    “No,” I said, still stroking