The Asylum by John Harwood Page A

his cold fingers. Our breath misted the glass. “Your uncle is wrong; I know he is, and I think you know it, too, in your heart. Yours is a loving spirit, and it should not die with you. Surely your melancholia would not return if you were away from here.”
    “And when you are back in London,” he said, gazing at me as if memorising every detail of my appearance, “will you want to see me again?” The implication was unmistakable.
    “Until I know what has happened to me, I cannot think beyond the present. But I know that I want to be your friend, and to see you again, and yes, I will write to you as soon as I am back in London. And now I think you should go, before Bella returns and—leaps to conclusions.”
    “But you will wait for Dr. Straker, I trust?” he said, mopping his face with his handkerchief, “rather than taking the first train back?”
    “Yes,” I said, suppressing another small, cold pang of unease. He had given me his word, and he was, after all, the heir: what was there to fear?
    “Then I shall certainly join you for breakfast, and perhaps if the weather is fine, we might take a turn in the grounds.”
    He left reluctantly, walking more or less backward until he bumped into the door-frame. Outside, the rain was still falling steadily, and the light was fading.
     
    I lay awake for a long time that night, and when at last I did sleep, it was only to be wakened an instant later, as it seemed, by light footsteps in the passage outside my door. For a wild moment I wondered if it might be Frederic, also wakeful; then I thought it must be Bella; but would Bella not have come in? I went to the door and peeped out. Oil lamps flickered along the empty corridor; all the doors I could make out were closed. Where, I wondered, did Bella sleep? In one of the rooms nearby? I thought of the ghost in the old stable, and heard Frederic saying, “A house as old as this is never entirely still, even in the dead of night.” Chill air stirred around my ankles; I retreated hastily to bed, and lay awake for some time, listening uneasily. But the footsteps did not return.
    The next time I woke, it was full daylight. I got out of bed at once, with a feeling of having overslept. Perhaps Frederic was already pacing up and down the sitting room, not wanting Bella to disturb me in case I was still asleep. Rather than wait for her, I got dressed on my own and hastened along the corridor. But the room was empty, and the fire had not been lit; perhaps it was earlier than I thought. I tugged at the bell-rope and went over to the window. The rain had ceased, but the garden below still dripped with moisture, and the paths were saturated.
    I stood there for a while, watching the clouds bulge and crumple like grotesque faces floating just above the treetops. Surely Bella had never taken as long as this? I rang again and waited several minutes more, but still she did not come.
    Perhaps the bell was not working. I went out into the dim, empty corridor. In the wall to my left, the direction from which Bella and Frederic had always appeared, were two more doors. I tried them as I went along; both were locked. The passage ended at another, heavier door; it, too, was locked.
    If you choose to leave, no one will hinder you.
    Of course, the door might be locked for my own protection; this was, after all, a lunatic asylum.
    I went back along the passage, giving the bell-rope another tug as I passed the sitting room. The wall now on my left was blank except for an opening about halfway along, the entrance to a much shorter passage, ending at another locked door. Apart from a bathroom near the room in which I slept, every door was locked, including the door at the far end, which led, I assumed, to the closed wards in the newest part of the building.
    The oil lamp near my room was still burning. Except for the dim shaft of light falling from the open door of the sitting room, the only source of illumination was a pane of opaque glass—a