John Harwood: The Asylum

Again I found myself clutching at the idea that Lucy Ashton must be my double, only to remember that this did nothing to explain why I was here. Once more I strove to penetrate the void shrouding my mind, until something brought me back to the immediate present, and the awareness that Lucy Ashton’s case contained no purse or pocketbook; no jewellery, no rings, and no money.

And two other things were missing—though of course they were missing, since these were not my things: the dragonfly brooch my mother had bequeathed to me, which I would never have left behind; and my writing case, a present from Aunt Vida, containing the journal I had kept since my sixteenth birthday. It was a quarto-sized case made of soft blue leather, with two gold clasps, and a key, which I always kept on a fine silver chain around my neck, but which was certainly not there now.

The loss of that key somehow brought home the extremity of my plight. My strength deserted me, and I sank down upon the edge of the bed, just as Dr. Straker reappeared in the doorway, followed by Bella with a pail of coals.

“Miss—Ferrars,” he said sternly, “you must get back into bed and stay there. As your physician, I command it. There can be no question of your leaving; you are far too ill.”

“But sir—”

“No more, I pray you. The wire has been dispatched as you requested; as soon as we have an answer, I shall let you know,” he said, and strode from the room.

“Bella,” I said as she arranged the blankets over me, “I can’t find my purse, or my brooch—in a small red plush box; it is quite valuable; or my writing case—a blue leather one. Have you see them anywhere?”

“No, miss, I ’aven’t. This is all there was, miss, when I packed up your room just now.”

“But I must have had money,” I said desperately. “How else could I have got here?”

“You gave me a sixpence, miss, when you was still wearing your cloak. P’raps it’s there.”

She tried the pockets but found only a pair of gloves.

“You don’t think I took it, miss?” she said, with a look of alarm.

“No, Bella. But someone must have, and my brooch and writing case; I would never travel without them.”

“I don’t know, miss, I’m sure. We’re all honest girls here. Might you have put them away somewhere yourself, miss, and—and forgotten? Now please, miss, I must get on.”

To this there was plainly no answer. I gave up all hope of escaping that day, and lay with my mind spinning, and a sick feeling of dread gnawing at the pit of my stomach, while daylight slowly faded from the room, until I woke with the glare of a lantern in my eyes, to find Dr. Straker standing beside my bed.

“I am afraid, Miss Ashton, that you must prepare yourself for a shock. As well as conveying your message to Josiah Radford, I took the liberty of asking him whether he had ever heard of a Lucy Ashton. This is his reply.”

NO KNOWLEDGE LUCY ASHTON STOP GEORGINA FERRARS HERE STOP YOUR PATIENT MUST BE IMPOSTER STOP JOSIAH RADFORD.

I was sedated, that night, with chloral, and emerged from a pit of oblivion with my body still aching and a foul taste in my mouth. Whether it was the after-effect of the drug, or the accumulated shocks of the previous day, all I could think was that Dr. Straker must have wired the wrong Josiah Radford; further than that, my mind refused to go. Bella brought me breakfast, which I was unable to eat, along with a mirror in which I saw a drawn, sunken face, white as a ghost’s except for dark pouches like bruises beneath eyes that were scarcely recognisable as my own. Dr. Straker, she told me, as she brushed the worst of the knots out of my hair, would be here directly; his orders were for me to stay in bed; and no, I was not to dress on any account. And so I was condemned to wait in my nightgown and wrap until he appeared at my bedside, looking, if anything, even more cheerful than he had the day before.

“Well, Miss Ashton, as I think we must call you until we discover who you really are, I must say that your case is unique in my experience.”

“Sir, I beg of you . . . I cannot explain what has happened, but I swear to you, on my dear mother’s grave, I am Georgina Ferrars!”

“I know. I know that is what you believe, with every fibre of your being. But consider the facts. There is a Georgina Ferrars presently at the address you gave me—no, hear me out. You came here under the name Lucy Ashton, and I think we may say with certainty that Lucy Ashton is not your real name, either. You are, I take it, familiar with Scott’s Waverley novels?”

I knew, suddenly, where I had heard the name before.

“Lucy Ashton is the heroine of The Bride of Lammermoor. She is forced by her mother to break her engagement to the man she loves, Edgar Ravenswood, and marry another whom she loathes. She stabs her husband on their wedding night, and dies, insane, of a seizure. So it occurs to me to ask whether this has any personal significance for you.”

I stared at him, appalled.

“I have never been engaged, sir, let alone . . . !”

“Nevertheless, you will agree that it is a disturbing choice of alias for a troubled young woman presenting herself for treatment at a private asylum. It suggests that there is something in her past—perhaps her immediate past—from which she is fleeing.”

“There is nothing, sir, nothing!”

“Nothing that you can remember, I agree.”

“But sir, I have told you my history; you wrote it down yesterday. The person who sent that telegram is lying; I do not know why. If you do not believe me—”

“I have already been in touch with the medical boards of Clerkenwell and Southwark: a Dr. Godfrey Ferrars held positions there in 1859 and 1862 respectively. He died at Southwark of typhoid fever on the thirtieth of August 1862, survived by his wife, Emily, and their infant daughter, Georgina.”

“Then how can you not believe me?” I cried.

“Because—though I am sure you could give me the most fluent recital of the facts of Georgina Ferrars’ life—it does not follow that you are Georgina Ferrars. You may, for example, have met the real Georgina Ferrars, or someone who knows her very well, and—for reasons we cannot yet fathom—become obsessed with her. I have seen such cases before; it is called hysterical possession, where the patient assumes the identity of another and comes to believe in all sincerity that she is that person. As well as the evidence of the telegram, we have the fact that you presented yourself here as Miss Ashton, suffered a seizure, lost all memory of the past six weeks, and only then declared yourself to be Georgina Ferrars—”

“Sir,” I broke in, gathering my courage, “you must hear me! That cable is a fraud. I do not know who sent it, or why, but if you send someone to Gresham’s Yard, you will find only my uncle; he will come straight away and fetch me. I have a little money saved,” I added, praying that it was still true, “and I will pay any expenses—”

“That will not be necessary. As it happens, I have to go up to London by this afternoon’s train. I shall call at Gresham’s Yard tomorrow, and speak to Josiah Radford—and, I fear, to Georgina Ferrars, and try to persuade her to come down and identify you—since you clearly know a good deal about her.

“And if,” he added, before I could speak, “if it should turn out that you have a mortal enemy, who has been lurking around Gresham’s Yard, waiting to intercept a telegram he could not possibly have known would come, I promise to bring Mr. Josiah Radford back with me on the very next train, and eat my hat—a thing I have never promised to do before—as penance. In the meantime, we shall keep you comfortable, at our expense, of course.”