John Harwood - The Asylum

I sprang up and hurried into the post office to warn Felix, who was engaged at the counter. For the first time ever, he betrayed irritation. “It is just some local farmer or the like,” he said curtly, and returned to his interrogation of the postmistress. The man was nowhere to be seen when we emerged, and we walked home in uncharacteristic silence, Felix brooding (I presumed) over the absence of the deed of trust; I feeling wounded and uneasy, glancing frequently over my shoulder and receiving (so I felt) disapproving looks from Felix.

“You must forgive me, my darling,” he said as we came up to the house. “I am out of temper with Carburton, not with you. Shall we walk on a little?”

“No, thank you,” I said, “I have a slight headache. But you must keep on; I shall be quite all right.”

If he had insisted upon staying, I should have forgiven him completely. But he kissed me perfunctorily, and strode off in the direction of St. Baldred’s Cradle, leaving me to make my own way indoors.

Wishing I had a piano, which I had scarcely missed until that moment, I wandered restlessly about the cottage. Felix had always come from the post office in high good humour, saying the deed was sure to arrive tomorrow, but I had never been with him at the moment of disappointment. He should not have been so dismissive, but then I should have been more sympathetic; no doubt he was right about the scar-faced man, who would surely have followed us if he had any sinister intent. And this was our last day at the cottage; we must not leave here on a sour note.

Felix had been gone about a quarter of an hour; I ran downstairs and out to the front gate, meaning to follow him; but what if he had circled inland? The wind had dropped, and the sun’s warmth was comforting, so I sat on top of the wall to watch for his return.

Several minutes passed; I grew restless again and was about to go back indoors, when I heard the clatter of wheels and the jingling of a bridle coming up the lane behind the trees to my left. I darted toward the house, but before I could reach it, the vehicle—an open carriage, with the driver perched on a box, and a veiled woman in a dark cloak and bonnet seated within—had turned the corner and pulled up at the gate.

Half-fearful, half-curious, I remained in the doorway. The driver got down to help his passenger—whose bonnet concealed her face—descend. It is someone come to see the house, I thought. The landlord has told her that we are leaving tomorrow.

She spoke softly to the driver, who resumed his seat and took up the reins again. As she turned and began to walk toward me, I saw that she was heavy with child. I saw, too, that there was something familiar about her; something that chilled my blood and settled like ice around my heart.

She was Clarissa.

Not an apparition, not an hallucination, but my sister, smiling in a fashion I remembered all too well.

“So, Rosina, you are Mrs. Mordaunt now? Felix will have to choose between us.”

I did not feel anything at all; I suppose I was incapable of feeling, even of thought. I invited her into the house—what else could I do?—I think I even offered her tea. She looked as striking as ever, despite her condition. The gown beneath her travelling-cloak was a rich, pale blue satin, abundantly trimmed with lace, whereas I was dressed as plainly as a girl of fourteen: anyone coming into the room would have taken me for the parlourmaid. Her eyes seemed even larger and darker than I remembered—kohl, perhaps, and belladonna, but so cleverly applied I could not be sure—her hair more abundant, the lines of her face if anything finer. She had kept her old trick of regarding you—regarding me, at least—with every appearance of interest, tinged with a derision as subtle as the hint of rouge about her cheekbones. But the old mockery had taken on a new edge—wry, bitter, undeceived—along with a cool resolve I had not seen before. Only her hands betrayed any agitation, twining and untwining beneath the fringes of her sleeves.

I listened as one listens in a nightmare, powerless to move or speak, whilst she explained that the woman who had died with George Harrington had been her maidservant, an English girl she had engaged in Dover. Clarissa had caught them in flagrante, as she put it, a week before the accident (while they were still in Florence); she had left him that same day, taking everything she could lay her hands upon. She supposed the girl had decided to call herself Mrs. Harrington when she and George moved on to Rome.

In Siena, travelling as Caroline Dumont, a young widow, Clarissa heard the news of her own death, and decided then and there to leave Clarissa Wentworth in her grave. She did not say whether she suspected my father of having anything to do with the accident, but once she had made the decision, there was no going back on it. And then, at a masked ball in Venice, she met Felix Mordaunt.

Their affair, which lasted about a month, ended when she took up with a Mr. Henderson, a wealthy American of forty or so. “Felix was a younger son,” she said coolly, “with no obvious prospects: he never mentioned that he was the heir, or I might have stayed with him.” I remember, as she said this, glancing at a pair of crossed daggers on the wall behind her, and picturing myself, quite unemotionally, taking one of them down and plunging it into her bosom. Something must have showed in my face, however, for she added, “You would have done the same in my position. I had no choice. I sold what I had to sell, for the best price I could secure; it was that, or starve.”

They parted, she said, on good terms; Felix went on to Rome, whilst she remained with her American suitor in Venice, where she very soon discovered that she was expecting Felix’s child. She had hoped to pass it off as Mr. Henderson’s, but his suspicions gathered as the months passed, and once again she found herself alone. Soon after that, she learnt from a new acquaintance that a certain Rosina Wentworth—it was the talk of London—had followed her late sister’s example by running away with Felix Mordaunt, the heir to the Mordaunt estate.

With no other prospects in sight, she returned to England and made her way to Tregannon House, thinking she would find us there. Instead, she met Edmund Mordaunt. “He did not like me any more than I liked him, but we had interests in common. His man had only just traced you, and Mr. Mordaunt was hesitating over whether to pass the information on to our father. He feared that if Felix were to be carried off to prison, he would do something wild, such as deeding the entire estate to you.

“Edmund Mordaunt was seeking a way of prising you and Felix apart; and, of course, being a very moral and upright man, he felt some obligation toward me, as another of the women his brother had ruined. And so, reluctantly, he gave me your address.”

She had been Felix’s mistress; she was carrying his child. I knew that I ought to be angry, but anger would not come; as at that moment when you have cut yourself badly and time seems to freeze. You know that the blood will spurt, but all you can see is white, severed flesh; and then the pinpoint drops begin to form.

“What do you want?” I said dully. The question sounded foolish as soon as uttered; not only foolish, but beside the point.

“Money, of course. Or perhaps we could all live happily together in one of those Ottoman countries where a man is allowed more than one wife; it would certainly suit Felix. And now, Rosina, it is your turn for confidences; you must tell me how you met him.”

Her expression changed; she shrank back in her chair. I discovered that I was on my feet, with no memory of having risen, frozen by the realisation that it was not Clarissa who had deceived me, but Felix. My hands fell slowly to my sides.