John Harwood - The Asylum

By the time I was eight or nine, I had come to believe that the subject of Papa—and especially their time at Nettleford, where he had taken so long to recover his health, even after I was born—was painful to her, though she tried very hard not to show it, and so I gradually ceased to question her. Perhaps if Mama and I had been living alone, I might have been more insistent. But our little household seemed to me quite complete, until all thought of my father was swept away by the shock of Mama’s sudden death.

I had become so absorbed in these recollections that I was startled to hear Bella’s voice in the doorway, telling me that “Mr. Mardent” would like to see me, if I felt well enough. I did not connect the name with Dr. Straker’s parting remark, and agreed uneasily, assuming that another doctor had come to examine me. But the young man who appeared in the doorway a few moments later looked, as Dr. Straker had intimated, more like a poet than a physician.

He was about the same height as Dr. Straker, but slender, almost emaciated, with thick brown hair, parted in the middle and worn quite long. Light from the window fell across his face, revealing sensitive features and dark, liquid eyes. He wore a suit of dark brown corduroy, with a loose white collar and a striped cravat.

“Miss Ferrars? My name is Frederic Mordaunt; I am Dr. Straker’s assistant; he asked me to call on you.”

The name “Mordaunt” struck a faint resonance, like the toll of a distant bell, immediately lost in the relief of being addressed as “Miss Ferrars.” His voice was low and hesitant; we might have been meeting in a drawing room. I invited him to sit down, but he remained hovering awkwardly in the doorway.

“Really I should not,” he stammered. “I am not a doctor, and it would not be seemly for me to . . . There is a sitting room just along the hall; the fire is lit, and I thought perhaps, if you felt strong enough, we could . . .”

Twenty minutes later, I was walking down the dim corridor, a little shakily but without Bella’s assistance. She had done her best to make me presentable, and though I still felt very bedraggled, Lucy Ashton’s blue woollen travelling-dress fitted me perfectly. Mr. Mordaunt was waiting by the window in a room not much larger than my own, but furnished with a settee, and cracked leather armchairs on either side of the hearth. The walls were papered in dark green vertical stripes, suggesting the bars of a cage, on a background much stained by smoke, with a faded hunting print above the mantel.

“We have already met, Miss Ferrars,” he said, once we were seated by the fire. “It was I who admitted you here—as Miss Ashton,” he added, colouring a little. “But you do not remember me, do you?”

“No, sir, I am afraid not. May I ask what Dr. Straker has told you about me?”

“I know that you have suffered a seizure and lost your memory of the past few weeks. And that you prefer to be addressed as Miss Ferrars—”

“I am Miss Ferrars,” I broke in. “I presume Dr. Straker has shown you the telegram?”

“I am afraid so,” he replied. “But Miss Ferrars, I am not here to question your—that is to say, I have no right; I am not a medical man. Dr. Straker simply thought that a little conversation might help you recall . . .”

He made an expansive gesture, then clasped his hands self-consciously.

“You must understand, Mr. Mordaunt,” I said firmly, “that although I cannot explain what has happened to me, that telegram is a mistake or a fraud, and I shall certainly be going home on Monday.”

He murmured something which was obviously meant to sound reassuring, but made no further reply.

“May I ask,” I continued, “how I appeared to you when I arrived here?”

“Well,” he said, colouring again, “you seemed agitated, and fearful—as many patients are when they first arrive here—but quite resolved that you must see Dr. Straker and no one else, on what you described as ‘an urgent and confidential matter.’”

“And did I say anything at all, beyond what you wrote on that paper, about why I had come here?”

“Well, no, Miss Ash—Ferrars, I mean—you did not. You struck me as preoccupied, almost as if—how shall I put it?—as if you were repeating a lesson you had learnt, whilst your mind was elsewhere.”

“And after? You told Dr. Straker that you saw me walking about the grounds.”

“Yes, I did. Even at a distance, you looked utterly desolate. I went out to you once, to ask if there was anything at all I could do to help.”

He looked at me appealingly, as if willing me to remember him.

I was about to ask him what I had said in reply, when Bella came in with a laden tray.

“It is almost midday,” said Mr. Mordaunt, “and I thought you might like—I took the liberty of ordering a light luncheon.”

I realised that, for the first time since my awakening, I was hungry. It seemed very strange to be sitting by a fireside, drinking tea and eating bread and butter and potted shrimp with this personable young man, and my hopes suddenly lifted. Why should I not simply say, I am quite recovered now, and need not wait for Dr. Straker to return? I remembered that I had no money; but perhaps I could persuade him to lend me enough for the fare to London.

“Tell me, Mr. Mordaunt,” I said, “what is it that you do for Dr. Straker?”

“Mostly, Miss Ferrars, I act as his secretary. There is, as you can imagine, an immense amount of paperwork to be kept up. But he is the kindest, as well as the most brilliant, of men. He has been like a father to me for as long as I can remember.”

“You knew him before you came here?”

“No, Miss Ferrars, I was born here.”

“Was your father a doctor, then?”

“No, a lunatic.”

I stared at him in astonishment.

“Your father was confined here?”

“In his last years, yes. But you see, Miss Ferrars, Tregannon House has only been an asylum for the past twenty years or so. Before that, it was my family home.”

“Your home? ”

“Yes; there have been Mordaunts here since my great-great-grandfather married a Tregannon in 1720 or thereabouts. It was an alliance of two wealthy families, which increased the standing of both. It also brought together two bloodlines marked by a strong hereditary tendency toward melancholy, violent mania, and insanity. My grandfather, George—Mad Mordaunt, they called him; the maddest of the lot—squandered a large part of the family fortune, and of his children, only my uncle Edmund was spared the worst of the affliction. But I should not be speaking thus—”

“No, I should like you to continue,” I said. “Is your mother still alive, may I ask?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I can barely remember her. She ran away, you see, with another man, when I was four years old. And who could blame her?”

He spoke without bitterness, and my heart went out to him.

“I am very sorry to hear it,” I said. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No; Uncle Edmund and I are the only surviving Mordaunts—in this unfortunate line, at least. And my uncle’s health is failing; I fear he has not long to live.”

“Does your uncle live here, too?”

“Yes. He has rooms on the ground floor, which he seldom leaves these days.”

“And—how were you brought up?” I asked.

“By Uncle Edmund; he paid for me to be privately tutored here. I owe everything to him, and Dr. Straker. They were friends, you see, at Oxford. Dr. Straker was already deep in the study of mental disease when they met, and Uncle Edmund had vowed to do whatever he could toward the lifting of the family curse, as he calls it. They dreamt of founding an asylum on humane and enlightened principles, like the Retreat at York—you have heard of it?—”