The Asylum by John Harwood

distant and remote. The lines, “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted?” were often in my mind.
    I was not unhappy, at least not consciously so, only detached from everything and everyone around me. If anybody had asked me, I would have insisted that I did not love my aunt any less, but my heart was unmoved by the sight of her; I seemed to have lost the power of feeling. I sensed that she was uneasy about me, but I was afraid of hurting her, and there seemed to be some inward prohibition against speaking of it. And so, all that winter, I insisted that nothing was amiss; I was not even aware that my heart was slowly reawakening until the day, early in the following spring, when I realised I was my old self again.
    It was then, for my sixteenth birthday, that Aunt Vida had given me the writing case, along with a journal in a slipcover bound in the same blue leather. “Think you should keep a diary. Never got into the habit myself. Often wished I had. Try to write something every day.”
    I wondered if she was inviting me to speak of the estrangement, but still the strange prohibition kept me silent, and as a sort of recompense I began my journal that very night. I had never corresponded with anyone, apart from dutiful letters to my uncle, and I found the act of setting down my most intimate thoughts both unsettling and compelling. Until then, I had seldom remembered my dreams, but the more assiduously I recorded them, the more frequent and vivid they became. There was one in particular that recurred several times, in which I was moving from room to room, searching for my mother. There was no one else in the house, and the echoes of my footsteps sounded unnaturally loud. The dream always began on the ground floor, but as it went on, I realised, with a growing sense of foreboding, that every surface was covered in a layer of fine white dust. Sometimes the thought, But Mama is dead! would flash across my mind, followed an instant later by the realisation that I was dreaming; but in at least one such dream I continued on up the stairs, with the dust growing thicker at every step, until it rose up in a great choking cloud and I woke with a cry of horror.
     
    A coal burst with a sharp crack and a shower of sparks. My writing case and brooch! “We’re all honest girls here, miss.” I remembered, with another stab of apprehension, Dr. Straker saying that I—or Lucy Ashton—had given my address as the Royal Hotel in Plymouth. Could I have left them there? Perhaps, now that I was calmer, I would begin to recall something of those missing weeks. I summoned all of my concentration, but still nothing would come, only a jumble of grey, featureless autumn days in my uncle’s shop, and then, with no perceptible interval, my awakening here in the infirmary.
    Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, and Frederic, slightly breathless, reappeared in the doorway.
    “Miss Ferrars; I am sorry to have been so long. Bella is bringing us some more refreshment.”
    To me, the time seemed to have flown, but I discovered to my surprise that I was hungry again.
    “I would not have left you,” he explained as he sat down, “but there were papers I had to get off to Liskeard in time for the London train.”
    “Do you mean there are no more trains today?”
    “No—why do you ask, Miss Ferrars?”
    “Because—how much is the fare to London, can you tell me?”
    “Two guineas, for a first-class ticket.”
    My heart beat faster, and my mouth felt dry, but I made up my mind to ask him.
    “Mr. Mordaunt, you must have some authority here. You will understand that I am very anxious to see my uncle; I know that telegram is a mistake, and I do not wish to wait for Dr. Straker. I should like to leave by the first train tomorrow, and if you will only lend me the fare to London, I shall repay you as soon as I am home again.”
    “Miss Ferrars, you are not a prisoner here, and if you choose