Page 19 of Lady for a Season
Edward has returned to his family. You will remain at Ivy Cottage to await my further instructions. A new patient will join you within a few weeks.
Eliza and Agnes seemed consoled by the note when Maggie read it to them, going about their daily chores as though nothing had changed. But Maggie wandered from room to room and all around the garden, even down to the stream and back, several times that day. Waiting for another patient seemed impossible to her – that she should forget all about Edward, ask no questions as to his wellbeing or whereabouts, only accept that he was gone and another put in his place as though one man or another were the same – how could she do so? She thought of his shouts, his frightened face, how he had reached out to her and called her name. Returning to his room, which contained the scent of him, she ran her hand over his bedlinen, seeing his shoes, which had been left behind. Wherever he was now, he was barefoot. Where was he at this moment? Were people being kind to him? And why? Why had Edward been taken away?
She slept fitfully that night and the next, waking often, thinking there was hammering at the door or that she heard Edward shout, lying in the dark room, hearing Eliza and Agnes’ breathing, unable to sleep for worrying about Edward.
She tried to remember every detail that might help her understand what had happened. He had been at Ivy Cottage for eight years, had come there from a school. He was twenty-two and therefore of age yet was still kept here. He seemed sane enough to her, apart from a few oddities, such as his fear of horses and the nightmares. She thought of his height, his deep blue eyes, his refined features. The lady visitors at the Hospital would surely have given him sweets had he been a child there, for he was more handsome than any man Maggie had ever seen.But broken and sent away from his family, into the clutches of Doctor Morrison.
Where was he? Back in his true home, the man had said, but where was that, what did it mean? If he had a family somewhere, why had they now taken him back? And without warning? At midnight in a carriage none of them had ever seen before?
Where was Edward now?
Edward gazed around in despair. The room was large but dusty, clearly the maids no longer cared much for it since it no longer had a purpose. There were holland covers over a few items but otherwise it was as before, one of the few places in the house he remembered with any fondness. He had run up the stairs to it after escaping from her. But his mother had followed him.
“You will take up your rightful rooms at once.”
“I will not. I will stay here.”
“You cannot possibly stay here. The servants will talk.”
“Let them.”
“If they talk, you will end up back in that… place.”
“Good. Send me back there.”
She stared at him in horror. “You cannot. You must take up your rightful place now that he – that they – are gone.”
It was unthinkable, what she was asking of him. It was impossible, what had happened. Not one, but both of them gone. He could not comprehend it, could not make it seem true. He kept expecting one of them to appear and yet the house was silent, no stamping of boots, no raised voices. She was all alone and she had sent for him, was asking for him to… it was impossible. He paced the room in his stockinged feet, back and forth, back and forth, under her anxious gaze.
“Where did you even tell everyone I was?”
“At school.”
“I am twenty-two years of age!”
“University. Then travelling.”
“One lie after another.”
“Would you have preferred we told the truth of what you are?”
“A lunatic, you mean?” he asked and she flinched at the word. “There is no pretty word for it.”
“You are... afflicted… with a... melancholic disposition…”
“So afflicted that you have had me in the care of a physician for the last eight years who specialises in the care of lunatics. Locked into a cottage and its garden, unable to go anywhere else, on the threat of being put into a harsher institution.”
“We did what we thought was best.”
“And now you need me and so… I am no longer mad? Am I cured, do you think?
“You… the title, the estate…”
He gave a bitter laugh. “Ah, of course. The title and the estate. Heaven forbid we lose those.”
“If you can only –”
“What? Play the part of a sane man long enough?”
