The Gates of Sleep (37 page)

But it wasn’t difficult to keep land and water and
air clean! Any housewife knew that—if you just took proper care—and
took it all the time.

But the people responsible for Ellen’s condition didn’t
care for the wisdom of the housewife; that much was clear enough. Theirs was
the wisdom of the accounting book, the figures on the proper side of the
ledger, and never mind a cost that could not be reckoned in pounds and pence.

For a moment, her heart sank, but her resolve strengthened.
I will do what I can,
she vowed silently, though to what, she wasn’t
sure.
I will do all that I can. Because I must.

If anything answered, there were no dramatic signs, yet she
felt as if something
had
heard her vow, found it good, and accepted
it. And she turned her horse’s head away, down the hill, and toward Briareley,
determined to begin that endless task with one single girl.

There was no stableman at Briareley, no servant arrived to
hold her horse and take it away when she rode up the drive toward the imposing
front entrance—Georgian, she thought, with four huge columns holding up
the porch roof—at the top of a long staircase of native stone made smooth
as marble. A Georgian front, Tudor wings? and heaven only knew what else behind
them. And no servants for all of this pile.

This, however, was not unexpected; from Sally, she had
heard that the doctor cut as many corners as possible, and keeping a stablehand
about just to care for a horse and two ponies was a great waste of wages when a
man-of-all-work was what was really needed. So Marina sat up in her saddle and
looked carefully at the drive; saw the wheel-ruts leading off to the side of
the house, and followed them. As she expected, they led her to a wide doorway
into a square courtyard open to the sky. Along two sides were stalls for
horses, along two were bays for carriages and other vehicles. There was, thank
heavens, a mounting-block in the center.

She made use of it, then led the horse to an unoccupied
stall. It was also utterly bare; she couldn’t do much about the lack of
straw on the ground, but she did take off his bridle, throw a blanket over him,
and leave him a bucket of water. He’d had his breakfast before she rode
out, and if Dr. Pike was as careful with money as he seemed to be, she didn’t
want to pilfer oats or hay without permission.

She considered going around to the kitchen
entrance—but this was a formal visit, after all, and she wasn’t an
expected and casual arrival. So, patting her hat to make sure it was still on
straight, she walked back around to the front.

She felt very small as she trudged up the staircase,
wondering what long-ago ancestor of the original owners had deemed it necessary
to cow his guests before they entered his home. Someone with a profound sense
of his own importance, she reckoned. Compared with this place, Oakhurst, which
had seemed so huge when she first arrived, was nothing.

When he gets staff for this hulk, and has it full of
patients, he’ll bowl over people who come to see if this is where loony
Uncle Terrance should be put.

It was a pity that a place like this, absolutely
overflowing with history, should have to be made into a sanitarium. But what
else was to be done with it? Let it molder until the roof fell in? Turn it into
a school? Who else would want it? People like Arachne, with new money out of
their factories, built brand new mansions with modern conveniences, and didn’t
care a tot about history. There were only so many American millionaires about,
and most of them wanted fancy homes near London, not out in the farmlands of
Devon. What was the point (they thought) of having money enough to buy a huge
old castle if there was nobody around to see it and admire it?

Except, of course, the local villagers, who had seen it all
their lives.

And what was the point of living out where there was
nothing to see and do? Nothing, as American millionaires saw it. They loved
London, London sights, excitement, theater, society.

It came as no surprise to her that there was no one in the
entrance hall, although there was a single desk set up facing the doors there.
The enormous room, with magnificent gilded and painted plaster-molding, cream
and olive and pale green, ornamenting the walls and ceiling. She paused to
listen, head tilted to one side, and followed the echoing sounds of soft voices
along the right side of the building.

I thought this place was supposed to be in poor repair?
That was the first thing she noticed; none of the signs of neglect that she had
expected, no stains on walls or ceilings betraying leaks, no cracks, no rot or
woodworm. In fact, although gilt was rubbed or flaked off from plasterwork here
and there, and paint and wallpaper fading, the building appeared to be sound.

She walked quietly—she’d had practice by
now—but her footsteps still echoed in the empty rooms. Not even a scrap
of carpet to soften the wooden floors!

Perhaps the financing of repair work is where all the
Doctor’s money is going.
If that was so, she was inclined to feel
more charitable, it would take a great deal of society money to pay for repairs
to a place like this one.

And it appeared that the huge rooms here had been made into
wards. As she entered the third, this one featuring painted panels of
mythological scenes up near the ceiling, she found people there. A modern
cast-iron stove with a fireguard about it had been fitted into the fireplace,
rendering it safer and a great deal more efficient at producing heat, and two
folk who were not in their beds dozing sat in a pair out of the motley
assortment of chairs around it. There were roughly a dozen beds, three
occupied, and one brisk-looking young woman in a nurse’s cap and apron
and light blue smock who seemed to be in charge of them; when she saw Marina,
she nodded, and walked toward her.

“I beg your pardon, miss,” the nurse said, as
soon as she was near enough to speak and be heard, “But the old family no
longer owns this home. This is Briareley Sanitarium now, and we do not give
house tours, nor entertain visitors, except for the visitors to the patients.”

“I know that,” she replied, with a smile to
soften it. “I’m Marina Roeswood, and I’m here on two
accounts. I would like to speak to Dr. Pike, and I would like to enquire about
the poor girl who was—”

How to
put this tactfully?

“—out in the snow yesterday. Ellen, I believe
is her name?”

“Ah.” The young woman seemed partially
mollified. “Well, in that case, I suppose it must be all right.”
She looked over her shoulder, back at the patients. “Miss, I can’t
leave my charges, and there’s no one to send for to take you around. I
shall tell you where to find the doctor, or at least, where to wait for him,
but you’ll have to promise to go straight there and not to disturb the
patients in any way. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly.” Again she smiled, and nodded. “It’s
possible that one of them might approach me; would it hurt anything if I try to
soothe him and put him back in a fireside chair? I think I can feign to be
whomever I’m thought to be.”

“We don’t have many as is inclined to
delusions, miss, but—yes, I think that would be the thing to do,” the
nurse replied after a moment of thought. “There isn’t a one as is
dangerous—or we couldn’t be as few of us for as many of them as
there is.”

Marina thought she sounded wistful at that. Perhaps she had
come from a larger establishment; Marina hoped she didn’t regret the
change.

“Now, you turn right around, go back to the hall,
across and to the back of the room. Go through that door, and keep going until
you find the Red Saloon, what used to be the billiard room. It’s Doctor’s
office now, and you wait for him there. He’ll be done with his rounds
soon, and I’ll try to see he knows you’re here.”

“And Ellen?” she asked.

“Not a jot of harm done her, poor little lamb,”
the nurse said sympathetically. “But that’s what happens,
sometimes, when you take your eyes off these folks. Like little children, they
are, and just as naughty when they’ve got a mind to it.” She looked
back over her shoulder again, and Marina took the hint and turned and went back
the way she had come.

Following the nurse’s instructions, she found the Red
Saloon without difficulty, complete with medical books in the shelves and empty
racks where billiard cues had once stood. It still boasted the red figured
wallpaper that had given it its name, and the red and white marble tiles of the
floor, as well as a handsome white marble fireplace and wonderful plasterwork
friezes near the ceiling. It was not hard to imagine the billiard-table and
other masculine furniture that must have once been here. Now there was nothing
but a desk, a green-shaded paraffin lamp, and a couple of chairs. She moved
toward one, then hesitated, and went over to the bookshelves to examine what
was there and see if there was anything she could while away her time with.

Medical texts, yes. Bound issues of medical journals.
But—tucked in a corner—a few volumes of poetry. Spencer. Ben
Jonson. John Donne.

Well.
She slid the last book out; the brown,
tooled-leather cover was well-worn, the pages well-thumbed, the title page
inscribed
To Andrew, a companion for Oxford, from Father.

She took it down, and only then did she take a seat, now
with a familiar voice to keep her company.

She looked up when the doctor came in, and extended her
hand. “Well, we meet again, Dr. Pike,” she said, as he took it, and
shook it firmly. “I won’t apologize for visiting you without
invitation, although I will do so for borrowing this copy of one of my old
friends.”

She held up the book of poetry, and he smiled. “No
apologies necessary,” he replied, and took his seat behind his desk. “Now,
why did you decide to come here?”

She took a deep breath; as she had read Donne, encountering
with a little pain some of his poems on the falseness of women, she had
determined to be as forthright and blunt as she dared. “You know, of
course, that I’m not of age?”

He raised an eyebrow. “The thought had occurred to
me. But I must say that you are extremely prepossessing for one who is—?”

She flushed. “Almost eighteen,” she said, with
a touch of defensiveness.

“It is a very mature eighteen, and I am not
attempting to flatter you,” he replied. “Do I take it that this has
something to do with your age?”

“I have a guardian, as you may know—my father’s
sister, Arachne Chamberten. My guardian would be horrified if she knew how much
freedom I am accustomed to,” she said, wishing bitterly it were
otherwise. “Furthermore, my guardian doesn’t know that I’m
here and she isn’t going to find out. She and her son have gone to deal
with a business emergency in Exeter, and they can’t be back until this
evening at the earliest. Madam Arachne has very, very strict ideas about what
is proper for the behavior of a girl my age.” She couldn’t help
herself, she made a face. “I think she has some rather exaggerated ideas
about how one has to act to be accepted in society, and the kind of people that
one can and can’t know.”

“Ah?” he responded, and she felt her cheeks
getting hotter.

“I mean, she thinks that if I fraternize with anyone
who is absolutely on the most-desired guest-lists, I would be hurting my
future.” Her blushes were cooled by her resentment. “I think she’s
wrong. Lady Hastings doesn’t act anything like Madam, and I’m sure
she
is in the best circles.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Dr. Pike said dryly. “I
don’t move in those circles myself. Oh, they may come to me when they
need me, but they wouldn’t invite me to their parties.”

She felt heat rushing into her cheeks again. “The
point is, I did promise to help you with that girl, and since my guardian is
probably going to have my wretched cousin riding with me at any time I’m
not
going to church or the vicarage, this was the only time I was going to be able
to arrange things with you. I think, if you can manage it, that we ought to
bring her there. I think the vicar would understand, he seems a very
understanding sort—”

The doctor seemed, oddly enough, to fix first on what she’d
said about the odious Reggie. “Your cousin? Don’t you mean, your
fiance?”

She stared at him blankly.
“What
fiance?”

“The gentleman who came to get you—”

Reggie. He thought she was engaged to
Reggie.
What
an absolutely
thick
thing to assume!

“Good gad!” she burst out. “Whatever
possessed you, to think the Odious Reggie was
my fiance?
I’d
rather marry my horse!”

He stared at her blankly, as she stared at him, fuming.
Then, maddeningly, he began to chuckle. “My apologies, Miss Roeswood. I
should have known better. I should have known that you would have more sense
than that.”

She drew herself up, offended that he had even given the
thought a moment of credence.
Not one ounce of credit to my good sense, not
one.
Couldn’t he see from the first words out of my mouth that I
would have less than no interest in a beast like Reggie?

He probably thought that, like any silly society debutante,
she would be so swayed by Reggie’s handsome face that she’d ignore
everything else. “I should hope so,” she said, stiffly. “I
should think anyone but the village idiot would have more sense than that.
Now—”

She was irrationally pleased to see him blush.

“—perhaps we can talk about your patient, and
how I am to be able to help her after today.”

“I think that you are right, if getting away from
your—escort—is going to be so difficult. The vicarage is the only
solution, Miss Roeswood,” the doctor replied. “And I believe that
we can manufacture some sort of reason to bring you and Ellen together there on
a regular basis. But first, well, I would like to see if you can do anything
for her, before we make any further plans.”