Hello dear readers! This story is the continuation of a fledgling post I made recently to YWS called "Jesse's Wine". Any of you who were interested in that might enjoy reading this story of two parts entitled "The Earlswood Confession". Earlswood was an actual insane asylum of the Victorian era located in Surrey, England. Any comments or suggestions or complaints are very much welcome.
Many thanks!
S.S. Rose
There wasn’t anything now that could take me back to the way things were. That was as lost as the bones of the earth beneath the Flood, broken and washed out to a wasteland before beginning again in the new light of the sun. I waited months to be angry at that water, the heavy press on her lungs and wet fingers digging into her heart.
Only now, after the blood is dried and cooled, does the pain finally come to her, the wicked sting that bites so deep. A heart hardened with scars is no less susceptible to ruin than it was before.
And yet two small hands can no more stop the rushing river than a single cry can end a war. That was my voice, and these are my hands, making something of their uselessness at last.
Seven years ago, she was a young woman fatefully dissimilar from her peers. We were sisters, I the elder and she the wild-hearted younger, tossed ashore from the sea of childhood to the thick unyielding forest of maturity. I could not keep her from losing herself amidst the shadows and thickets of that wood; I can do nothing but tell her story, now that I am fully grown and but a fraction wiser than when I was eighteen. I swear to you, reader, had I been granted but a glimpse of her hidden heart, of the future that lay coiled up and secret in her soul, I would never have exposed her to the world. Its joys and sorrows devastated her, I can see that now. But when we were young, we saw nothing but the small devastations of our own hearts.
From early adolescence, the parents of Ariane Cardea fretted incessantly over their daughter, for she was unlike the other schoolgirls of her age. She was prone to inexplicable and dramatic changes of mood, often resulting in floors strewn with the shards of Mrs. Cardea’s best porcelain tea-ware. She became a veritable force of nature, sweeping though the house raining tears of melancholy rage, grabbing prized objects at random and smashing them against the sage-coloured walls. She frightened her parents even more for the fact that after a period of a quarter of an hour, the spell would cease and she would become at once the calm and collected product of a sensible Victorian upbringing.
Needless to say, Mr. and Mrs. Cardea deemed it best to isolate Ariane from the prying eyes of the outside world. She was educated and raised entirely at home, occasionally allowed to roam the walled-in jungle of the garden, where she built for herself a world from her imagination. Only I, her sister, was permitted to play with her behind the thick stone boundaries of the yard, hidden from the air and noise and adventure of the world and touched only by the wan inquisitive light of the sun.
But as you know, reader, an adolescent’s soul cannot be contained in a single jar. So I snuck her out one day when the sun behind her cloudy veil of indifference kindly hid her eyes from my sin. Ah, how we relished our freedom! I was half-afraid that Ariane would be so shocked by the newness of life beyond our home that she would fall into one of her rages. But she didn’t. For once, my sister and I enjoyed the day as it was meant to be: normal, safe, and happy.
But that excursion held consequences that I could never have foreseen.
“Grina, look at that boy.” she whispered as we strolled through the city market.
“Which one?”
“That one,” she pointed excitedly to a young man with a head of thick black hair and eyes so grey they mightn’t have had any colour at all.
His name was Jesse Foster. Apparently, he had noticed her too. And why not? Her shining, untrimmed chestnut curls and piercing cerulean eyes were irresistible. But he never knew her mind; never knew it until it was much too late to appreciate its beauty.
Ariane and Jesse grew closer since their chance encounter on that stolen sunless day. Secretly, of course, they became lovers. She wore his affection around her neck: he had given her a necklace with a little gold cross set with diamonds. I did not know this, or I would never have allowed her to accept such a token.
I, in my foolishness, believed Ariane to be cured from her madness, because she had not lost control of herself in weeks. If she could be cured by anything, I believed it would be by the elixir of love. But I was dreadfully mistaken.
“Ariane, calm down!” he commanded, taking her firmly by the shoulders and staring deep into her anxious eyes. I had left Ariane alone one day beneath and old oak tree that no one ever visited because it was much too far from the village to be worth the trip. She was waiting for Jesse, but he was late. I wanted to purchase a pair of yellow agate earrings from the ladies’ boutique at the edge of town. I would return shortly. But Jesse was late. And Ariane panicked.
“Ariane!” he cried again, but she wouldn’t listen. She wailed and shrieked insanely, tearing leaves from the drooping oak branches and shredding them before throwing them to the ground. “Ariane, I’m sorry. I love you! Please calm down!”
“You liar!” she screeched. “I loved you, but you left me alone! You’ve got another girl somewhere, I know it!”
“No, Ariane, I swear! Please, my father –”
But it was no use. Eventually Ariane’s words no longer made sense, and the secret was out.
“‘Screaming incoherently’, you said?” repeated Doctor Horace Blair, respected physician and psychologist.
“Yes, sir,” affirmed a pale and frightened Jesse. “Flailing her arms and tearing at her hair. It wasn’t…normal.”
“Mmm. Indeed.” said the doctor. “It appears to me that Miss Cardea is not altogether balanced of mind. Are you familiar with the Earlswood Asylum?”
“The madhouse?” Jesse was aghast.
“That is how some would refer to it. I professionally suggest that Miss Cardea be admitted there as soon as possible. She is quite possibly a danger to society.”
Jesse could not speak.
“It is for her own good,” urged Blair. “I myself have made many visits to the institution. It is quite respected in the psychological field. In fact, Earlswood is the most sanitary and modernized asylum in all of England. Besides,” his tone grew quiet and confidential, “I know she would rather be admitted by a friend than by the local authorities.”
“She has no choice, then?”
“She is an imbecile, Mr. Foster, and therefore cannot make a reasonable choice. As I said, she is a danger to society…and to herself.” he added.
Jesse came to me, wrecked and distraught; his colorless eyes little windows of misery. He seemed so young, though he was the same age as myself, and he was so handsome and vulnerable in his sorrow that I took him into my arms. I rocked him back and forth as one might comfort a child, and when he looked up again he kissed me with the lips of a martyr, but the tongue of Judas.
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