The Asylum Read Online Free PDF

imperious. The roots shook; a rush of earth and pebbles spurted from the bank. I remember one glimpse, as if looking down from above, of myself pressed against the cliff with my fingers clawed over the brink. The next instant, as it seemed, I was sprawled on the ground, scraped and bloodied and weeping with shock and relief.
    I do not know how long I lay there before realisation struck me. I had broken my solemn promise never, ever, to go anywhere near the edge; I had set off a landslip; and what if more of the cliff should fall? I was covered in dirt from head to foot, and my pinafore was torn and filthy. I sprang to my feet, raced up the hillside, heedless of the need to keep out of sight of the house, and scrambled back over the wall with a horrid rending of cloth. I dared not tell the truth; I would have to say that I had fallen in the garden; or perhaps I should say that I had tried to climb the wall to look over and had fallen off. Then at least I should be confessing to a small part of my sin. Yes; I could say that I had heard a strange noise from the cliff, climbed up to see what it was, and slipped. And I knew that I must go indoors straightaway, and not wait to be called and have to explain why I had stayed in the garden in such a dreadful state.
    As it happened, my mother was still asleep, and the first person I met was Amy, who scolded me roundly, scrubbed me down, and gave me a clean pinafore. Mama was alarmed rather than angry when she saw my scrapes and bruises, said she hoped I had learnt my lesson, and made me promise, which I did with heartfelt sincerity, never to climb the wall again. I was still afraid that more of the cliff might collapse—what if our house was swallowed up in the night?—but as no one had heard the noise, they assumed I had imagined it.
    I tried not to show how shaken I was, but every time I closed my eyes I would find myself back on the cliff-face, and I was so pale the next morning that Mama thought I might be sickening for something. Though I would much have preferred to do my lessons with her, I was made to rest in bed, with nothing to do but brood upon what I had done. If Rosina had not shouted at me—as it had truly seemed—I should certainly have died; but then if she had not taunted me with my fear of the cliff, I should never have gone near it. After a while I slipped out of bed, confronted my reflection in the mirror, and berated her for putting me in such danger. “I might have died!,” I was shouting, when my mother appeared behind Rosina—as it momentarily seemed—in the glass, staring down at me with a look of consternation.
    “Georgina! What are you doing?”
    “I was only playing at charades, Mama,” I said lamely. I was not sure what charades were, but I knew that they involved pretending to be other people.
    “But you were shouting at your own reflection, and calling it Rosina; you said you might have died.”
    “She is only someone I made up, Mama; it was just a story I was telling myself.”
    “Georgina,” she said, kneeling down, taking me gently but firmly by the shoulders, and turning me to face her, “I am not angry, but you must tell me the truth. This—what you were doing with the mirror—is not good for you. And what is this about dying? Is it to do with your falling off the wall yesterday?”
    “Yes, Mama,” I confessed, and to turn my guilty thoughts away from the cliff, I proceeded to tell her all about Rosina, and how the idea of a sister had come to me from the mirror, and that Rosina was the bold and reckless one who had dared me to climb the wall, aware as I spoke that my mother was regarding me with deepening anxiety, until my voice trailed off altogether.
    “But why did you name her Rosina?” she asked. There was a note of fear in her voice that I had never heard before.
    “I don’t know, Mama,” I said helplessly. “It just—came to me.”
    “I see,” she said, and was silent for a little. “Now, Georgina, you must not