The Gates of Sleep

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