A Month of Madness

Front matter

BY HAROLD VALLINGS, Aul hor of " A Parson at Bay" " 77z<? Transgression of Terence Clancy. etc. " If, plunged yourself in easy sensuality, you allow the whole wretched world to pass groaning by you unmoved : if the fight for the truth is taking place, and all men of honour are on the ground armed on the one side or the other, and you alone are to lie on your balcony, and smoke your pipe out of the noise and the danger, you had better have died, or never have been born at all, than such a sensual coward." — Thackeray. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, PUBLISHERS in ORDINARY to HER MAJESTY i895. (All rights reserved.}

Chapter I

"IKSSIO, no, no, child! I don't want you here ! Get out of my sight, will you ? And take care to shut my door, and both the passage doors, so that I may lose some of that maddening music." Lilian, ten years old to-day, and the eldest of my flock, looked at me earnestly. Her wondering eyes grew moist, her mouth drooped and quivered. " It's m-m-my birthday party, Daddy dear," she murmured wistfully. " Then go and enjoy it — if you can," I retorted. And she went, trying to hide her tears, and to walk proudly. The child's fortitude stung me sharply. Yet, when one's mind is savage and bitter, there is a certain satisfaction in playing the brute. I had spoiled the little thing's pleasure, which she had been hugging to herself for six months or more — and I was glad, in a sort of way. " Do you feel any better for that ?

" asked my friend Yarmshaw, who was smoking with me in my study — the only room free from the children's-party atmosphere that had been filling the house for the last week, from attic to basement. " Would you like to join the children ? " I rejoined savagely, adding more quietly — for my mood was oddly changeful — " to tell the truth, I wish you would, old fellow. I'm not fit company for any one to-night, and the little rogues must be badly off for a master of the revels." " I know that," he answered coolly ; " but as far as I can judge, the master of the house is the person most in need of assistance under this roof to-night. What has come to you, Hal ?" I could not at first answer the question. Yarmshaw is a man of cold, cynical temperament, who dominates me at all times when the mind has free play.

In moments of action, when the blood rules us, I take the lead ; but as soon as passions cool, and muscles are at rest, I drop back into his wake again. We fell into these respective parts years ago in our Winchester days, and have retained them ever since. Yarmshaw has the calculating, and combinative faculty of a great strategist. I could never have been anything more than a hot-headed roughand-tumble company officer. The muscular moments, too — those few and far between epochs in which I got my chance and won my spurs — have nearly always been led up to by Yarmshaw. He used to make the quarrels, and never until the battle was joined did I succeed in thrusting him aside. In truth, he is innately combative, as well as destructive. He cannot work off the slaughterous spirit, which seems common to most men, by ordinary process of sport, as I can ; his pleasure of the chase consists mainly in hunting down man's ideals and aspirations.

He would have set all Utopia by the ears in a week. With him, the ordinarily sound maxim : " What's up is truth, what's down is heresy," must be read backwards. At the present time, for instance, he is a pronounced Radical, because the Tories happen to hold possession of the state coach ; but I am well assured that the moment the latter tumble from the box seat, that quiet, smooth - flowing tongue, whose bitter power the House of Commons knows so well, will be turned upon his former friends. But whithersoever he turns, and whatsoever be his latest whim, I know well that he will take me with him : that his party will be my party ; his opinions mine : that his latest theory — whether as to the shape of a hat or the future of the universe — will possess and dominate me, until — it shall please him to change it again.

"What has come to you ?" he repeated, after a pause, with his strong, sad eyes, which always master me so, calmly investi gating mine. For answer, I took up a volume that lay upon my smoking-table, and tossed it over to him. " My book," he said indifferently; "well, what of it ? " " Are its conclusions deliberate ? Am I to take them for truth ? " "My dear Hotspur" — he addressed me by the old nickname which followed me from Winchester to Oxford, and which I fear will cling to me to the end of the chapter " I wish you were not so impressible." " Don't put me off with such stuff as that!" I cried angrily, "but let me know once for all whether or not that book, ' The Moods of a Human Automaton,' sets forth your real convictions." " The convictions of one mood, no doubt ; but put a penny in another slot, stimulate another group of brain-cells, and you'd haply get a very different book from me — a theo logical work, say, or, for aught I know, an apology for cannibalism.

How can you trouble your head about the convictions of any man when you know that they hinge upon the state of the weather, or of his digestive organs ? With a little practice in a certain kind of analysis you could easily trace back every theory propounded in that book to brain-fag, dyspepsia, or what-not." " I see that you meant what you said, and mean it still. Man is nothing but a delicately adjusted automaton, having no more moral responsibility than an insect or a mollusc." " Psha ! Burn the book, and forget all about it — as most sensible people have done already." " I can't forget it, for, as I will explain shortly, something has occurred that makes the truth or falsity of your views of im mediate and vital importance to me." " You are working yourself up into a state, I perceive, just in your old fashion.

Have you been visiting that hospital again ? " " Several times lately." " Ah, I thought as much ! " — Yarmshaw snapped out the words rather fiercely for so serene and emotionless a man — " I've told you many times that you are not fit to go among suffering people. Why, shall I ever forget that day at Winchester when you had to take me up for a flogging ? You never could bear to witness pain : that's your weak side, and you ought to guard it constantly." " It's impossible to do so, as I have proved by trial. Pain confronts one at every turn ; and the Problem of Pain has been harassing me all my life. I shallnever shake myself clear of it ! " "You are an odd fellow, Hal; at once morbid and reckless, soft-hearted and hot blooded." " Well, from your point of view, it's morbid to feel anything intensely, and reckless to carry any idea through to its logical issue."

" Carry an idea, man ? You never did such a thing in your life. The idea has to carry you ! You mount on its back, hide your spurs in it, and gallop madly on till you've ridden the thing to death, and so got for yourself a stunning fall, which it takes you a month to recover. There's that hos pital, now — why couldn't you content your self with pouring out your money in the endowment of a new ward, and leaving your wife, the best and most sensible of women, and — save where your friend Yarmshaw is concerned — the most charitable, to do the visiting ? You kept your sanity pretty well until you took to thrusting your nose among the sick and suffering. Under some circum stances the practise of philanthropy may be more vicious than vice itself." " Shall I tell you the secret of my late hospital visiting, Yarmshaw ?

" " No need, I assure you : it lies in your temperament, and is no secret to me. Haven't I witnessed a score of your Hotspur gallopings ? " " You are wrong for once," I answered quietly ; " the secret lies this time in an accidental discovery, which came about thus. I happened to visit ' our ward,' as we call it, one day when my wife was out of town, and one of the patients — a poor devil evidently marked for death, and who had been suffering acutely for months — gave me a full history of his ailment, as sick men are so apt to do." " Well ? " "Well, I have, within the last few days, discovered in myself precisely the symptoms that marked the incipient stage of his disease. Yarmshaw, I have no earthly reason to doubt that I am booked for the same weary journey, broken by painful operations, that he has just completed.

The man died this morning." Yarmshaw started from his chair. I could see from his frightened stare that he thought my reason was going. " There's no madness about me," I con tinued brokenly, "save that of despair. If you care to consult the senior surgeon of our hospital, who examined me to-day and was forced to admit that my fears are well grounded, he will corroborate what I have told you." My friend accepted this statement in per fect silence. He turned away from me, and we remained for some moments apart and motionless. Then, the craving for human sympathy being strong upon me, I walked across and laid my hand upon his shoulder. " Say something, old fellow," I murmured ; " give me a word of some sort, for the burden is more than I can bear alone. Help me, for I'm in sore need. You are my guide and leader ; I have founded myself upon you.

If you can't help me, no one can." " You may be utterly mistaken, Vellacott. Again, even if this surgeon's diagnosis be sound, you have a fine constitution, and with your power of vitality you may be well able to shake off what has been fatal to many weaklings." " Yes, there is that small hope, and I hug it close ; yet I must shape my life on the assumption that it will probably come to an end shortly. If the symptoms continue, and if the approved remedies, after a fair trial, fail to arrest the disease, it would be absurd for any one holding our views to go on wading through the morass of suffering which must needs precede death in the ordinary course, would it not ? " " You mean — " Suicide ? — of course I do. What else could a Human Automaton mean ? " I paused expectantly ; but Yarmshaw would not give me even an acquiescent glance, much less the cordial word of ap proval for which I longed.

He seemed vexed with me for coming to a conclusion that was but the logical outcome of his teaching. " It seems, then, that you will fail me in my hour of need ? " I cried bitterly. " Your philosophy of nihilism, which you have im posed upon me with all your force, has darkened ten years of my life, yet you now grudge the one boon that it has power to bestow upon me — the right of ceasing to exist at will ? " Still my friend answered nothing : he had the look of one who, having constructed a deadly engine, fears to see it set in motion. "Well, Yarmshaw, I won't dwell further on that at present ; but I do ask your sym pathy for the plan of campaign upon which I am now about to enter." "Campaign against what?" his words came reluctantly : his face was full of a vague disquiet, not unmixed, it seemed, with resentment.

" Against Human Suffering ; the plan of which the idea has been in my mind for I know not how long, and which, under the stress of this personal trouble, cries aloud to me, as it has never cried before. Put your self in my place for a moment. The mental attitude which is common to us both leads you and me to very different issues. You take a cynical pleasure in the assurance that whatever is, is wrong, that human life is a tangle of pains and futilities which nothing can ever put right. But to me the groaning of the world has an appeal and a meaning : I can't acquiesce in it as it stands. I'm a man under sentence of death, with perhaps but a few weeks to work in — but something I must do!' " Do pull yourself together and cease your raving," he muttered sulkily. "Your chance lies in keeping your mind steady, and " " A curse on your commonplaces !

" I cried. " You ought to be the last man in the world to inflict them upon me." Yarmshaw leaned back in his chair with a fretful sigh, muttering, " I ought to have left you in happy possession of the old fictions ; with your peculiar temperament you are fitted for nothing else." That was all the sympathy he was capable of offering me. He had always seemed somewhat callous to the sufferings of "the general," but somehow I had looked for a different attitude from him in this case, the person concerned being his chosen friend. He appeared even to resent my being in trouble, to be anxious to get away from me. " It is too late to talk of ' the old fictions,' " I answered after a moment's pause ; " you've crushed them to powder long ago. But if you could see your way to some small modifi cation of your views, if there were anywhere a weak spot in your absolutism " He stopped me with a quick shake of his head.

The man was always bitterly honest, and rigidly consistent to any theory that happened to possess him. I do not believe he would soften a thought, or pare down a hypothesis that he considered sound, to save the life of his nearest friend. Moreover, his philosophy knew not a semitone : his hatred of compromise was even more fervid than my own. " Well, well, then stick to your all-round negations, and listen to my Plan of Cam paign, which is nothing but their logical expression in deed and action." " I wish to hear nothing about it, Vella cott." " Then you shall hear it ! " I retorted hotly. " You've always pressed your views upon me without regard to my wishes, and without giving a thought to the hopes and aspirations which you've killed, and it is but fair that you should know whither they have at last led me."

Then I dropped my voice to a whisper — and the whispered words sent the blood flying from his face. He listened for a few moments, with lips white as death, unable to find voice enough to interrupt me. At length he drew himself up with a shiver, muttering hoarsely, " My God ! — with such a maggot in your brain as that, you're not fit to go loose about the world ! " " I'm what you have made me, Yarmshaw — a piece of your own handiwork. Upon this one point I am mad, if you will, and perhaps my state of health has to answer for it ; but, right or wrong, my mind's made up, and though I have but a few weeks to work in " At this moment, through the opening of some door, a gush of dance music, mixed with children's laughter, came sweeping down the passage — a dreadful sound to me just now, so dreadful that I bowed myself down to indulge my anguish for a space.

" I'll have you locked up, by God, if you stick to this ! " Yarmshaw jerked out the words in the tone of one who, after a fierce struggle, has suddenly got his heel upon the neck of some deadly reptile. "As you please," I answered dully; "by doing so you would relieve me of an awful burden — the hardest ever laid upon a man by the stern task-master, Duty. But of course, in that case, I should feel no obligation to go on living ; and I need hardly tell you that, my resolution being what it is, I carry the means of death about with me. " Where ? " That is my secret. Enough that I can snap the life-thread at a touch. As the poet says truly — ' There are blind ways provided, the fordone Heart-weary worker in this pageant world Slips out by, letting the main masque defile By the conspicuous portal.' " At this point Yarmshaw rose, saying hastily, " I'm going now."

" Do you intend to take steps against my liberty, or to leave me alone ? " " To leave you alone, Hal, hoping that you will come to your senses after a night's rest, and sweep all that cursed stuff out of your mind." " Good night, then, Yarmshaw." " Good night. I'll look you up again in a day or two." A Month of Madness. 19 He left me quite reassured, as he thought ; but Yarmshaw had no skill in deception, and I read his face without difficulty. He had it in mind to thwart me, and half an hour's reflection would doubtless complete any half-formed decision. I had to count Yarmshaw, the only soul who knew the secret of my scheme, as an enemy — one who would strike quickly, too. There was not a moment to lose. I had been immersed nearly all day in a certain problem, and must now accept on the instant one or other of the solutions — all more or less inadequate — that had offered themselves.

The problem, now further complicated by Yarmshaw's knowledge of my intentions, was as follows : — For the carrying out of my purpose or plan I required a period of four or five weeks, during which I must be living in close con tact with other men, yet absolutely secluded from every soul that knew me. I must, in fact, be dead to my friends. Meanwhile Yarmshaw must be satisfied that I have given up all thought of my mad scheme, and am safe for the present; and, further, my anxious wife, who is already troubled about me, must be freed from concern during my absence. These were the cardinal points ; the minor details will keep for the present. Now, in this difficult juncture, I was lucky enough to have two favourable chances offered me. For, as it happened, I was under an engagement to join my cousin, Charles Vellacott, who had taken a piece of trout-fishing on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, and three days ago I had been actually on the point of starting thither, being only withheld at the last moment by the state of my health.

Moreover, my wife, thinking my ailment to be of the nervous kind to which I was subject, and which usually yielded to a few weeks' change of air, had been strongly urging me to make the effort and give the fishing a chance. So there was an exit from the home circle ready provided for me. Furthermore, I had received this evening, just before Yarm shaw's arrival, a telegram from my sailing master at Southampton, to the effect that my new forty-rater, the Imogen, had been run down at her moorings by a coasting ketch. This message I had, in my troubled state, tossed aside without giving it a thought, but I now perceived that it would come pat to my purpose. The message, in fact, provided me with a ready-made excuse for leaving town at once, by the first train I could catch, while the fishing excursion would give me four or five weeks clear at a stroke.

For listen. I had but to tell my wife that I had fallen in with her views, and hoped in a day or two to muster energy enough for the Spanish journey ; in short, that, after seeing to the repairs of the yacht, I A Month of Madness. 22 might very likely go straight on from South ampton, vid Havre — and my cable would be cut. She was accustomed to my head longs habits, and would be relieved to find that my old spirit was returning. Then to-morrow, or next day, I should be seen on board the Havre boat by some of my yacht's crew ; and afterwards, by an arrange ment which had occurred to me earlier in the day, and which will be set before you in due course, letters descriptive of my angling adventures, gradual recovery of health, and so on, would arrive from Spain every three or four days, the while I was actually at home in England — perhaps not fifty miles from London.

By this means I should sever every rope which bound me to home and friends, save that leading through my cousin Charles, whom I could trust entirely, and who, when duly hoodwinked, would I knew be a mere puppet in my hands. Were Yarmshaw to call next day, he would hear of my departure, and be reassured as to my state by those at home ; and, should he follow me to South ampton, it would only be to hear from the yacht's crew of my departure for the Con tinent. To him also I miobt write from Seganza, the Pyrenean village, with assur ances of my return to sanity. Yes, I had it all clear now — there remained only to put my simple plan of self-effacement into execution. The first step would be to ring for my sen-ant, and order out the already-packed luggage. That seemed a simple thing to do, yet there were agonized moments to be got through before I could accomplish it.

My agitation was at first overmastering. That bell-pull was to me the throttle-valve of an engine whose machinery, once set in motion, I should have no power to check. Once clear of home, there could be no going back, no return to the arms of a beloved wife, to the clinging hands of my little children. I was doomed not merely to death, but to the carrying through of a fearful task, the accomplishment of which, were there no "blind way pro vided," must, in the present constitution of society, make of me an outcast among men. Brief as was the parting scene, my forti tude barely sufficed to carry me through it. My wife came at my summons, and stood before me, radiant and smiling as though with the reflected light of all the happy little faces from whose midst she had emerged. With affected indignation I showed her the telegram, exclaiming — " There, you see !

Our smart little craft but just fitted out, yet smashed up already by some lubberly coasting skipper ! " " Well, that is vexing, dear ! I see you mean to be off at once. Are you well enough for the journey, Harry ? " " Oh dear, yes ; this exasperating accident has shaken me clear of the megrims. I'm well enough." o But her tender eyes were clouding with anxiety. "Let me go with you, dearest," she urged. " I could be ready dressed for the journey in an hour, and Lady St. Petrock would take charge of our little guests. What train shall we catch ? " She little knew how torturing was her solicitude ! I had to maintain a feigned fury of impatience, to allay her fears, promise a shower of letters and telegrams, broach my intention of probably going on to Spain, the while her eyes searched and probed me.

I declined even to have the little ones extracted from their ball-room, insisting that the cab would be at the door immediately, and that it would be a pity to break in upon their enjoyment. But enough ; I could not bring myself to dwell upon that parting even it were necessary. Suffice it that I did contrive to reassure, at least partially, that sweet wife whom I was deceiving ; and so got fairly away into the hall. Here, however, Lilian caught me, clinging round my neck with a hundred kisses, and, with her fresh young cheek laid against mine, forcing from me many lying promises of a speedy return. But at length I found myself seated, half dazed, in a cab, bowling smoothly away towards Waterloo Station — bound, as you know, upon a dark and terrible journey, but the full horrors of which you can as yet but guess at.

In truth, O reader-friend, I would entreat you to pause a moment before deciding to follow me into the pit whither my path now leads me. I feel that it is my solemn duty to tell the tale of that journey, now while it still rings in my brain, because it may chance to save some soul, stricken as I was, from a madness like that which befell me. Yet let not the whole man, who needs not the surgeon's knife, draw near to the operating table ; and let the fortunate one, who has never yet broken forth from the Happy Valley, remember that he cannot leave it in my company without tasting of worse things than ever befell the Prince of Abyssinia.

Chapter II

T is curious to note how a scheme 1B^1 which months of hard thinking have left in the embryonic stage will develop suddenly at the first touch of action. Make a move of some sort, take a step, howsoever feeble and tentative, and, lo ! the formless thing, upon which all the grinding of your brain seems to have made no impression, becomes a tool shaped and fashioned to your purpose. Such, at least, was my experience that night ; for hardly had my train drawn clear of the terminus when my Plan of Campaign, an hour or two ago so vague that I could give but the crudest outline of it to Yarmshaw, stood forth crisp and clear to my gaze. I knew then just what I had to do, and with that knowledge came a quickening of my courage, a hardening of my purpose ; I felt all the audacity of a fanatic who has given a first stroke to that iron wedge wherewith he hopes to rive the world asunder.

As I stretched out of the train window to look back, it seemed to me that all the pain and misery of the great city were rising up like a smoke, which, as in some Eastern story, was shaping itself into the form of a mighty genie — the demon against whom so many of the great, the good, the wise, have striven in vain. Yet this monster, together with all his dark brethren, I, Henry Vellacott, a mere ordinary man, equipped with nothing newer than a fervent love of humanity and a dogged resolve to carry a certain idea to its logical conclusion, was about to assail single-handed. Thus did I begin my journey full of a strange exaltation, which yet somehow had in it more of pain than beatitude. Before the real work could begin, however, there were yet some preliminaries to be dealt with, and to these a few sentences must be devoted.

Next morning, my courage being no whit abated, the business at Southampton was readily transacted. I faced many old friends at the Yacht Club, and by them was con doled with, and questioned as to the Imogen. With them I discussed the best method of bringing the ketch's master to book, the chances of the coming racing season, my Spanish expedition, and so on ; in short, I went through all the solemn mockery that was needful. Then I handed my damaged ship over to a well-known firm, heard their surveyor's report, and gave all necessary orders to my sailing-master. Next morning I was free to sail for Havre, and was actually seen on board by several friends. Thus I had got clear of Yarmshaw, and had left behind me sufficient evidence of my changed state to relieve his mind — I had, in fact, obliterated my trail.

Havre was not in my programme, save as a halting-place. I disembarked there only to await my cousin's answer to a letter sent off on the morning of my arrival at Southampton. This letter contained a con fession, partly true, and an earnest appeal to his old friendship. I told him the truth as to my state of health, since nothing more suitable to my purpose could well have been invented. That groundwork of fact made an excellent foundation for the requisite superstructure of fiction. Charles was informed of my scheme of self-obliteration for a period, but not of its true object, which was set forth as the sparing of my wife the weeks of anxiety and suspense that must pass before my disease either succumbed to treatment or attained the point where all hope of cure must be given up. I laid stress on this possibility of final cure, and of the immense gain that must accrue from my plan of benevolent deception.