"Can you," said Marston, with the same slow and stern articulation, and
after a considerable pause--"can you prevent the malady you profess to
cure?--can you meet and defeat the enemy halfway?--can you scare away the
spirit of madness before it takes actual possession, and while it is
still only hovering about its threatened victim?" "Sir," he replied, "in certain cases--in very many, indeed--the enemy, as
you well call it, may thus be met, and effectually worsted at a distance. Timely interposition, in ninety cases out of a hundred, is everything;
and, I assure you, I hear your question with much pleasure, inasmuch as I
assume it to have reference to the case of the patient about whom you
desire to consult me; and who is, therefore, I hope, as yet merely
menaced with the misfortune from which you would save him." "I, myself, am that patient, sir," said Marston, with an effort; "your
surmise is right. I am not mad, but unequivocally menaced with madness;
it is not to be mistaken. Sir, there is no misunderstanding the
tremendous and intolerable signs that glare upon my mind." "And pray, sir, have you consulted your friends or your family upon the
course best to be pursued?" inquired Dr. Parkes, with grave interest. "No, sir," he answered sharply, and almost fiercely; "I have no fancy to
make myself the subject of a writ _de lunatico inquirendo_; I don't want
to lose my liberty and my property at a blow. The course I mean to take
has been advised by no one but myself--is known to no other. I now
disclose it, and the causes of it, to you, a gentleman, and my
professional adviser, in the expectation that you will guard with the
strictest secrecy my spontaneous revelations; this you promise me?" "Certainly, Mr. Marston; I have neither the disposition nor the right to
withhold such a promise," answered the physician. "Well, then, I will first tell you the arrangement I propose, with your
permission, to make, and then I shall answer all your questions,
respecting my own case," resumed Marston, gloomily. "I wish to place
myself under your care, to live under your roof, reserving my full
liberty of action. I must be free to come and to go as I will; and on the
other hand, I undertake that you shall find me an amenable and docile
patient enough. In addition, I stipulate that there shall be no attempt
whatever made to communicate with those who are connected with me: these
terms agreed upon, I place myself in your hands. You will find in me, as
I said before, a deferential patient, and I trust not a troublesome one. I hope you will excuse my adding, that I shall myself pay the charge of
my sojourn here from week to week, in advance." The proposed arrangement was a strange one; and although Dr. Parkes
dimly foresaw some of the embarrassments which might possibly arise
from his accepting it, there was yet so much that was reasonable as
well as advantageous in the proposal, that he could not bring himself
to decline it. The preliminary arrangement concluded, Dr. Parkes proceeded to his more
strictly professional investigation. It is, of course, needless to
recapitulate the details of Marston's tormenting fancies, with which the
reader has indeed been already sufficiently acquainted. Doctor Parkes,
having attentively listened to the narrative, and satisfied himself as to
the physical health of his patient, was still sorely puzzled as to the
probable issue of the awful struggle already but too obviously commenced
between the mind and its destroyer in the strange case before him. One
satisfactory symptom unquestionably was, the as yet transitory nature of
the delusion, and the evident and energetic tenacity with which reason
contended for her vital ascendancy. It was a case, however, which for
many reasons sorely perplexed him, but of which, notwithstanding, he was
disposed, whether rightly or wrongly the reader will speedily see, to
take by no means a decidedly gloomy view. Having disburdened his mind of this horrible secret, Marston felt for a
time a sense of relief amounting almost to elation. With far less of
apprehension and dismay than he had done so for months before, he that
night repaired to his bedroom. There was nothing in his case, Doctor
Parkes believed, to warrant his keeping any watch upon Marston's actions,
and accordingly he bid him good-night, in the full confidence of meeting
him, if not better, at least not worse, on the ensuing morning. He miscalculated, however. Marston had probably himself been conscious of
some coming crisis in his hideous malady, when he took the decisive step
of placing himself under the care of Doctor Parkes. Certain it is, that
upon that very night the disease broke forth in a new and appalling
development. Doctor Parkes, whose bedroom was next to that occupied by
Marston, was awakened in the dead of night by a howling, more like that
of a beast than a human voice, and which gradually swelled into an
absolute yell; then came some horrid laughter and entreaties, thick and
frantic; then again the same unearthly howl. The practiced ear of Doctor
Parkes recognized but too surely the terrific import of those sounds. Springing from his bed, and seizing the candle which always burned in his
chamber, in anticipation of such sudden and fearful emergencies, he
hurried with a palpitating heart, and spite of his long habituation to
such scenes as he expected, with a certain sense of horror, to the
chamber of his aristocratic patient. Late as it was, Marston had not yet gone to bed; his candle was still
burning, and he himself, half dressed, stood in the center of the floor,
shaking and livid, his eyes burning with the preterhuman fires of
insanity. As Doctor Parkes entered the chamber, another shout, or rather
yell, thundered from the lips of this demoniac effigy; and the mad-doctor
stood freezing with horror in the doorway, and yet exerting what remained
to him of presence of mind, in the vain endeavor, in the flaring light of
the candle, to catch and fix with his own practiced eye the gaze of the
maniac. Second after second, and minute after minute, he stood
confronting this frightful slave of Satan, in the momentary expectation
that he would close with and destroy him. On a sudden, however, this
brief agony of suspense was terminated; a change like an awakening
consciousness of realities, or rather like the withdrawal of some hideous
and visible influence from within, passed over the tense and darkened
features of the wretched being; a look of horrified perplexity, doubt,
and inquiry, supervened, and he at last said, in a subdued and sullen
tone, to Doctor Parkes:

"Who are you, sir? What do you want here? Who are you, sir, I say?" "Who am I? Why, your physician, sir; Doctor Parkes, sir; the owner of
this house, sir," replied he, with all the sternness he could command,
and yet white as a specter with agitation. "For shame, sir, for shame, to
give way thus.