Mad: A Story of Dust and Ashes

by George Manville Fenn

A noble mansion had the doctor built in imagination: one that should be wondrous in its prosperity and endurance, but it had no foundation—a bit had crumbled here, a wall there cracked, then a corner had given way (a key to the whole), and with a crash the fabric had come down—so that the builder’s spirit was crushed as here he sat, shrunk and limp, waiting for the news of some fresh calamity, some new fall that should crush him yet more; for in his wild dreams he had seen his brother threatening him, and Septimus triumphantly shaking the will in his face. And so he sat on, hour after hour, clasping the tiny bottle in his hand—containing what? But a spoonful of some limpid fluid; while the stricken man still listened as if for something that he expected to happen that day.

There he sat, without fire, but feeling not the cold, hearing not the imploring whispered words of his wife—words uttered at the door after he had dismissed her, to wander up and down or sit shivering, and refusing the offered hospitality of some feeling fellow-prisoner.

Deeper grew the wrinkles upon the doctor’s brow as he sat. He had taken nothing for many hours, but a wine-glass stood upon the table, and more than once a trembling hand had been stretched out to grasp it. But he would wait another hour, he would wait until that other crushing news came, that other news hidden from his sight as by a black curtain, which ever trembled as though about to be raised. He would wait until the clocks struck again, just to think; though each stroke of hammer upon bell sounded funereally upon his ear. Again another hour, and another, and so on through the long night, through the grey, cold dawn, and again after the bright rising of the sun, which brought no hope to him.

“Only one other hour,” said the crouching man, and the words hissed between his fevered lips. “Only another hour!” he muttered, while his bloodshot eyes seemed to dilate as he drew forth the bottle and held it up to the light, shook it, and, watched the bright beads that trickled down the sides of the glass. His unshorn beard and sunken cheeks gave him a strangely haggard look; such that those who had known him in former days would have passed him without recognition.

Suddenly there was a step in the long corridor—one of many, but a step that he seemed to know; and then followed low voices, and the sound of a woman sobbing.

It had come at last—he had waited, and it was here—and a bitter smile trembled, it did not play, round the lips of Doctor Hardon, as he once more drew forth the bottle.

“This, this, this!” he kept on hissing in a harsh whisper as he smiled, thinking that the dark curtain which trembled in front would show him the future and not the present. And now he tried to draw forth the little stopper, but it was immovable. He tore at it fiercely, and then seized it with his teeth, but it broke short off, and he spat the piece angrily upon the floor.

“Now, now!” he muttered, as though there was not a moment to spare, while with trembling hand he seized the poker, and, holding the bottle above the wine-glass, struck it sharply, shivered it to atoms, and the liquid, mingled with sharp fragments, fell into the vessel, a large portion splashing over the table and moistening the doctor’s hand.

“Now, now!” he muttered, seizing the glass; and as he gave one glance at the bright blue wintry sky, he raised the little vessel hesitatingly to his lips. Then the door was pushed open, Mrs Hardon stepped in, shrieked, and dashed the undrained glass from her husband’s hand, so that it fell shivered upon the cold hearthstone, when, falling at his feet and clutching his knees, the unhappy woman sobbed loudly:

“O Tom, Tom, ask him to forgive us!” but the doctor only stood glaring at his visitor.