“Do not laugh at madmen. Their madness may last longer than ours. That is the only difference.”
By the end of 1920, the United States had almost completed the great program begun during the final months of President Winthrop’s administration.
On the surface, the country was peaceful.
The Tariff and Labour questions had been settled. The war with Germany, which had begun after Germany seized the Samoan Islands, had left almost no lasting scars. The Germans had once occupied Norfolk, but nobody remembered that defeat anymore. The Americans were too busy celebrating their naval victories and laughing at the miserable fate of General Von Gartenlaube’s army in New Jersey.
American investments in Cuba and Hawaii had paid enormous returns, and Samoa had proved extremely valuable as a naval coaling station.
The country was now better defended than ever.
Fortifications protected every major coastal city. The army, organized according to the Prussian system and supervised by the General Staff, had grown to three hundred thousand men, supported by a territorial reserve of one million.
Six powerful fleets of cruisers and battleships guarded the navigable seas, while additional ships remained ready to defend American waters.
Even the country’s diplomacy had improved.
The politicians from the West had finally admitted that diplomats needed proper training just as lawyers needed law schools. America was no longer sending unqualified patriots overseas simply because they were patriotic.
The nation was rich.
Chicago had recovered from its second great fire and risen again from the ashes. The new city was white, grand, and beautiful—perhaps even more impressive than the famous White City built there for the 1893 World’s Fair.
Across the country, ugly buildings were being replaced by beautiful ones.
Even New York had changed.
A sudden demand for order and decency had swept through the city. Many of its worst buildings had disappeared. Streets had been widened, paved, and properly lit. Trees had been planted. Public squares had been created. The elevated railways had been torn down and replaced with underground lines.
The new government buildings and military barracks were handsome pieces of architecture.
The stone quays that had once surrounded Manhattan had been transformed into parks, giving the city’s crowded population places to breathe.
The government also began supporting the state theatre and opera.
The money was well spent.
The National Academy of Design had become comparable to the great European institutions. Nobody envied the Secretary of Fine Arts, but the Secretary of Forestry and Game Preservation had an easier job now, thanks to the new National Mounted Police.
America had also benefited from its latest treaties with France and England.
Foreign-born Jews were excluded from the country as a supposed measure of self-preservation. A new independent Negro state called Suanee had been established. Immigration was restricted. Naturalization laws had been tightened. Power was gradually being concentrated in the hands of the executive government.
All of this helped keep the country calm and prosperous.
Then the government finally solved the Indian problem.
Native cavalry scouts, dressed in their traditional clothing, replaced the miserable little groups that had once been attached to half-starved army regiments.
The country breathed a sigh of relief.
After the enormous Congress of Religions, religious hatred and intolerance seemed to disappear as well. Old enemies began to show kindness toward one another. Different religious groups slowly came together.
Many people believed that the millennium had finally arrived.
At least in America.
But self-preservation was still the first law of nations.
America could do nothing but watch as Germany, Italy, Spain, and Belgium were torn apart by anarchy.
Russia watched from the Caucasus.
Then, one by one, it bent those ruined countries to its will.
In New York, the summer of 1899 was remembered for the destruction of the Elevated Railroads.
The summer of 1900 was remembered for something else.
That was the year the Dodge Statue was removed.
The following winter began a campaign to repeal the laws against suicide.
Twenty years later, in April 1920, that campaign finally achieved its goal.
The first Government Lethal Chamber opened on Washington Square.
I happened to walk past it that day.
Earlier that morning, I had visited Dr. Archer at his house on Madison Avenue. The visit was nothing more than a formality.
Four years earlier, I had fallen from my horse.
Ever since then, I had occasionally suffered from pain in the back of my head and neck.
But the pain had been gone for several months.
Dr. Archer examined me and finally said:
“There is nothing left for me to cure.”
I almost laughed.
I already knew that.
The doctor’s fee was hardly worth paying for such a statement, but I did not mind the money.
What still bothered me was his original mistake.
When they found me unconscious on the pavement after my accident, someone had mercifully shot my horse to put it out of its misery.
I was taken to Dr. Archer.
He believed my brain had been damaged.
So he sent me to his private asylum and treated me as a madman.
Eventually, he decided that I was cured.
I had always known that my mind was perfectly sound—perhaps sounder than his.
Still, I paid him what he jokingly called my “tuition” and left.
Before I went, I smiled at him.
“I’ll get even with you someday for that mistake.”
He laughed.
“Come and see me from time to time.”
I did.
I kept hoping he would give me an opportunity to settle the account.
He never did.
So I decided to wait.
The fall from my horse had actually done me some good.
Before the accident, I had been a lazy young man who spent his days doing almost nothing.
Afterward, I became active.
Energetic.
Disciplined.
And, above all, ambitious.
There was only one thing that still troubled me.
I often laughed at myself for being bothered by it.
But I could not make it disappear.
During my recovery, I had bought and read a book called The King in Yellow.
I had never read anything like it.
After finishing the first act, I suddenly decided that I should stop.
I stood up and threw the book into the fireplace.
It struck the metal grate and fell open on the hearth.
Then I saw the first words of the second act.
I bent down to pick up the book.
My eyes became fixed on the open page.
I cannot explain what happened to me.
I gave a cry.
Perhaps it was terror.
Perhaps it was joy.
Whatever it was, the feeling was so intense that every nerve in my body seemed to suffer.
I pulled the book out of the fire.
Then I carried it, shaking, into my bedroom.
I read it.
Then I read it again.
I wept.
I laughed.
I trembled.
Even now, that horror sometimes returns to me.
That book is the thing that troubles me.
I cannot forget Carcosa.
I cannot forget the black stars hanging in its sky.
I cannot forget the shadows of men’s thoughts stretching longer in the afternoon as the twin suns sank into the Lake of Hali.
And I can never forget the Pallid Mask.
God help the writer of that book.
The man who created such a beautiful and terrible world seemed to have cursed the entire world with it.
The book’s power was impossible to resist.
When the French government seized the translated copies that had arrived in Paris, London immediately became eager to read it.
Soon the book spread like a disease.
It moved from city to city and from continent to continent.
One government banned it.
Another confiscated it.
Newspapers condemned it.
Preachers denounced it.
Even the most radical literary critics attacked it.
And yet nobody could explain exactly what was wrong with it.
The book did not openly violate any known moral principle.
It preached no particular doctrine.
It did not directly attack anyone’s beliefs.
It simply could not be judged by any ordinary standard.
Everyone agreed that The King in Yellow contained something close to the highest achievement of art.
But everyone also felt that human beings were not meant to endure what was hidden inside those pages.
The first act was almost painfully ordinary.
That was what made the second act so much worse.
I remember the exact date.
April 13, 1920.
That was the day the first Government Lethal Chamber opened on the south side of Washington Square, between Wooster Street and South Fifth Avenue.
The government had purchased the entire block in the winter of 1898.
Before that, it had been filled with shabby buildings containing cafés and restaurants used mainly by foreigners.
The old buildings were demolished.
The French and Italian cafés disappeared.
The entire block was surrounded by a beautiful gilded iron fence.
Inside was a garden.
There were lawns, flowers, and fountains.
At the center stood a small white building in a strict classical style.
Six Ionic columns supported its roof.
A single bronze door opened into the building.
In front of it stood a magnificent marble statue of the Fates.
It had been created by a young American sculptor named Boris Yvain, who had died in Paris at the age of only twenty-three.
The opening ceremony was already underway when I crossed University Place and entered the square.
I pushed my way through the silent crowd.
But when I reached Fourth Street, the police stopped me.
A regiment of United States lancers stood in a hollow square around the Lethal Chamber.
Across from Washington Park, the Governor of New York stood on a raised platform.
Behind him were the Mayor of New York, the Mayor of Brooklyn, the Inspector-General of Police, the commander of the state troops, Colonel Livingston, the President’s military aide, General Blount, commander of Governor’s Island, Major-General Hamilton, commander of the New York and Brooklyn garrison, Admiral Buffby of the fleet in the North River, Surgeon-General Lanceford, the staff of the National Free Hospital, Senators Wyse and Franklin, and the Commissioner of Public Works.
A squadron of National Guard hussars surrounded the platform.
The Governor was finishing his reply to the Surgeon-General’s speech.
I heard him say:
“The laws forbidding suicide, and the laws punishing attempts at self-destruction, have been repealed.”
“The government has decided to recognize a man’s right to end his own existence when physical suffering or mental despair has made life unbearable.”
“We believe society itself will benefit when such people are removed from our midst.”
“Since the law was passed, the number of suicides in the United States has not increased.”
“Now the government intends to establish a Lethal Chamber in every city, town, and village in the country.”
“It remains to be seen whether those unhappy people who are constantly driven toward suicide will accept the relief we are offering them.”
The Governor stopped speaking.
He turned toward the white building.
The street became completely silent.
“There,” he said, “a painless death awaits anyone who can no longer endure the suffering of this life.”
“If death is what he wants, let him go there.”
He turned quickly toward the President’s military aide.
“I declare the Lethal Chamber open.”
Then he faced the enormous crowd again.
“Citizens of New York and of the United States of America, through me, the Government declares the Lethal Chamber open.”
A sharp military command broke the silence.
The hussars mounted their horses and followed the Governor’s carriage.
The lancers wheeled into formation along Fifth Avenue and waited for the commander of the garrison.
The mounted police followed them.
I left the crowd behind.
They continued staring at the white marble Death Chamber.
I crossed South Fifth Avenue and walked along the western side of the street toward Bleecker Street.
Then I turned right.
I stopped in front of a shabby little shop.
A sign above the door read:
HAWBERK, ARMOURER.
I looked inside.
Hawberk was working at the back of the shop.
He looked up.
The moment he saw me, he called out in his deep, friendly voice:
“Come in, Mr. Castaigne!”
His daughter, Constance, stood up as I entered.
She came toward me and held out her hand.
But I noticed the disappointment in her face.
She had been expecting another Castaigne.
My cousin Louis.
I smiled at her embarrassment and complimented her on the banner she was embroidering from a colored plate.
Old Hawberk sat nearby, repairing the worn greaves of an ancient suit of armor.
The small hammer in his hand made a pleasant sound.
Ting.
Ting.
Ting.
After a while, he put the hammer down and reached for a tiny wrench.
The soft sound of chain mail moving against itself sent a thrill through me.
I loved the sound of steel rubbing against steel.
I loved the dull strike of the mallet against the armor plates.
I loved the soft jingle of chain mail.
That was why I visited Hawberk.
He had never interested me personally.
Neither had Constance.
The only thing about her that interested me was her love for Louis.
That mattered to me more than I cared to admit.
Sometimes it even kept me awake at night.
But I knew everything would eventually work out.
I intended to arrange their future just as I intended to arrange the future of my good doctor, John Archer.
Under ordinary circumstances, however, I would never have bothered visiting them that day.
The hammer was the reason.
Its music fascinated me.
I could sit there for hours simply listening.
Whenever a ray of sunlight struck the polished steel, the sensation was almost unbearable.
My eyes would fix upon the shining metal.
My pupils would widen.
The pleasure would run through every nerve in my body until I felt I might break apart.
Then Hawberk would move and block the sunlight.
The strange sensation would fade.
I would lean back and listen again.
Swish.
Swish.
His polishing cloth rubbed the rust from the old rivets.
Constance continued working on the embroidery in her lap.
Every now and then, she stopped to compare it with the colored plate from the Metropolitan Museum.
I looked at it.
“Who is that for?”
Hawberk answered.
Besides caring for the armor collection at the Metropolitan Museum, he also looked after several private collections belonging to wealthy men.
The armor he was repairing belonged to one of those clients.
A particular greave had been missing from the famous suit for years.
His client had eventually traced it to a small shop in Paris on the Quai d’Orsay.
Hawberk had negotiated for it and managed to obtain it.
Now the armor was complete.
He put down his hammer and told me the history of the suit.
It had been passed from owner to owner since 1450.
Eventually it came into the possession of Thomas Stainbridge.
When Stainbridge’s magnificent collection was sold, Hawberk’s client purchased the suit.
After that, they began searching for the missing greave.
Almost by accident, they finally found it in Paris.
I looked at him.
“You kept searching all that time without even knowing whether the greave still existed?”
“Of course,” he said calmly.
For the first time, I became genuinely interested in Hawberk.
“It must have been worth something to you.”
He laughed.
“No. Finding it was the reward.”
“You don’t want to become rich?”
He looked at me seriously.
“My only ambition is to become the best armourer in the world.”
Constance looked up from her embroidery.
“Did you see the ceremony at the Lethal Chamber?”
“I did.”
“I saw the cavalry riding up Broadway this morning. I wanted to see the opening, but Father wanted me to finish this banner.”
Then she hesitated.
She looked at me.
“Did you see your cousin, Mr. Castaigne?”
There was the slightest tremor in her eyelashes.
“No,” I said casually. “Louis’s regiment is training in Westchester County.”
I stood and picked up my hat and cane.
Hawberk grinned.
“Are you going upstairs to see the lunatic again?”
I hated that word.
If Hawberk knew what it stirred inside me, he would never use it in my presence.
Still, I kept my voice calm.
“I think I’ll go up and see Mr. Wilde for a few minutes.”
“Poor man,” Constance said softly.
She shook her head.
“It must be terrible to live alone year after year, poor, crippled, and almost insane.”
She looked at me kindly.
“It is very good of you to visit him as often as you do, Mr. Castaigne.”
“I think he’s vicious,” Hawberk said.
He picked up his hammer again.
I listened to its golden ringing against the metal.
When he finished, I answered:
“No. He isn’t vicious.”
I paused.
“And he isn’t even slightly insane.”
Hawberk looked at me.
“His mind is like a treasure room. He can take things from it that you and I might spend our entire lives trying to learn.”
Hawberk laughed.
I continued, a little impatiently:
“He knows history better than anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Nothing is too small for him to investigate.”
“And his memory is perfect.”
“He remembers every detail.”
“If people in New York knew that such a man existed, they would honor him more than anyone alive.”
“Nonsense,” Hawberk muttered.
He bent down to look for a rivet that had fallen onto the floor.
I watched him.
“Is it really nonsense?”
I kept my voice under control.
“Is it nonsense when Mr. Wilde says that the tassets and cuissards from the famous suit of armor known as the ‘Prince’s Emblazoned’ are lying in a pile of rusty stage equipment, broken stoves, and ragpicker’s rubbish in an attic on Pell Street?”
Hawberk’s hammer slipped from his hand.
It hit the floor.
He picked it up.
Then he looked at me calmly.
“How did you know the tassets and left cuissard were missing from the Prince’s Emblazoned?”
“I didn’t know.”
I smiled.
“Mr. Wilde told me the other day.”
“He said they’re in the attic at 998 Pell Street.”
“Nonsense,” Hawberk said.
But his hand was trembling beneath his leather apron.
I smiled pleasantly.
“Is this nonsense too?”
I paused.
“Mr. Wilde constantly calls you the Marquis of Avonshire.”
Constance suddenly stood up.
Terror flashed across her face.
“And he calls Miss Constance—”
I stopped.
Hawberk stared at me.
Slowly, he smoothed his leather apron.
“That is impossible,” he said.
“Mr. Wilde may know a great many things, but—”
“About armor, for example,” I interrupted with a smile.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “About armor, perhaps.”
He took a breath.
“But he is wrong about the Marquis of Avonshire.”
“As you know, the Marquis killed the man who dishonored his wife many years ago.”
“Then he went to Australia, where he died not long after his wife.”
“Mr. Wilde is wrong,” Constance whispered.
Her lips were pale, but her voice remained soft and calm.
I looked at both of them.
“All right,” I said.
“Let’s agree that, in this one matter, Mr. Wilde is wrong.”