At length, as his disease advanced towards its sure and terrible
development, the ANXIETY, which was the form it had taken, and the
mental hurry and worry which accompanied it, arrived at such a pitch
that the least delicate and acute observers remarked it in Jacob Ogden's
face. His mother earnestly entreated him not to torment himself so much
about his affairs, but to take a partner, and allow himself more rest.
The advice came too late. The tender cells of the cerebrum were in a
state of fevered disturbance, which must now inevitably lead to one of
the forms of madness.
It broke out one night at Wenderholme. He toiled till three o'clock in
the morning, alone, at his accounts. There was nothing in them which he
would not have mastered quite easily when in health, but the condition
of his brain had led to many errors, and the attempt to correct these
had only increased and multiplied them. He toiled and toiled till his
brain could no longer stand the confusion, and he went mad.
First there came a sense of strangeness to every thing about him, and
then a wild alarm--a _terror_ such as he had never known! For a few
minutes Reason fiercely struggled to keep her seat, and would not be
dispossessed. Those minutes were the most fearful the man had ever
passed through. He sprang from his place, and paced the room from wall
to wall in violent agitation. "I'm very ill," he thought; "I cannot tell
what's the matter with me. I believe I'm going to have a fit. No, it
isn't that--it isn't that; I know what it is--I know now--_I'm going
mad_!"
No visible external foe can ever be so terrible as the mysterious
internal avengers. They come upon us we know not when nor where. They
come when the doors are locked, the mansion guarded, and all the
household sleeps. They come in their terrible invisibility, like devils
taking possession. The strokes of mortal disease are dealt mysteriously
_within_; and who would not rather meet a body of armed savages than
invisible apoplexy or paralysis?
For five minutes Ogden wrestled with his invisible enemy. "I _will_ not
go mad," he cried aloud--"I _will_ not!"
And a minute afterwards the struggle ceased, and he was another being,
mad beyond hope of recovery.
A strange smile came over his face, and he pressed his hand upon his
forehead. "I'll dodge them yet," he said; "they aren't as sharp as I
am. I'm sharper than the best of them!"
He began to count the money in his purse. It was not much--five pounds
eighteen exactly. He counted the sum quite correctly, over and over
again; then he looked anxiously about for a place to hide it in. Whilst
he was doing this, his mother, who had felt anxious about him all night,
and had been unable to sleep, came to his room-door and listened. She
heard him walking about and muttering to himself. Then she opened the
door and went in.
He concealed his purse cunningly, and placed himself between the
intruder and its hiding-place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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