2. No. II.
THE MAD SENIOR.
I was called upon in my senior year to watch with
an insane student. He was a man who had attracted
a great deal of attention in college. He appeared in
an extraordinary costume at the beginning of our
freshman term, and wrote himself down as Washington
Greyling, of —, an unheard-of settlement
somewhere beyond the Mississippi. His coat and other
gear might have been the work of a Chickasaw
tailor, aided by the superintending taste of some white
huntsman, who remembered faintly the outline of habiliments
he had not seen for half a century. It was
a body of green cloth, eked out with wampum and
otter-skin, and would have been ridiculous if it had
not encased one of the finest models of a manly frame
that ever trod the earth. With close-curling black
hair, a fine weather-browned complexion, Spanish features
(from his mother—a frequent physiognomy in
the countries bordering on Spanish America), and
the port and lithe motion of a lion, he was a figure to
look upon in any disguise with warm admiration.
He was soon put into the hands of a tailor-proper,
and, with the facility which belongs to his countrymen,
became in a month the best-dressed man in college.
His manners were of a gentleman-like mildness,
energetic, but courteous and chivalresque, and, unlike
most savages and all coins, he polished without “losing
his mark.” At the end of his first term, he would
have been called a high-bred gentleman at any court
in Europe.
The opening of his mind was almost as rapid and
extraordinary. He seized everything with an ardor
and freshness that habit and difficulty never deadened.
He was like a man who had tumbled into a new star,
and was collecting knowledge for a world to which he
was to return. The first in all games, the wildest in
all adventure, the most distinguished even in the elegant
society for which the town is remarkable, and
unfailingly brilliant in his recitations and college performances,
he was looked upon as a sort of admirable
phenomenon, and neither envied nor opposed in anything.
I have often thought, in looking on him, that
his sensations at coming fresh from a wild western
prairie, and, at the first measure of his capacities with
men of better advantages, finding himself so uniformly
superior, must have been stirringly delightful. It is a
wonder he never became arrogant; but it was the last
foible of which he could have been accused.
We were reading hard for the honors in the senior
year, when Greyling suddenly lost his reason. He
had not been otherwise ill, and had, apparently in the
midst of high health, gone mad at a moment's warning.
The physicians scarce knew how to treat him.
The confinement to which he was at first subjected,
however, was thought inexpedient, and he seemed to
justify their lenity by the gentlest behavior when at
liberty. He seemed oppressed by a heart-breaking
melancholy. We took our turns in guarding and
watching with him, and it was upon my first night of
duty that the incident happened which I have thus
endeavored to introduce.
It was scarce like a vigil with a sick man, for our
patient went regularly to bed, and usually slept well.
I took my “Lucretius” and the “Book of the Martyrs,”
which was just then my favorite reading, and
with hot punch, a cold chicken, books, and a fire, I
looked forward to it as merely a studious night; and,
as the wintry wind of January rattled in at the old
college windows, I thrust my feet into slippers, drew
my dressing-gown about me, and congratulated myself
on the excessive comfortableness of my position.
The Sybarite's bed of roses would have been no temptation.
It had snowed all day, but the sun had set with a
red rift in the clouds, and the face of the sky was
swept in an hour to the clearness of—I want a comparison—your
own blue eye, dear Mary! The all-glorious
arch of heaven was a mass of sparkling stars.
Greyling slept, and I, wearied of the cold philosophy
of the Latin poet, took to my “Book of Martyrs.” I
read on, and read on. The college clock struck, it
seemed to me, the quarters rather than the hours.
Time flew: it was three.
“Horrible! most horrible!” I started from my chair
with the exclamation, and felt as if my scalp were
self-lifted from my head. It was a description in the
harrowing faithfulness of the language of olden time,
painting almost the articulate groans of an impaled
Christian. I clasped the old iron-bound book, and
rushed to the window as if my heart was stifling for
fresh air.
Again at the fire. The large walnut fagots had
burnt to a bed of bright coals, and I sat gazing into it,
totally unable to shake off the fearful incubus from
my breast. The martyr was there—on the very hearth
—with the stakes scornfully crossed in his body; and
as the large coals cracked asunder and revealed the
prightness within, I seemed to follow the nerve-rending
instrument from hip to shoulder, and suffer with him
pang for pang, as if the burning redness were the pools
of his fevered blood.
“Aha!”
It struck on my ear like the cry of an exulting fiend.
“Aha!”
I shrunk into the chair as the awful cry was repeated,
and looked slowly and with difficult courage
over my shoulder. A single fierce eye was fixed upon
me from the mass of bed-clothes, and, for a moment,
the relief from the fear of some supernatural presence
was like water to a parched tongue. I sank back relieved
into the chair.
There was a rustling immediately in the bed, and,
starting again, I found the wild eyes of my patient
fixed still steadfastly upon me. He was creeping
stealthily out of bed. His bare foot touched the floor,
and his toes worked upon it as if he was feeling its
strength, and in a moment he stood upright on his
feet, and, with his head forward and his pale face livid
with rage, stepped toward me. I looked to the door.
He observed the glance, and in the next instant he
sprang clear over the bed, turned the key, and dashed
it furiously through the window.
“Now!” said he.
“Greyling!” I said. I had heard that a calm and
fixed gaze would control a madman, and with the most
difficult exertion of nerve, I met his lowering eye, and
we stood looking at each other for a full minute, like
men of marble.
“Why have you left your bed?” I mildly asked.
“To kill you!” was the appaling answer; and in
another moment the light-stand was swept from between
us, and he struck me down with a blow that
would have felled a giant. Naked as he was, I had
no hold upon him, even if in muscular strength I had
been his match; and with a minute's struggle I yielded,
for resistance was vain. His knee was now upon my
breast and his left hand in my hair, and he seemed
by the tremulousness of his clutch to be hesitating
whether he should dash my brains out on the hearth.
I could scarce breathe with his weight upon my chest,
but I tried, with the broken words I could command,
to move his pity. He laughed, as only maniacs can,
and placed his hand on my throat. Oh God! shall I
ever forget the fiendish deliberation with which he
closed those feverish fingers?
“Greyling! for God's sake! Greyling!”
“Die! curse you!”
In the agonies of suffocation I struck out my arm,
and almost buried it in the fire upon the hearth.
With an expiring thought, I grasped a handful of the
red-hot coals, and had just strength sufficient to press
them hard against his side.
“Thank God!” I exclaimed with my first breath,
as my eyes recovered from their sickness, and I looked
upon the familiar objects of my chamber once more.
The madman sat crouched like a whipped dog in
the farthest corner of the room, gibbering and moaning,
with his hands upon his burnt side. I felt that I
had escaped death by a miracle.
The door was locked, and, in dread of another attack,
I threw up the broken window, and to my
unutterable joy the figure of a man was visible upon
the snow near the out-buildings of the college. It
was a charity-student, risen before day to labor in the
wood-yard. I shouted to him, and Greyling leaped
to his feet.
“There is time yet!” said the madman; but as he
came toward me again with the same panther-like
caution as before, I seized a heavy stone pitcher
standing in the window-seat, and hurling it at him
with a fortunate force and aim, he fell stunned and
bleeding on the floor. The door was burst open at
the next moment, and, calling for assistance, we tied
the wild Missourian into his bed, bound up his head
and side, and committed him to fresh watchers....
We have killed bears together at a Missouri saltlick
since then; but I never see Wash. Greyling with
a smile off his face, without a disposition to look
around for the door.
