Facing the Flag: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

CHAPTER I.

HEALTHFUL HOUSE.

The _carte de visite_ received that day, June 15, 189-, by the
director of the establishment of Healthful House was a very neat one,
and simply bore, without escutcheon or coronet, the name:

COUNT D'ARTIGAS.

Below this name, in a corner of the card, the following address was
written in lead pencil:

"On board the schooner _Ebba_, anchored off New-Berne, Pamlico Sound."

The capital of North Carolina--one of the forty-four states of the
Union at this epoch--is the rather important town of Raleigh, which is
about one hundred and fifty miles in the interior of the province. It
is owing to its central position that this city has become the seat
of the State legislature, for there are others that equal and
even surpass it in industrial and commercial importance, such as
Wilmington, Charlotte, Fayetteville, Edenton, Washington, Salisbury,
Tarborough, Halifax, and New-Berne. The latter town is situated on
estuary of the Neuse River, which empties itself into Pamlico Sound, a
sort of vast maritime lake protected by a natural dyke formed by the
isles and islets of the Carolina coast.

The director of Healthful House could never have imagined why the card
should have been sent to him, had it not been accompanied by a
note from the Count d'Artigas soliciting permission to visit the
establishment. The personage in question hoped that the director would
grant his request, and announced that he would present himself in the
afternoon, accompanied by Captain Spade, commander of the schooner
_Ebba_.

This desire to penetrate to the interior of the celebrated sanitarium,
then in great request by the wealthy invalids of the United States,
was natural enough on the part of a foreigner. Others who did not bear
such a high-sounding name as the Count d'Artigas had visited it, and
had been unstinting in their compliments to the director. The latter
therefore hastened to accord the authorization demanded, and added
that he would be honored to open the doors of the establishment to the
Count d'Artigas.

Healthful House, which contained a select _personnel_, and was assured
of the co-operation of the most celebrated doctors in the country, was
a private enterprise. Independent of hospitals and almshouses, but
subjected to the surveillance of the State, it comprised all the
conditions of comfort and salubrity essential to establishments of
this description designed to receive an opulent _clientele_.

It would have been difficult to find a more agreeable situation than
that of Healthful House. On the landward slope of a hill extended a
park of two hundred acres planted with the magnificent vegetation that
grows so luxuriantly in that part of North America, which is equal in
latitude to the Canary and Madeira Islands. At the furthermost limit
of the park lay the wide estuary of the Neuse, swept by the cool
breezes of Pamlico Sound and by the winds that blew from the ocean
beyond the narrow _lido_ of the coast.

Healthful House, where rich invalids were cared for under such
excellent hygienic conditions, was more generally reserved for the
treatment of chronic complaints; but the management did not decline to
admit patients affected by mental troubles, when the latter were not
of an incurable nature.

It thus happened--a circumstance that was bound to attract a good deal
of attention to Healthful House, and which perhaps was the motive
for the visit of the Count d'Artigas--that a person of world-wide
notoriety had for eighteen months been under special observation
there.

This person was a Frenchman named Thomas Roch, forty-five years of
age. He was, beyond question, suffering from some mental malady, but
expert alienists admitted that he had not entirely lost the use of
his reasoning faculties. It was only too evident that he had lost all
notion of things as far as the ordinary acts of life were concerned;
but in regard to subjects demanding the exercise of his genius, his
sanity was unimpaired and unassailable--a fact which demonstrates how
true is the _dictum_ that genius and madness are often closely
allied! Otherwise his condition manifested itself by complete loss
of memory;--the impossibility of concentrating his attention upon
anything, lack of judgment, delirium and incoherence. He no longer
even possessed the natural animal instinct of self-preservation, and
had to be watched like an infant whom one never permits out of one's
sight. Therefore a warder was detailed to keep close watch over him
by day and by night in Pavilion No. 17, at the end of Healthful House
Park, which had been specially set apart for him.

Ordinary insanity, when it is not incurable, can only be cured by
moral means. Medicine and therapeutics are powerless, and their
inefficacy has long been recognized by specialists. Were these moral
means applicable to the case of Thomas Roch? One may be permitted
to doubt it, even amid the tranquil and salubrious surroundings of
Healthful House. As a matter of fact the very symptoms of uneasiness,
changes of temper, irritability, queer traits of character,
melancholy, apathy, and a repugnance for serious occupations were
distinctly apparent; no treatment seemed capable of curing or even
alleviating these symptoms. This was patent to all his medical
attendants.

It has been justly remarked that madness is an excess of subjectivity;
that is to say, a state in which the mind accords too much to mental
labor and not enough to outward impressions. In the case of Thomas
Roch this indifference was practically absolute. He lived but within
himself, so to speak, a prey to a fixed idea which had brought him to
the condition in which we find him. Could any circumstance occur
to counteract it--to "exteriorize" him, as it were? The thing was
improbable, but it was not impossible.

It is now necessary to explain how this Frenchman came to quit France,
what motive attracted him to the United States, why the Federal
government had judged it prudent and necessary to intern him in this
sanitarium, where every utterance that unconsciously escaped him
during his crises were noted and recorded with the minutest care.

Eighteen months previously the Secretary of the Navy at Washington,
had received a demand for an audience in regard to a communication
that Thomas Roch desired to make to him.

As soon as he glanced at the name, the secretary perfectly understood
the nature of the communication and the terms which would accompany
it, and an immediate audience was unhesitatingly accorded.

Thomas Roch's notoriety was indeed such that, out of solicitude for
the interests confided to his keeping, and which he was bound to
safeguard, he could not hesitate to receive the petitioner and listen
to the proposals which the latter desired personally to submit to him.

Thomas Roch was an inventor--an inventor of genius. Several important
discoveries had brought him prominently to the notice of the
world. Thanks to him, problems that had previously remained purely
theoretical had received practical application. He occupied a
conspicuous place in the front rank of the army of science. It will be
seen how worry, deceptions, mortification, and the outrages with which
he was overwhelmed by the cynical wits of the press combined to drive
him to that degree of madness which necessitated his internment in
Healthful House.

His latest invention in war-engines bore the name of Roch's
Fulgurator. This apparatus possessed, if he was to be believed, such
superiority over all others, that the State which acquired it would
become absolute master of earth and ocean.

The deplorable difficulties inventors encounter in connection with
their inventions are only too well known, especially when they
endeavor to get them adopted by governmental commissions. Several of
the most celebrated examples are still fresh in everybody's memory.
It is useless to insist upon this point, because there are sometimes
circumstances underlying affairs of this kind upon which it is
difficult to obtain any light. In regard to Thomas Roch, however,
it is only fair to say that, as in the case of the majority of his
predecessors, his pretensions were excessive. He placed such an
exorbitant price upon his new engine that it was practicably
impossible to treat with him.

This was due to the fact--and it should not be lost sight of--that in
respect of previous inventions which had been most fruitful in result,
he had been imposed upon with the greatest audacity. Being unable
to obtain therefrom the profits which he had a right to expect, his
temper had become soured. He became suspicious, would give up nothing
without knowing just what he was doing, impose conditions that
were perhaps unacceptable, wanted his mere assertions accepted as
sufficient guarantee, and in any case asked for such a large sum of
money on account before condescending to furnish the test of practical
experiment that his overtures could not be entertained.

In the first place he had offered the fulgurator to France, and made
known the nature of it to the commission appointed to pass upon his
proposition. The fulgurator was a sort of auto-propulsive engine,
of peculiar construction, charged with an explosive composed of new
substances and which only produced its effect under the action of a
deflagrator that was also new.

When this engine, no matter in what way it was launched, exploded, not
on striking the object aimed at, but several hundred yards from it,
its action upon the atmospheric strata was so terrific that any
construction, warship or floating battery, within a zone of twelve
thousand square yards, would be blown to atoms. This was the principle
of the shell launched by the Zalinski pneumatic gun with which
experiments had already been made at that epoch, but its results were
multiplied at least a hundred-fold.

If, therefore, Thomas Roch's invention possessed this power, it
assured the offensive and defensive superiority of his native country.
But might not the inventor be exaggerating, notwithstanding that the
tests of other engines he had conceived had proved incontestably that
they were all he had claimed them to be? This, experiment could alone
show, and it was precisely here where the rub came in. Roch would
not agree to experiment until the millions at which he valued his
fulgurator had first been paid to him.

It is certain that a sort of disequilibrium had then occurred in his
mental faculties. It was felt that he was developing a condition of
mind that would gradually lead to definite madness. No government
could possibly condescend to treat with him under the conditions he
imposed.

The French commission was compelled to break off all negotiations with
him, and the newspapers, even those of the Radical Opposition, had to
admit that it was difficult to follow up the affair.

In view of the excess of subjectivity which was unceasingly augmenting
in the profoundly disturbed mind of Thomas Roch, no one will be
surprised at the fact that the cord of patriotism gradually relaxed
until it ceased to vibrate. For the honor of human nature be it said
that Thomas Roch was by this time irresponsible for his actions. He
preserved his whole consciousness only in so far as subjects bearing
directly upon his invention were concerned. In this particular he had
lost nothing of his mental power. But in all that related to the most
ordinary details of existence his moral decrepitude increased daily
and deprived him of complete responsibility for his acts.

Thomas Roch's invention having been refused by the commission, steps
ought to have been taken to prevent him from offering it elsewhere.
Nothing of the kind was done, and there a great mistake was made.

The inevitable was bound to happen, and it did. Under a growing
irritability the sentiment of patriotism, which is the very essence of
the citizen--who before belonging to himself belongs to his country--
became extinct in the soul of the disappointed inventor. His thoughts
turned towards other nations. He crossed the frontier, and forgetting
the ineffaceable past, offered the fulgurator to Germany.

There, as soon as his exorbitant demands were made known, the
government refused to receive his communication. Besides, it so
happened that the military authorities were just then absorbed by the
construction of a new ballistic engine, and imagined they could afford
to ignore that of the French inventor.

As the result of this second rebuff Roch's anger became coupled with
hatred--an instinctive hatred of humanity--especially after his
_pourparlers_ with the British Admiralty came to naught. The English
being practical people, did not at first repulse Thomas Roch. They
sounded him and tried to get round him; but Roch would listen to
nothing. His secret was worth millions, and these millions he would
have, or they would not have his secret. The Admiralty at last
declined to have anything more to do with him.

It was in these conditions, when his intellectual trouble was growing
daily worse, that he made a last effort by approaching the American
Government. That was about eighteen months before this story opens.

The Americans, being even more practical than the English, did not
attempt to bargain for Roch's fulgurator, to which, in view of the
French chemist's reputation, they attached exceptional importance.
They rightly esteemed him a man of genius, and took the measures
justified by his condition, prepared to indemnify him equitably later.

As Thomas Roch gave only too visible proofs of mental alienation,
the Administration, in the very interest of his invention, judged it
prudent to sequestrate him.

As is already known, he was not confined in a lunatic asylum, but was
conveyed to Healthful House, which offered every guarantee for the
proper treatment of his malady. Yet, though the most careful attention
had been devoted to him, no improvement had manifested itself.

Thomas Roch, let it be again remarked--this point cannot be too often
insisted upon--incapable though he was of comprehending and performing
the ordinary acts and duties of life, recovered all his powers when
the field of his discoveries was touched upon. He became animated, and
spoke with the assurance of a man who knows whereof he is descanting,
and an authority that carried conviction with it. In the heat of his
eloquence he would describe the marvellous qualities of his fulgurator
and the truly extraordinary effects it caused. As to the nature of the
explosive and of the deflagrator, the elements of which the latter was
composed, their manufacture, and the way in which they were employed,
he preserved complete silence, and all attempts to worm the secret out
of him remained ineffectual. Once or twice, during the height of the
paroxysms to which he was occasionally subject, there had been reason
to believe that his secret would escape him, and every precaution had
been taken to note his slightest utterance. But Thomas Roch had
each time disappointed his watchers. If he no longer preserved the
sentiment of self-preservation, he at least knew how to preserve the
secret of his discovery.

Pavilion No. 17 was situated in the middle of a garden that was
surrounded by hedges, and here Roch was accustomed to take exercise
under the surveillance of his guardian. This guardian lived in the
same pavilion, slept in the same room with him, and kept constant
watch upon him, never leaving him for an hour. He hung upon
the lightest words uttered by the patient in the course of his
hallucinations, which generally occurred in the intermediary state
between sleeping and waking--watched and listened while he dreamed.

This guardian was known as Gaydon. Shortly after the sequestration of
Thomas Roch, having learned that an attendant speaking French fluently
was wanted, he had applied at Healthful House for the place, and had
been engaged to look after the new inmate.

In reality the alleged Gaydon was a French engineer named Simon Hart,
who for several years past had been connected with a manufactory of
chemical products in New Jersey. Simon Hart was forty years of age.
His high forehead was furrowed with the wrinkle that denoted the
thinker, and his resolute bearing denoted energy combined with
tenacity. Extremely well versed in the various questions relating to
the perfecting of modern armaments, Hart knew everything that had been
invented in the shape of explosives, of which there were over eleven
hundred at that time, and was fully able to appreciate such a man
as Thomas Roch. He firmly believed in the power of the latter's
fulgurator, and had no doubt whatever that the inventor had conceived
an engine that was capable of revolutionizing the condition of both
offensive and defensive warfare on land and sea. He was aware that the
demon of insanity had respected the man of science, and that in Roch's
partially diseased brain the flame of genius still burned brightly.
Then it occurred to him that if, during Roch's crises, his secret was
revealed, this invention of a Frenchman would be seized upon by some
other country to the detriment of France. Impelled by a spirit of
patriotism, he made up his mind to offer himself as Thomas Roch's
guardian, by passing himself off as an American thoroughly conversant
with the French language, in order that if the inventor did at any
time disclose his secret, France alone should benefit thereby. On
pretext of returning to Europe, he resigned his position at the New
Jersey manufactory, and changed his name so that none should know what
had become of him.

Thus it came to pass that Simon Hart, alias Gaydon, had been an
attendant at Healthful House for fifteen months. It required no little
courage on the part of a man of his position and education to perform
the menial and exacting duties of an insane man's attendant; but, as
has been before remarked, he was actuated by a spirit of the purest
and noblest patriotism. The idea of depriving Roch of the legitimate
benefits due to the inventor, if he succeeded in learning his secret,
never for an instant entered his mind.

He had kept the patient under the closest possible observation for
fifteen months yet had not been able to learn anything from him,
or worm out of him a single reply to his questions that was of the
slightest value. But he had become more convinced than ever of the
importance of Thomas Roch's discovery, and was extremely apprehensive
lest the partial madness of the inventor should become general, or
lest he should die during one of his paroxysms and carry his secret
with him to the grave.

This was Simon Hart's position, and this the mission to which he had
wholly devoted himself in the interest of his native country.

However, notwithstanding his deceptions and troubles, Thomas Roch's
physical health, thanks to his vigorous constitution, was not
particularly affected. A man of medium height, with a large head,
high, wide forehead, strongly-cut features, iron-gray hair and
moustache, eyes generally haggard, but which became piercing and
imperious when illuminated by his dominant idea, thin lips closely
compressed, as though to prevent the escape of a word that could
betray his secret--such was the inventor confined in one of
the pavilions of Healthful House, probably unconscious of his
sequestration, and confided to the surveillance of Simon Hart the
engineer, become Gaydon the warder.

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