Chapter 2

I had walked down that day from Dr. Archer’s house on Madison Avenue,
where I had been as a mere formality. Ever since that fall from my
horse, four years before, I had been troubled at times with pains in
the back of my head and neck, but now for months they had been absent,
and the doctor sent me away that day saying there was nothing more to
be cured in me. It was hardly worth his fee to be told that; I knew
it myself. Still I did not grudge him the money. What I minded was
the mistake which he made at first. When they picked me up from the
pavement where I lay unconscious, and somebody had mercifully sent a
bullet through my horse’s head, I was carried to Dr. Archer, and he,
pronouncing my brain affected, placed me in his private asylum where I
was obliged to endure treatment for insanity. At last he decided that I
was well, and I, knowing that my mind had always been as sound as his,
if not sounder, “paid my tuition” as he jokingly called it, and left.
I told him, smiling, that I would get even with him for his mistake,
and he laughed heartily, and asked me to call once in a while. I did
so, hoping for a chance to even up accounts, but he gave me none, and I
told him I would wait.

The fall from my horse had fortunately left no evil results; on the
contrary it had changed my whole character for the better. From a lazy
young man about town, I had become active, energetic, temperate, and
above all—oh, above all else—ambitious. There was only one thing
which troubled me, I laughed at my own uneasiness, and yet it troubled
me.

During my convalescence I had bought and read for the first time, _The
King in Yellow_. I remember after finishing the first act that it
occurred to me that I had better stop. I started up and flung the book
into the fireplace; the volume struck the barred grate and fell open
on the hearth in the firelight. If I had not caught a glimpse of the
opening words in the second act I should never have finished it, but
as I stooped to pick it up, my eyes became riveted to the open page,
and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that
I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing out of the coals and
crept shaking to my bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept
and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet.
This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where
black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men’s thoughts
lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of
Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask.
I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world
with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity,
irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King
in Yellow. When the French Government seized the translated copies
which had just arrived in Paris, London, of course, became eager to
read it. It is well known how the book spread like an infectious
disease, from city to city, from continent to continent, barred out
here, confiscated there, denounced by Press and pulpit, censured even
by the most advanced of literary anarchists. No definite principles
had been violated in those wicked pages, no doctrine promulgated, no
convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any known standard,
yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been
struck in _The King in Yellow_, all felt that human nature could not
bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest
poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first act only
allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect.

It was, I remember, the 13th day of April, 1920, that the first
Government Lethal Chamber was established on the south side of
Washington Square, between Wooster Street and South Fifth Avenue. The
block which had formerly consisted of a lot of shabby old buildings,
used as cafés and restaurants for foreigners, had been acquired by
the Government in the winter of 1898. The French and Italian cafés
and restaurants were torn down; the whole block was enclosed by a
gilded iron railing, and converted into a lovely garden with lawns,
flowers and fountains. In the centre of the garden stood a small,
white building, severely classical in architecture, and surrounded by
thickets of flowers. Six Ionic columns supported the roof, and the
single door was of bronze. A splendid marble group of the “Fates” stood
before the door, the work of a young American sculptor, Boris Yvain,
who had died in Paris when only twenty-three years old.

The inauguration ceremonies were in progress as I crossed University
Place and entered the square. I threaded my way through the silent
throng of spectators, but was stopped at Fourth Street by a cordon of
police. A regiment of United States lancers were drawn up in a hollow
square round the Lethal Chamber. On a raised tribune facing Washington
Park stood the Governor of New York, and behind him were grouped the
Mayor of New York and Brooklyn, the Inspector-General of Police, the
Commandant of the state troops, Colonel Livingston, military aid to
the President of the United States, General Blount, commanding at
Governor’s Island, Major-General Hamilton, commanding the garrison of
New York and Brooklyn, Admiral Buffby of the fleet in the North River,
Surgeon-General Lanceford, the staff of the National Free Hospital,
Senators Wyse and Franklin of New York, and the Commissioner of Public
Works. The tribune was surrounded by a squadron of hussars of the
National Guard.