The Twilight of the Souls Part 16

until...."

He had lost the thread of his thoughts, pa.s.sed his hand over his hair and said, mournfully:

"Addie, my dear boy, you mustn't come and see me any more. Uncle is in a bad house. It's a bad place, that doctor's house. Terrible things happen there at night. You're too young, Addie, to come to such a bad house.

Promise me that you won't come again...."

"Uncle, the doctor's is not a bad house...."

"Of course you would know better than I! You're young; and you don't know and don't see things. There are scandalous goings-on at night, scandalous things in every room in the house. I shall tell Mamma to take you away: I can't look after all of you...."

"Uncle, you should stop thinking of such things and enjoy your walk and the air and the woods and the dunes and the clouds...."

"Yes, that's what you say: stop thinking ... and enjoy ... and enjoy...."

"Yes, enjoy nature around you...."

"Nature?..."

His restless black eyes encountered Addie's clear glance. And suddenly he stopped and said:

"Tell me, do they leave them alone, in my rooms on the Nieuwe Uitleg?"

"Uncle, there's nothing there; and all your books and china are well taken care of...."

"Is there nothing there?"

"No, Uncle, not what you think."

"And in the doctor's house?"

"There's nothing there either, Uncle."

"Here, round about us?"

"There's nothing, Uncle."

"Then what I hear...."

"Is an hallucination, Uncle."

"What I see...."

"That too."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it's the truth, Uncle."

"How do you know what is the truth?"

"Through my senses, Uncle. Through my reason."

"Are they healthy? Are they infallible?"

"Perhaps not infallible, but healthy. And yours are ailing."

"Are mine ailing?"

"Yes, Uncle."

"My senses?"

"Yes. And your reason too."

"You know that?"

"Yes, I know it for certain."

It was as though the sick man for one moment doubted himself, while he kept his eyes fixed on the boy's steady, blue eyes and read a strange lucidity in them. But something inside him made him unable or unwilling to overstep a certain boundary which was like a line of suffering in his sick mind, a grievous horizon, an horizon which was too near, which he could not look at from a distance, which had neither light nor darkness behind it, but only mist.

"And what about this?" he asked, pointing with his stick to the dune on which they stood.

"What, Uncle?"

"This, this, underneath us! This moaning and sighing and imploring for help!"

He threw himself flat on the sand; he dug furiously:

"Yes!" he shouted. "Wait! Wait a moment! I'm coming, I'm coming!"

And, rooting with his hands, like an animal, he sent the sand flying around him.

"Oh," thought Addie, "if he would only make one more effort suddenly to see, to hear, to feel that he was dreaming ... that he was dreaming! Oh, to have him get well ... to see him get well, all at once, so that one knew it by the brightness in his eyes ... and the untroubled look on his face!..."

Then he put his hand on Ernst's shoulder. The sick man stood up, walked along:

"Come on," he said, beckoning to Addie.

CHAPTER VIII

That evening, in the lane in front of the little hotel, Addie walked arm-in-arm with his mother. The deepening shadows gathered round them, pierced by the bright light of the lamp outside the house.

"Mummy, I want to talk to you...."

They were strolling slowly up and down; and the pressure of his hand urged her gently forward, through the deepening shadows, out of the fierce glow of the lamp and farther along the road, whence, under the starry skies, the meadows receded to remote distances towards the last streak of light on the horizon.