The Twilight of the Souls Part 7

"The doctor wants to get me to Nunspeet," he answered, craftily. He laughed scornfully: "I know all about it. You people think I'm mad. But I'm not mad," he went on, haughtily. "You people are stupid: stupid and mad is what you are. You see nothing and hear nothing, you with your dull brute senses; and then you just think, because some one else sees and hears and feels, that he's mad ... whereas it's you yourselves who are mad. I shall stay here; I won't go to Nunspeet."

But suddenly he grew alarmed and asked:

"I say, Constance, you won't force me, surely? You won't beat me? That beastly cad down below, that fellow, that cad: he hit me ... and woke them ... and trod on them! He stood treading on them, the great fool, the blockhead!... Tell me, Constance, you will leave me here, won't you?"

"No, Ernst, no one wants to force you. But it would be a good thing if you went to Nunspeet."

"But why? I'm all right here."

"You would be among kind people ... who will be fond of you."

"No one has ever been fond of me," he said.

"Ernst!" she cried, with a sob.

"No one has ever been fond of me," he repeated, bluntly. "Not Mamma ...

nor any of you ... not one. If I had not had all of them ... oh, if I had not had all of them! My darlings, my darlings! Oh, what can be the matter with them? Now they're waking up! Now they're awake! Oh, listen to them moaning! Oh dear, listen to them screaming! They're screaming, they're yelling! ... _Is_ it purgatory? Oh, dear, how they're crowding round me! They're stifling me, they're stifling me!... Oh dear, it's more than I can bear!"

He rushed to the open window; and she was afraid that he wanted to throw himself out, so that she caught him round the body with both her arms.

The old doctor came in. He shut the window.

"I can do nothing," she murmured to the old man, in despair.

"Yes, you can," said the doctor, calmly. "Yes, you can, mevrouw."

"You are all of you my enemies," said Ernst. "My enemies and theirs."

And he went and sat in his corner, huddled up, with his arms round his knees.

"Go away," he said, addressing both of them.

"I'm going, Ernst," said the old doctor. "But Constance may as well stay."

He sometimes called her by her Christian name, the old doctor who had brought them into the world in India; and to Constance it was touching, to hear that name from under his grey moustache; it called up those old, old days.

"Constance can stay?"

"Very well," said Ernst.

The doctor left them alone: the nurse would be on his guard.

"Ernst," said Constance, "suppose we went together ... to Nunspeet?"

"Why? Why?" he asked, vehemently. "I'm all right here.... And we can't take them with us there," he whispered, more gently. "Ssh! You're waking them."

"It will be quieter for them, perhaps, if you leave them here, dear,"

she said, kneeling on the floor beside him, feeling for his hand, with her eyes full of tears.

"No, no ... that woman's brother down there ... that cad...."

"But, Ernst," she said, more firmly, with her eyes on his, "dear Ernst, do let me tell you: they don't exist. They exist only in your imagination. You must really get rid of the idea: then you will be well again, quite well.... Ernst, dear Ernst, they don't exist. Do look round you: there's nothing to see but the room, your furniture, your books, your vases. There's nothing else, except our two selves.... Oh, Ernst, do try to see it: there's nothing.... That you feel as if you were suffocating comes from always being so much alone, never going out, never walking. At Nunspeet, we will walk ... on the heath, over the dunes ... and then you will get quite well again, Ernst.... For, honestly, you are ill.... There's nothing here, nothing. Look for yourself: there's only you and I ... and your furniture and books...."

He quietly let her talk; an ironical smile curled round his lips; and at last he gave her a glance of pitying contempt, gave a little shrug of his shoulders. Then he softly stroked her hand, patted it gently, in a fatherly manner:

"You are kind and nice, Constance, but," shaking his head, "you have no sense! I believe you mean what you say, but that's just it: you're narrow, you're limited. You don't see, you don't hear," putting his hand to his eyes and ears, "what I see, what I hear with my eyes and my ears...."

"But, Ernst, you must surely understand that those are all illusions.

The doctor says that they are hallucinations."

He continued to smile, looked at her with his contemptuous pity, looked hard out of his black Van Lowe eyes.

"They are hallucinations, Ernst."

"And you?"

"No, I'm not."

"And the room, the books, the vases?..."

"No, they are not. They are all around you, they exist."

"Well ... and why not all of them, the souls?"

"They don't exist, Ernst. They are hallucinations."

He just closed his eyelids, smiled, shrugged his shoulders, to convey that he was utterly at a loss to understand such exceedingly limited perceptions. Then he said, gently and kindly:

"No, Constance dear, you're not clever ... if you mean all you say. I believe you do mean it, but that's just it: you live like a blind person; you don't see, you don't hear. That's the way you all of you live and exist, in a dream, with closed eyes and deaf ears. You none of you see, hear or understand anything. You know nothing. You are as unfeeling as stones. You can't help it, Constance, but it's a pity, for you are so nice. There might have been something to be made of you, if you had learnt to see and hear and feel. It's too late now, Constance.

You are stupid now, like all the rest; but I'm sorry, for you are very nice. Your hand is soft, your voice is soft; and you did your best not to tread on my poor darlings ... and not to drag them away on their chains, which are riveted so fast to my heart that they hurt me sometimes, here!"

He put his hand to his heart. A weariness came over her brain, as though she were exhausting herself in the effort to speak and to give understanding to an intelligence and a soul which remained very far away, miles away, and which her words could only reach through a dense cloud of darkness. And suddenly that sense of weariness and impotence became crueller and harder within her: it was as though she were talking to a stone, to a wall; she felt her own words beating back against her forehead like tennis-b.a.l.l.s striking the wall.

"But, Ernst," she tried once more, "won't you come to Nunspeet with me ... to please _me_, to walk on the heath with _me_? You would be giving me such immense pleasure. It would be good for _me_...."

"And all of them, here, around me?..."

He pointed round the room, cautiously.

"We will leave them to sleep here."

"And that cad, downstairs?..."

"He sha'n't interfere with them, I promise you.... We'll lock up the room, Ernst, and they shall sleep peacefully."

She humoured him, not knowing if she was doing right, but feeling too tired to convince him.

"You promise?" he asked, suddenly. "You promise that they shall sleep peacefully?"