Читать книгу The Twilight of the Souls - Louis Marie-Anne Couperus - Страница 7

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CHAPTER III

Constance went to the Nieuwe Uitleg next morning; the landlady, shaking her head, let her in; Dr. van der Ouwe met her in the passage:

"I thank you for coming, mevrouw. It won't do for Ernst to remain here any longer; I should like to take him down to Nunspeet, with one of you, as soon as possible, to-morrow. But it won't be an easy matter . . . poor fellow!"

"I'll do my best," said Constance, doubtfully.

"Then I'll leave you alone with him. You won't be nervous? No, you're not nervous. He's quite quiet, poor fellow. Don't be afraid: I shall be near."

Constance went upstairs, with her heart thumping in her breast. She tapped softly at the door and received no answer:

"Ernst!" she called; and her voice was not very steady. "Ernst . . ."

But there was no reply.

She slowly opened the door. The door-handle grated into her very soul; and before entering she asked once more:

"Ernst. . . . May I come in?"

He still did not answer and she walked into the ​room. She had made up her mind to smile at once, to come up to him with a smile, so that the expression of her face might put her poor brother at his ease. And so she smiled as she entered, looking for him with kindly eyes, as though there were nothing at all out of the common.

But her smile seemed to freeze on her lips when she saw him sitting huddled in a corner of the room, in a flannel shirt and an old pair of trousers, with his long hair hanging unkempt. Nevertheless she controlled herself and said, in as natural a tone as she could command:

"Good-morning, Ernst. I've come to see how you are."

He looked at her suspiciously from his corner and asked:

"Why?"

"Because I heard that you were not well. So I thought I would see how you were getting on.

"I'm not ill," he said, in a low voice.

"Why are you sitting in that corner, Ernst? Are you comfortable there?"

"Ssh!" he said. "They're asleep. Don't speak too loud."

"No. But I may talk quietly, mayn't I, Ernst? . . . Can't you get up from your chair? For there's no room there to sit beside you. Come, dear, won't you get up?"

​And she smiled and held out both her hands to him.

He smiled back and said:

"Ssh! Don't wake them."

"No, no. But do get up."

He gave way at last and, grasping her hands warily, allowed her to pull him up, out of his corner, and once more said, earnestly:

"You must promise me not to wake them. All my visitors wake them, the brutes! The doctor woke them too."

"No, Ernst, we'll let them sleep. There, it's nice of you to have got up. Shall we sit down here?"

"Yes. Why have you come? You never come to see me. . . ."

There was in his words an unconscious reproach that startled her. It was quite true: she never came to see him. Since that first time, eighteen months ago, when he had asked her to his rooms on her return to Holland, the day when she had lunched here with him, when he had toasted her with two fingers of champagne out of a quaint old glass, she had never once been back. She reproached herself for it now: she, who did feel all that affection for her family, why had she left that brother to himself, as all the others did, just because he was queer? If she had overcome that vague feeling of distaste, almost of repugnance; if she had felt for him ​always as she suddenly felt for him now, perhaps he would not have been so self-centred, perhaps he would have retained his sanity.

"No, Ernst," she confessed, "I never came to see you. It wasn't nice of me, was it?"

"No, it wasn't nice of you," he said. "For I'm very fond of you, Constance."

Her heart began to fail her. Her breath came in gasps; her eyes filled with tears. She put her arm over his shoulder and, without restraining her emotion, she cried:

"Did we all leave you so much alone, Ernst?"

"No," he said, quietly, "I am never alone. They are all of them around me, always. There are some of every century. Sometimes they are magnificently dressed and sing with exquisite voices. But latterly," mournfully shaking his head, "latterly they have not been like that. They are all grey, like ghosts; they no longer sing their beautiful tunes; they weep and wail and gnash their teeth. They used to come out into the middle of the room . . . and laugh and sing and glitter. But now, oh, Constance, I don't know what they suffer, but they suffer something terrible . . . a purgatory! They crowd round me, they suffocate me, till I can't draw my breath. . . . Hush, there they are, waking again! . . ."

"No, Ernst, no, Ernst, they're asleep!"

He turned to her with a knowing laugh:

​"Yes," he whispered, "you are kind, you love them, you are sorry for them . . . you let them sleep . . . you don't wake them. . . ."

And they sat quietly together for a moment, without speaking, she with her arm round his shoulder.

"What a lot of pretty things you have, Ernst!" she said, looking round the room.

"Yes," he said, "I collected them . . . gradually, very gradually. There was one in every piece."

"Ernst," she said, gently, "perhaps it would be a good thing if you went to the country this summer."

At once he seemed to stiffen and shrink under her touch, as though all his limbs were becoming tense and stark:

"I won't leave here," he said.

"Ernst, it would be so good for you. Do you know Nunspeet?"

She felt him go rigid; and he looked at her angrily and harshly:

"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-balls 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?"

"Yes."

"That the cad downstairs won't wake them and tread on them?"

"Yes, yes."

"You promise that?"

"Yes."

"We'll lock up the room very quietly?"

"Yes."

"And nobody at all will come in?"

"No."

"You promise that?"

"Yes."

"Will you swear it?"

"Yes, Ernst."

​"All right, then."

"Will you come?" she cried, rejoicing and unable to believe her ears.

"Yes. Because you would so much like to go for walks . . . on the heath. You're nice. . . ."

He spoke gently, pityingly; and his contempt was not as great as it had been, for he looked upon her as a nice but stupid child that needed his help and his protection.

She smiled at him in return, stood up where she had been kneeling beside him, put out her hands to him, inviting him to get up from his corner also. He let her pull him up; he was a heavy weight: she drew him out of his corner like a lump of lead.

"Then we start to-morrow, Ernst?"

He nodded yes, good-naturedly: she was very nice . . . and she was longing for those walks . . . and she was so weak, so stupid, she knew nothing, saw, heard and felt nothing, absolutely nothing. He must help her and guide her and support her.

"And shall we pack a trunk now, while I am here?"

He did not understand that a trunk was necessary: he looked at her blankly; but he wanted to please her and said:

"All right. But don't make a noise."

The doctor returned.

"He's coming," she whispered. "We're going to pack his trunk."

​The doctor pressed her hand. Ernst looked down upon them both, smiling, as upon poor, unfortunate people who cannot help being so stupid . . . so slow of understanding . . . so limited in their knowledge . . . so dull of perception. . . .

And, while Constance and the doctor opened the clothes-press in his bedroom, he warned them, quietly, but with dignity:

"Ssh! Be careful, you know. Don't let the door of the wardrobe creak. Don't wake them! . . ."