Part 7 (1/2)
”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. ”Ss.h.!.+ 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....”