It was just then that Boyce came in. So soon as he spoke Davidson
exclaimed: “Old Boyce! Dead too! What a lark!” I hastened to explain
that Davidson was in a kind of somnambulistic trance. Boyce was
interested at once. We both did all we could to rouse the fellow out of
his extraordinary state. He answered our questions, and asked us some of
his own, but his attention seemed distracted by his hallucination about
a beach and a ship. He kept interpolating observations concerning some
boat and the davits and sails filling with the wind. It made one feel
queer, in the dusky laboratory, to hear him saying such things.
He was blind and helpless. We had to walk him down the passage, one at
each elbow, to Boyce’s private room, and while Boyce talked to him
there, and humoured him about this ship idea, I went along the corridor
and asked old Wade to come and look at him. The voice of our Dean
sobered him a little, but not very much. He asked where his hands were,
and why he had to walk about up to his waist in the ground. Wade thought
over him a long time—you know how he knits his brows—and then made him
feel the couch, guiding his hands to it. “That’s a couch,” said Wade.
“The couch in the private room of Professor Boyce. Horsehair stuffing.”
Davidson felt about, and puzzled over it, and answered presently that he
could feel it all right, but he couldn’t see it.
“What _do_ you see?” asked Wade. Davidson said he could see nothing but
a lot of sand and broken-up shells. Wade gave him some other things to
feel, telling him what they were, and watching him keenly.
“The ship is almost hull down,” said Davidson, presently, _apropos_ of
nothing.
“Never mind the ship,” said Wade. “Listen to me, Davidson. Do you know
what hallucination means?”
“Rather,” said Davidson.
“Well, everything you see is hallucinatory.”
“Bishop Berkeley,” said Davidson.
“Don’t mistake me,” said Wade. “You are alive, and in this room of
Boyce’s. But something has happened to your eyes. You cannot see; you
can feel and hear, but not see. Do you follow me?”
“It seems to me that I see too much.” Davidson rubbed his knuckles into
his eyes. “Well?” he said.
“That’s all. Don’t let it perplex you. Bellows, here, and I will take
you home in a cab.”
“Wait a bit.” Davidson thought. “Help me to sit down,” said he,
presently; “and now—I’m sorry to trouble you—but will you tell me all
that over again?”
Wade repeated it very patiently. Davidson shut his eyes, and pressed his
hands upon his forehead. “Yes,” said he. “It’s quite right. Now my eyes
are shut I know you’re right. That’s you, Bellows, sitting by me on the
couch. I’m in England again. And we’re in the dark.”
Then he opened his eyes. “And there,” said he, “is the sun just rising,
and the yards of the ship, and a tumbled sea, and a couple of birds
flying. I never saw anything so real. And I’m sitting up to my neck in a
bank of sand.”
He bent forward and covered his face with his hands. Then he opened his
eyes again. “Dark sea and sunrise! And yet I’m sitting on a sofa in old
Boyce’s room!—God help me!”