DREAMS
When Adams arrived at the Avenue Malakoff he found Berselius in the
library. He was seated in a big armchair, and M. Pinchon, his secretary, a
man dry-looking as an account-book, bald, and wearing spectacles, was just
leaving the room with some shorthand notes of business letters to be
typed.
Berselius was much changed; his hair was quite gray, his eyes, once so
calm, forceful, and intrinsically brilliant, had lost their lustre, his
face wore the expression of a confirmed invalid.
Great discontent was the predominant feature of this expression.
It was only within the last few days that this had appeared. On recovering
from the hardships of the forest and on the voyage home, though weak
enough, he had been serene, mild, amiable and rather listless, but during
the last few days something was visibly troubling him.
He had "gone off," to use an expressive phrase sometimes employed by
physicians.
A strange thing had happened to Berselius. Ever since the recovery of his
memory his new self had contemplated the past from the heights of new
birth, calmly conscious of the fact that this past belonged to a man who
was dead. The more he examined this past the more he loathed the man to
whom it had belonged, but the difference between that man and himself was
so profound that he felt, rightly, that he was not _He_.
Three mornings ago Berselius, who rarely dreamt, had awakened from a long
night of hunting in Dreamland. In Dreamland he had cast off his new
personality and became his old self, and then, in his hunting shirt and
with a cordite rifle in his hand, accompanied by the Zappo Zap, he had
tracked elephant herds across illimitable plains.
He had awakened to his new self again with the full recognition in his
mind that only a few moments ago he had been thinking with that other
man's brain, acting under his passions, living his life.
The Berselius of Dreamland had not the remotest connection with, or
knowledge of, the Berselius of real life. Yet the Berselius of real life
was very intimately connected with the Berselius of Dreamland, knew all
his actions, knew all his sensations, and remembered them to the minutest
detail.
The next night he did not dream at all--not so on the third night, when
the scene of horror by the Silent Pools was reenacted, himself in the
original _role_. The incidents were not quite the same, for scenes from
real life are scarcely ever reproduced on the stage of Dreamland in their
entirety; but they were ghastly enough in all conscience, and Berselius,
awake and wiping the sweat from his brow, saw them clearly before him and
remembered the callousness with which he had watched them but a few
moments ago.
No man can command his dreams; the dreaming man lives in a world beyond
law, and it came as a shock to Berselius that his old self should be alive
in him like this, powerful, active, and beyond rebuke.
Physically, he was a wreck of his old self, but that was nothing to the
fact which was now borne in on him--the fact that this new mentality was
but a thin shell covering the old, as the thin shell of earth, with its
flowers and pleasant landscapes, covers the burning hell which is the
earth's core.
The thing was perfectly natural. A great and vivid personality, and forty
years of exuberant and self-willed life had at a stroke been checked and
changed. The crust of his mind had cooled; tempestuous passions had passed
from the surface, giving place to kindlier emotions, but the furnace was
there beneath the flower garden just as it is in the case of the earth.
Captain Berselius was still alive, though suppressed and living in
secrecy. At night, touched by the magic wand of sleep, he became awake,
and became supreme master of the tenement in the cellars of which he was
condemned to sleep by day.
So far from having been touched by death, Captain Berselius was now secure
from death or change; a thing not to be reasoned with or altered--beyond
human control--yet vividly alive as the fabled monster that inhabits the
cellars of Glamis Castle.
Between the dual personalities of the man complete fission had taken
place, a terrible accident of the sort condemning the cast-off personality
to live in darkness beyond the voice of mind or amendment.
"Well," said Adams, as he entered the room. "How are you to-day?"
"Oh, about the same, about the same. If I could sleep properly I would
mend, but my sleep is broken."
"I must give you something to alter that."
Berselius laughed.
"Drugs?"
"Yes, drugs. We doctors cannot always command health, but we can command
sleep. Do you feel yourself able to talk for a bit?"
"Oh, yes, I feel physically well. Sit down, you will find some cigars in
that cabinet."
Adams lit a cigar and took his seat in an armchair close to his companion.
All differences of rank and wealth were sunk between these two men who had
gone through so much together. On their return, when Berselius had desired
Adams to remain as his medical attendant, he had delegated M. Pinchon as
intermediary to deal with Adams as to the financial side of the question.
Adams received a large salary paid monthly in advance by the secretary.
Berselius did not have any hand in the matter, thus the feeling of
employer and employed was reduced to vanishing point and the position
rendered more equal.
"You know," said Adams, "I have always been glad to do anything I can for
you, and I always shall be, but since I have come back to Paris I have
been filled with unrest. You complain of sleeplessness--well, that is my
disease."
"Yes?"
"It's that place over there; it has got into my blood. I declare to God
that I am the last man in the world to sentimentalize, but that horror is
killing me, and I must act--I must do something--even if I have to go into
the middle of the Place de la Concorde and shout it aloud. I shall shout
it aloud. I'm not made so that I can stand seeing a thing like that in
silence."
Berselius sat with his eyes fixed on the carpet; he seemed abstracted and
scarcely listening. He knew perfectly well that Adams was acquainted with
the affair at the Silent Pools, but the subject had never been mentioned
between them, nor was it now.
"That missionary I met on the return home at Leopoldsville," went on
Adams, "he was a Baptist, a man, not a religion-machine. He gave me
details from years of experience that turned my heart in me. With my own
eyes I saw enough----"
Berselius held up his hand.
"Let us not speak of what we know," said he. "The thing is there--has been
there for years--can you destroy the past?"
"No; but one can improve the future." Adams got up and paced the floor.
"Now, now as I am talking to you, that villainy is going on; it is like
knowing that a murder is slowly being committed in the next house and that
one has no power to interfere. When I look at the streets full of people
amusing themselves; when I see the _cafés_ crammed, and the rich driving
in their carriages; the churches filled with worshippers worshipping a God
who serenely sits in heaven without stretching a hand to help His poor,
benighted creatures--when I see all this and contrast it with what I have
seen, I could worship _that_!"
He stopped, and pointed to the great gorilla shot years ago in German West
Africa by Berselius. "That was a being at least sincere. Whatever
brutalities he committed in his life, he did not talk sentiment and
religion and humanitarianism as he pulled his victims to pieces, and he
did not pull his victims to pieces for the sake of gold. He was an honest
devil, a far higher thing than a dishonest man."
Again Berselius held up his hand.
"What would you do?"
"Do? I'd break that infernal machine which calls itself a State, and I'd
guillotine the ruffian that invented it. I cannot do that, but I can at
least protest."
Berselius, who had helped to make the machine, and who knew better than
most men its strength, shook his head sadly.
"Do what you will," said he. "If you need money my funds are at your
disposal, but you cannot destroy the past."
Adams, who knew nothing of Berselius's dream-obsession, could not
understand the full meaning of these words.
But he had received permission to act, and the promise of that financial
support without which individual action would be of no avail.
He determined to act; he determined to spare neither Berselius's money nor
his own time.
But the determination of man is limited by circumstance, and circumstance
was at that moment preparing and rehearsing the last act of the drama of
Berselius.