Datasets:
Beifengdo
/
Python-Learning

Dataset card Data Studio Files
xet
 Community
text
stringlengths
0
73
Lord Godalming and Quincey. Van Helsing sits in my study poring over the
record prepared by the Harkers; he seems to think that by accurate
knowledge of all details he will light upon some clue. He does not wish
to be disturbed in the work, without cause. I would have taken him with
me to see the patient, only I thought that after his last repulse he
might not care to go again. There was also another reason: Renfield
might not speak so freely before a third person as when he and I were
alone.
I found him sitting out in the middle of the floor on his stool, a pose
which is generally indicative of some mental energy on his part. When I
came in, he said at once, as though the question had been waiting on his
lips:--
"What about souls?" It was evident then that my surmise had been
correct. Unconscious cerebration was doing its work, even with the
lunatic. I determined to have the matter out. "What about them
yourself?" I asked. He did not reply for a moment but looked all round
him, and up and down, as though he expected to find some inspiration for
an answer.
"I don't want any souls!" he said in a feeble, apologetic way. The
matter seemed preying on his mind, and so I determined to use it--to "be
cruel only to be kind." So I said:--
"You like life, and you want life?"
"Oh yes! but that is all right; you needn't worry about that!"
"But," I asked, "how are we to get the life without getting the soul
also?" This seemed to puzzle him, so I followed it up:--
"A nice time you'll have some time when you're flying out there, with
the souls of thousands of flies and spiders and birds and cats buzzing
and twittering and miauing all round you. You've got their lives, you
know, and you must put up with their souls!" Something seemed to affect
his imagination, for he put his fingers to his ears and shut his eyes,
screwing them up tightly just as a small boy does when his face is being
soaped. There was something pathetic in it that touched me; it also gave
me a lesson, for it seemed that before me was a child--only a child,
though the features were worn, and the stubble on the jaws was white. It
was evident that he was undergoing some process of mental disturbance,
and, knowing how his past moods had interpreted things seemingly foreign
to himself, I thought I would enter into his mind as well as I could and
go with him. The first step was to restore confidence, so I asked him,
speaking pretty loud so that he would hear me through his closed ears:--
"Would you like some sugar to get your flies round again?" He seemed to
wake up all at once, and shook his head. With a laugh he replied:--
"Not much! flies are poor things, after all!" After a pause he added,
"But I don't want their souls buzzing round me, all the same."
"Or spiders?" I went on.
"Blow spiders! What's the use of spiders? There isn't anything in them
to eat or"--he stopped suddenly, as though reminded of a forbidden
topic.
"So, so!" I thought to myself, "this is the second time he has suddenly
stopped at the word 'drink'; what does it mean?" Renfield seemed himself
aware of having made a lapse, for he hurried on, as though to distract
my attention from it:--
"I don't take any stock at all in such matters. 'Rats and mice and such
small deer,' as Shakespeare has it, 'chicken-feed of the larder' they
might be called. I'm past all that sort of nonsense. You might as well
ask a man to eat molecules with a pair of chop-sticks, as to try to
interest me about the lesser carnivora, when I know of what is before
me."
"I see," I said. "You want big things that you can make your teeth meet
in? How would you like to breakfast on elephant?"
"What ridiculous nonsense you are talking!" He was getting too wide
awake, so I thought I would press him hard. "I wonder," I said
reflectively, "what an elephant's soul is like!"
The effect I desired was obtained, for he at once fell from his
high-horse and became a child again.
"I don't want an elephant's soul, or any soul at all!" he said. For a
few moments he sat despondently. Suddenly he jumped to his feet, with
his eyes blazing and all the signs of intense cerebral excitement. "To
hell with you and your souls!" he shouted. "Why do you plague me about
souls? Haven't I got enough to worry, and pain, and distract me already,
without thinking of souls!" He looked so hostile that I thought he was
in for another homicidal fit, so I blew my whistle. The instant,
however, that I did so he became calm, and said apologetically:--
"Forgive me, Doctor; I forgot myself. You do not need any help. I am so
worried in my mind that I am apt to be irritable. If you only knew the
problem I have to face, and that I am working out, you would pity, and
tolerate, and pardon me. Pray do not put me in a strait-waistcoat. I
want to think and I cannot think freely when my body is confined. I am
sure you will understand!" He had evidently self-control; so when the
attendants came I told them not to mind, and they withdrew. Renfield
watched them go; when the door was closed he said, with considerable
dignity and sweetness:--