LITMIR.BIZ

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like laughing gas,” remarked Good. “I only hope I shan’t wake with all my teeth out. The last time I took it I felt – “

      “Stop joking,” I said, “for this is a serious matter.”

      “A jolly sight too serious! Is there anything else?”

      “No. That is, if there is anybody you particularly wish to see, you might concentrate your thoughts on him – “

      “Him! I can’t think of any him, unless it is the navigating lieu tenant of my first ship, with whom I always want to have it out in the next world, as he is gone from this, the brute.”

      “On her, then; I meant her.”

      “Then why didn’t you say so instead of indulging in pharisaic al humbug? Who would breathe poison just to meet another man?”

      “I would,” I replied firmly.

      “That’s a lie,” muttered Good. “Hullo! don’t be in such a hurry with that coal, I ain’t ready. Ought I to say any hocus-pocus? Dash it all! it is like a nightmare about being hanged.”

      “No,” I replied, as I dropped the ember onto the Taduki just as Lady Ragnall had done. “Now, play fair, Good,” I added, “for I don’t know what the effect of half a dose would be; it might drive you mad. Look, the flame is burning! Open your mouth and arrange your weight as I said, and when your head begins to whirl, lean back at the end of the third deep breath.”

      The mysterious, billowy vapour arose as the pale blue flame died away, and spread itself out fanwise.

      “Aye, aye, my hearty,” said Good, and thrust his face into it with such vigour that he brought his head into violent contact with mine, as I leant forward from the other side.

      I heard him mutter some words that were better left unsaid, for often enough Good’s language would have borne editing. Then I heard no more and forgot that he existed.

      My mind became wonderfully clear and I found myself arguing in a fashion that would have done credit to the greatest of the Greek philosophers upon all sorts of fundamental problems. All I can remember about that argument or lecture is that, in part at any rate, it dealt with the possibility of reincarnation, setting out the pros and cons in a most vivid manner.

      Even if I had not forgotten them, these may be passed over, as they are familiar to students of such subjects. The end of the exposition, however, was to the effect that, accepted as it is by a quarter of the inhabitants of the earth, this doctrine should not lightly be set aside, seeing that in it there is hope for man; that it is at least worthy of consideration. If the sages who have preached it, from Plato down – and indeed for countless ages before his time, since without doubt he borrowed it from the East – are right, then at least we pure human creatures do not appear and die like gnats upon a summer’s eve, but in that seeming day pass on to life eternally renewed, climbing a kind of Jacob’s ladder to the skies.

      It is true that as our foot leaves it, each rung of that ladder vanishes. Below is darkness and all the gulf of Time. Above is darkness and we know not what. Yet our hands cling to the uprights and our feet stand firm upon a rung, and we know that we do not fall, but mount; also that, in the nature of things, a ladder must lean against some support and lead somewhere. A melancholy business, this tread mill doctrine, it may be said, where one rung is so like another and there are so many of them. And yet, and yet – is it not better than that of the bubble which bursts and is gone? Aye, because life is better than death, especially if it be progressive life, and if at last it may lead to some joy undreamed, to some supernal light in which we shall see all the path that we have trodden, and with it the deep foundations of the Rock of Being upon which our ladder stands and the gates of Eternal Calm whereon it leans.

      Thus, in the beginning of my dream state, I, the lecturer, argued to an unknown audience, or perhaps I was the audience and the lecturer argued to me, I am not sure, pointing out that otherwise we are but as those unhappy victims of the Revolution in the prisons of Paris, who for a little while bow and talk and play our part, waiting till the door opens and the jailer Death appears to lead us to the tumbril and the knife.

      The argument, I should point out, was purely rational; it did not deal with faith, or any revealed religion, perhaps because these are too personal and too holy. It dealt only with the possible development of a mighty law, under the workings of which man, through much tribulation, might accomplish his own weal and at last come to look upon the source of that law and understand its purpose.

      Obviously these imperfectly reported reflections, and many others that I cannot remember at all, were induced by the feeling that I might be about to plunge into some seeming state of former existence, as I had done once before under the influence of this herb. My late friend, Lady Ragnall, believed that state to be not seeming but real; while I, on the other hand, could not accept this as a fact. I set it down, as I am still inclined to do, to the workings of imagination, superexcited by a strange and powerful drug and drawing, perhaps, from some fount of knowledge of past events that is hidden deep in the being of every one of us.

      However these things may be, this rhetorical summing up of the case, of which I can only recollect the last part, was but a kind of introductory speech such as is sometimes made by a master of ceremonies before the curtain rises upon the play. Its echoes died away into a deep silence. All the living part of me went down into darkness, dense darkness that seemed to endure for ages. Then, with strugglings and effort, I awoke again – reborn. A hand was holding my own, leading me forward; a voice I knew whispered in my ear, saying:

      “Look upon one record of the past, O Doubter. Look and believe.” Now there happened to me, or seemed to happen, that which I had experienced before in the museum at Ragnall

      Castle; namely, that I, Allan, the living man of to-day, beheld myself another man, and yet the same; and whilst remaining myself, could enter into and live the life of that other man, knowing his thoughts, appreciating his motives and his efforts, his hopes and his fears, his loves and his hates, and yet standing outside of them, reading him like a book and weighing everything in the scales of my modern judgment.

      The voice – surely it was that of Lady Ragnall, though I could not see her face – died away; the hand was loosed. I saw a man in the cold, glimmering light of dawn. He was a very sturdy man, thick-limbed, deep-chested, and somewhat hairy, whose age I judged to be about thirty years. I knew at once that he was not a modern man, although his weather-tanned skin was white where the furs he wore had slipped away from his shoulder, for there was something unusual about his aspect. Few modern men are so massive of body, and never have I seen one with a neck so short and large in circumference, al though the feet and hands were not large. His frame was extraordinarily solid; being not more than five feet seven inches in height and by no means fat, yet he must have weighed quite fifteen stone, if not more. His dark hair was long and parted in the middle; it hung down to his shoulders.

      He turned his head, looking behind him as though to make sure that he was alone, or that no wild beast stalked him, and I saw his face. The forehead was wide and not high, for the hair grew low upon it; his eyebrows were beetling and the eyes beneath them deep set. They were remarkable eyes, large and gray, quick-glancing also, yet when at rest somewhat sombre and very thoughtful. The nose was straight with wide and sensitive nostrils, suggesting that its owner used them as a dog or a deer does, to scent with. The mouth was thick-lipped but not large, and within it were splendid and regular white teeth, broader than those we have; the chin was very massive, and on it grew two little tufts of beard, though the cheeks were bare.

      For the rest, this man was long armed, for the tip of his middle finger came down almost to the kneecap. He had a sort of kilt about his middle and a heavy fur robe upon his shoulder which looked as though it were made of bearskin. In his left hand he held a short spear, the blade of which seemed to be fashioned of chipped flint, or some other hard and shining stone, and in the girdle of his kilt was thrust a wooden-handled instrument or ax, made by setting a great, sharp-edged stone that must have weighed two pounds or so into the cleft end of the handle which was lashed with sinews both above and below the axhead.

      I, Allan, the man of to-day, looked upon this mighty savage, for mighty I could see he was – both in his body and, after a fashion, in his mind also

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