The Mahatma and the Hare: A Dream Story by H. Rider Haggard
Produced by John Bickers; Dagny; Emma Dudding
THE MAHATMA AND THE HARE
A DREAM STORY
by H. Rider Haggard
"Ultimately a good hare was found which took the field at . . . There the hounds pressed her, and on the hunt arriving at the edge of the cliff the hare could be seen crossing the beach and going right out to sea. A boat was procured, and the master and some others rowed out to her just as she drowned, and, bringing the body in, gave it to the hounds. A hare swimming out to sea is a sight not often witnessed."--_Local paper, January_ 1911.
". . . A long check occurred in the latter part of this hunt, the hare having laid up in a hedgerow, from which she was at last evicted by a crack of the whip. Her next place of refuge was a horse-pond, which she tried to swim, but got stuck in the ice midway, and was sinking, when the huntsman went in after her. It was a novel sight to see huntsman and hare being lifted over a wall out of the pond, the eager pack waiting for their prey behind the wall."--_Local paper, February_ 1911.
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The author supposes that the first of the above extracts must haveimpressed him. At any rate, on the night after the reading of it, justas he went to sleep, or on the following morning just as he awoke, hecannot tell which, there came to him the title and the outlines of thisfantasy, including the command with which it ends. With a particularclearness did he seem to see the picture of the Great White Road,"straight as the way of the Spirit, and broad as the breast of Death,"and of the little Hare travelling towards the awful Gates.
Like the Mahatma of this fable, he expresses no opinion as to the meritsof the controversy between the Red-faced Man and the Hare that, withoutsearch on his own part, presented itself to his mind in so odd afashion. It is one on which anybody interested in such matters can forman individual judgment.
THE MAHATMA[*]
[*] Mahatma, "great-souled." "One of a class of persons with preter-natural powers, imagined to exist in India and Thibet."--_New English Dictionary_.
Everyone has seen a hare, either crouched or running in the fields,or hanging dead in a poulterer's shop, or lastly pathetic, evendreadful-looking and in this form almost indistinguishable from askinned cat, on the domestic table. But not many people have met aMahatma, at least to their knowledge. Not many people know even who orwhat a Mahatma is. The majority of those who chance to have heard thetitle are apt to confuse it with another, that of Mad Hatter.
This is even done of malice prepense (especially, for obvious reasons,if a hare is in any way concerned) in scorn, not in ignorance, bypersons who are well acquainted with the real meaning of the word andeven with its Sanscrit origin. The truth is that an incredulous Westernworld puts no faith in Mahatmas. To it a Mahatma is a kind of spiritualMrs. Harris, giving an address in Thibet at which no letters aredelivered. Either, it says, there is no such person, or he is afraudulent scamp with no greater occult powers--well, than a hare.
I confess that this view of Mahatmas is one that does not surprise mein the least. I never met, and I scarcely expect to meet, an individualentitled to set "Mahatma" after his name. Certainly _I_ have no right todo so, who only took that title on the spur of the moment when the Hareasked me how I was called, and now make use of it as a _nom-de-plume_.It is true there is Jorsen, by whose order, for it amounts to that, Ipublish this history. For aught I know Jorsen may be a Mahatma, but hedoes not in the least look the part.
Imagine a bluff person with a strong, hard face, piercing grey eyes, andvery prominent, bushy eyebrows, of about fifty or sixty years of age.Add a Scotch accent and a meerschaum pipe, which he smokes even when heis wearing a frock coat and a tall hat, and you have Jorsen. I believethat he lives somewhere in the country, is well off, and practisesgardening. If so he has never asked me to his place, and I only meet himwhen he comes to Town, as I understand, to visit flower-shows.
Then I always meet him because he orders me to do so, not by letter orby word of mouth but in quite a different way. Suddenly I receive animpression in my mind that I am to go to a certain place at a certainhour, and that there I shall find Jorsen. I do go, sometimes to anhotel, sometimes to a lodging, sometimes to a railway station or to thecorner of a particular street and there I do find Jorsen smoking his bigmeerschaum pipe. We shake hands and he explains why he has sent for me,after which we talk of various things. Never mind what they are, forthat would be telling Jorsen's secrets as well as my own, which I mustnot do.
It may be asked how I came to know Jorsen. Well, in a strange way.Nearly thirty years ago a dreadful thing happened to me. I was marriedand, although still young, a person of some mark in literature. Indeedeven now one or two of the books which I wrote are read and remembered,although it is supposed that their author has long left the world.
The thing which happened was that my wife and our daughter were comingover from the Channel Islands, where they had been on a visit (she was aJersey woman), and, and--well, the ship was lost, that's all. The shockbroke my heart, in such a way that it has never been mended again, butunfortunately did not kill me.
Afterwards I took to drink and sank, as drunkards do. Then the riverbegan to draw me. I had a lodging in a poor street at Chelsea, and Icould hear the river calling me at night, and--I wished to die as theothers had died. At last I yielded, for the drink had rotted out allmy moral sense. About one o'clock of a wild, winter morning I went to abridge I knew where in those days policemen rarely came, and listened tothat call of the water.
"Come!" it seemed to say. "This world is the real hell, ending in theeternal naught. The dreams of a life beyond and of re-union thereare but a demon's mocking breathed into the mortal heart, lest by itsuniversal suicide mankind should rob him of his torture-pit. There isno truth in all your father taught you" (he was a clergyman and rathereminent in his profession), "there is no hope for man, there is nothinghe can win except the deep happiness of sleep. Come and sleep."
Such were the arguments of that Voice of the river, the old, familiararguments of desolation and despair. I leant over the parapet; inanother moment I should have been gone, when I became aware that someone was standing near to me. I did not see the person because it was toodark. I did not hear him because of the raving of the wind. But I knewthat he was there. So I waited until the moon shone out for a whilebetween the edges of two ragged clouds, the shapes of which I can see tothis hour. It showed me Jorsen, looking just as he does to-day, for henever seems to change--Jorsen, on whom, to my knowledge, I had not seteyes before.
"Even a year ago," he said, in his strong, rough voice, "you would nothave allowed your mind to be convinced by such arguments as those whichyou have just heard in the Voice of the river. That is one of the worstsides of drink; it decays the reason as it does the body. You must havenoticed it yourself."
I replied that I had, for I was surprised into acquiescence. Then I grewdefiant and asked him what he knew of the arguments which were or werenot influencing me. To my surprise--no, that is not the word--to mybewilderment, he repeated them to me one by one just as they had arisena few minutes before in my heart. Moreover, he told me what I had beenabout to do, and why I was about to do it.
"You know me and my story," I muttered at last.
"No," he answered, "at least not more than I know that of many men withwhom I chance to be in touch. That is, I have not met you for nearlyeleven hundred years. A thousand and eighty-six, to be correct. I was ablind priest then and you were the captain of Irene's guard."
At this news I burst out laughing and the laugh did me good.
"I did not know I was so old," I said.
"Do you ca
"I thought that I was mad, but you are madder," I said.
"Doubtless. Well, I am so mad that I managed to be here in time to saveyou from suicide, as once in the past you saved me, for thus things comeround. But your rooms are near, are they not? Let us go there and talk.This place is cold and the river is always calling."
That was how I came to know Jorsen, whom I believe to be one of thegreatest men alive. On this particular night that I have described hetold me many things, and since then he has taught me much, me and a fewothers. But whether he is what is called a Mahatma I am sure I do notknow. He has never claimed such a rank in my hearing, or indeed to beanything more than a man who has succeeded in winning a knowledge of hisown powers out of the depths of the dark that lies behind us. Of courseI mean out of his past in other incarnations long before he was Jorsen.Moreover, by degrees, as I grew fit to bear the light, he showed mesomething of my own, and of how the two were intertwined.
But all these things are secrets of which I have perhaps no right tospeak at present. It is enough to say that Jorsen changed the current ofmy life on that night when he saved me from death.
For instance, from that day onwards to the present time I have nevertouched the drink which so nearly ruined me. Also the darkness hasrolled away, and with it every doubt and fear; I know the truth, andfor that truth I live. Considered from certain aspects such knowledge,I admit, is not altogether desirable. Thus it has deprived me of myinterest in earthly things. Ambition has left me altogether; for yearsI have had no wish to succeed in the profession which I adopted in myyouth, or in any other. Indeed I doubt whether the elements of worldlysuccess still remain in me; whether they are not entirely burnt away bythat fire of wisdom in which I have bathed. How can we strive to win acrown we have no longer any desire to wear? Now I desire other crownsand at times I wear them, if only for a little while. My spirit growsand grows. It is dragging at its strings.
What am I to look at? A small, white-haired man with a thin and ratherplaintive face in which are set two large, dark eyes that continuallyseem to soften and develop. That is my picture. And what am I in theworld? I will tell you. On certain days of the week I employ myself inediting a trade journal that has to do with haberdashery. On anotherday I act as auctioneer to a firm which imports and sells cheap Italianstatuary; modern, very modern copies of the antique, florid marblevases, and so forth. Some of you who read may have passed such martsin different parts of the city, or even have dropped in and purchased abust or a tazza for a surprisingly small sum. Perhaps I knocked itdown to you, only too pleased to find a _bona fide_ bidder amongst mycompany.
As for the rest of my time--well, I employ it in doing what good Ican among the poor and those who need comfort or who are bereaved,especially among those who are bereaved, for to such I am sometimes ableto bring the breath of hope that blows from another shore.
Occasionally also I amuse myself in my own fashion. Thus sure knowledgehas come to me about certain epochs in the past in which I lived inother shapes, and I study those epochs, hoping that one day I may findtime to write of them and of the parts I played in them. Some of theseparts are extremely interesting, especially as I am of course able tocontrast them with our modern modes of thought and action.
They do not all come back to me with equal clearness, the earlierlives being, as one might expect, the more difficult to recover and thecomparatively recent ones the easiest. Also they seem to range over avast stretch of time, back indeed to the days of primeval, prehistoricman. In short, I think the subconscious in some ways resembles theconscious and natural memory; that which is very far off to it grows dimand blurred, that which is comparatively close remains clear and sharp,although of course this rule is not invariable. Moreover there isforesight as well as memory. At least from time to time I seem to comein touch with future events and states of society in which I shall havemy share.
I believe some thinkers hold a theory that such conditions as those ofpast, present, and future do not in fact exist; that everything alreadyis, standing like a completed column between earth and heaven; thatthe sum is added up, the equation worked out. At times I am tempted tobelieve in the truth of this proposition. But if it be true, of courseit remains difficult to obtain a clear view of other parts of the columnthan that in which we happen to find ourselves objectively conscious atany given period, and needless to say impossible to see it from base tocapital.
However this may be, no individual entity pervades all the column.There are great sections of it with which that entity has nothing todo, although it always seems to appear again above. I suppose that thosesections which are empty of an individual and his atmosphere representthe intervals between his lives which he spends in sleep, or in statesof existence with which this world is not concerned, but of such gulfsof oblivion and states of being I know nothing.
To take a single instance of what I do know: once this spirit of mine,that now by the workings of destiny for a little while occupies the bodyof a fourth-rate auctioneer, and of the editor of a trade journal, dweltin that of a Pharaoh of Egypt--never mind which Pharoah. Yes, althoughyou may laugh and think me mad to say it, for me the legions foughtand thundered; to me the peoples bowed and the secret sanctuaries wereopened that I and I alone might commune with the gods; I who in theflesh and after it myself was worshipped as a god.
Well, of this forgotten Royalty of whom little is known save what afew inscriptions have to tell, there remains a portrait statue in theBritish Museum. Sometimes I go to look at that statue and try to recallexactly under what circumstances I caused it to be shaped, puzzling outthe story bit by bit.
Not long ago I stood thus absorbed and did not notice that the hour ofthe closing of the great gallery had come. Still I stood and gazed anddreamt till the policeman on duty, seeing and suspecting me, came up androughly ordered me to begone.
The man's tone angered me. I laid my hand on the foot of the statue, forit had just come back to me that it was a "Ka" image, a sacred thing,any Egyptologist will know what I mean, which for ages had sat in achamber of my tomb. Then the Ka that clings to it eternally awoke at mytouch and knew me, or so I suppose. At least I felt myself change. A newstrength came into me; my shape, battered in this world's storms, put onsomething of its ancient dignity; my eyes grew royal. I looked at thatman as Pharaoh may have looked at one who had done him insult. He sawthe change and trembled--yes, trembled. I believe he thought I was someimperial ghost that the shadows of evening had caused him to mistake forman; at any rate he gasped out--
"I beg your pardon, I was obeying orders. I hope your Majesty won't hurtme. Now I think of it I have been told that things come out of these oldstatues in the night."
Then turning he ran, literally ran, where to I am sure I do not know,probably to seek the fellowship of some other policeman. In due course Ifollowed, and, lifting the bar at the end of the hall, departed withoutfurther question asked. Afterwards I was very glad to think that I haddone the man no injury. At the moment I knew that I could hurt him ifI would, and what is more I had the desire to do so. It came to me, Isuppose, with that breath of the past when I was so great and absolute.Perhaps I, or that part of me then incarnate, was a tyrant in thosedays, and this is why now I must be so humble. Fate is turning my prideto its hammer and beating it out of me.
For thus in the long history of the soul it serves all our vices.