“But the clue?” I asked breathlessly.
He smiled again at the eagerness that again betrayed me.
“This old world,” he resumed quietly, “is strewn, of course, with the remnants of what once has been our bodies — ‘suits of clothes’ we have inhabited, used, and cast aside. Here and there, from one chance or another, some of these may have been actually preserved. The Egyptians, for instance, went to considerable trouble to ensure that they should survive as long as possible, thus assisting memory later.”
“Embalming, you mean?”
“As you wander through the corridors of a modem museum,” he continued imperturbably, “you may even look through a glass covering at the very tenement your soul has occupied at an earlier stage! Probably, of course, without the faintest whisper of recognition, yet, possibly, with just that acute and fascinated interest which is the result of stirring memory. For the ‘old clothes’ still radiate vibrations that belong to you; the dried blood and nerves once thrilled with emotions, spiritual or otherwise, that were you — the link may be recoverable. You think it is wild nonsense! I tell you it is in the best sense scientific. And, similarly,” he added, “you may chance upon some such remnant of another — the body of ancient friend or enemy.” He paused abruptly in his extraordinary recital. “I had that good fortune,” he added, “if you like to call it so.”
“You found hers?” I asked in a low voice. “Her, I mean?”
“Maennlich,” he replied with a smile, “has the best preserved mummies in the world. He never allowed them even to be unwrapped. The object I speak of — a body she had occupied in a recent Egyptian section — though not when we were there, unfortunately — lay in one of his glass cases, while the soul who once had used it answered his bell and walked across his carpets — two of her bodies in the house at once. Curious, wasn’t it? A discarded instrument and the one in present use! The rest was comparatively easy. I traced her whereabouts at once, for the clue furnished the plainest possible directions. I went straight to her.”
“And you knew instantly — when you saw her? You had no doubt?”
“Instantly — when the door swung open and our eyes met on the threshold.”
“Love at first sight, Julius, you mean? It was love you felt?” I asked it beneath my breath, for my heart was beating strangely.
He raised his eyebrows. “Love?” he repeated, questioningly. “Deep joy, intuitive sympathy, content and satisfaction, rather. I knew her. I knew who she was. In a few minutes we were more intimate in mind and feeling than souls who meet for the first time can become after years of living together. You understand?”
I lowered my eyes, not knowing what to say. The standards of modern conduct, so strong about me, prevented the comments or questions that I longed to utter.
There flashed upon me in that instant’s pause a singular conviction — that these two had mated for a reason of their own. They had not known the clutch of elemental power by which Nature ensures the continuance of the race. They had not shuddered, wept, and known the awful ecstasy, but had slipped between her fingers and escaped. They had not loved. While he knew this consciously, she was aware of it unconsciously. They mated for another reason, yet one as holy, as noble, as pure — if not more so, indeed — as those that consecrate marriage in the accepted sense. And the thought, strange as it was, brought a sweet pleasure to me, though shot with a pain that was equally undeniable and equally perplexing. While my thoughts floundered between curiosity, dismay and something elusive that yet was more clamorous than either, Julius continued without a vestige of embarrassment, though obviously omitting much detail that I burned to hear.
“And that very week — the next day, I think, it was, I asked Maennlich to allow me an hour’s talk with her alone ”
“She — er ——?”
“She liked me — from the very first, yes. She felt me.”
“And showed it?” I asked bluntly.
“And showed it,” he repeated, “although she said it puzzled her and she couldn’t understand.”
“On her side, then, it was love — love at first sight?”
“Strong attraction,” he put it, “but an attraction she thought it her duty to resist at first. Her present conditions made any relationship between us seem incongruous, and when I offered marriage — as I did at once — it overwhelmed her. She made sensible objections, but it was her brain of Today that made them. You can imagine how it went. She urged that to marry a man in another class of life, a ‘gentleman,’ a ‘wealthy’ gentleman and an educated, ‘scholar gentleman,’ as she called me, could only end in unhappiness — because I should tire of her. Yet, all the time — she told me this afterwards — she had the feeling that we were meant for one another, and that it must surely be. She was shy about it as a child.”
“And you convinced her in the end!” I said to myself rather than aloud to him. There were feelings in me I could not disentangle.
“Convinced her that we needed one another and could never go apart,” he said. “We had something to fulfil together. The forces that drove us together, though unintelligible to her, were yet acknowledged by her too, you see.”
“I see,” my voice murmured faintly, as he seemed to expect some word in reply. “I see.” Then, after a longer pause than usual, I asked: “And you told her of your — your theories and beliefs — the purpose you had to do together?”
“No single word. She could not possibly have understood. It would have frightened her.” I heard it with relief, yet with resentment too.
“Was that quite fair, do you think?”
His answer I could not gainsay. “Cause and effect,” he said, “work out, whether memory is there or not. To attempt to block fulfilment by fear or shrinking is but to delay the very thing you need. I told her we were necessary to each other, but that she must come willingly, or not at all. I used no undue persuasion, and I used no force. I reahsed plainly that her upper, modern, uncultured and uneducated self was merely what she had acquired in the few years of her present life. It was this upper self that hesitated and felt shy. The older self below was not awake, yet urged her to acceptance blindly — as by irresistible instinctive choice. She knew subconsciously; but, once I could succeed in arousing her knowledge consciously, I knew her doubts would vanish. I suggested living away from city life, away from any conditions that might cause her annoyance or discomfort due to what she called our respective ‘stations’ in life; I suggested the mountains, some beautiful valley perhaps, where in solitude for a time we could get to know each other better, untroubled by the outer world — until she became accustomed ”
“And she approved?” I interrupted with impatience.
“Her words were ‘That’s the very thing; I’ve always had a dream like that.’ She agreed with enthusiasm, and the opposition melted away. She knew the kind of place we needed,” he added significantly.
We had reached the head of the valley by this time, and I sat down upon a boulder with the sweep of Jura forests below us like a purple carpet. The sun and shadow splashed it everywhere with softest colouring. The morning wind was fresh; birds were singing; this green vale among the mountains seemed some undiscovered paradise.
“And you have never since felt a moment’s doubt — uncertainty — that she really is this ‘soul’ you knew before?”
He lay back, his head upon his folded hands, and his eyes fixed upon the blue dome of sky.
“A hundred proofs come to me all the time,” he said, stretching himself at full length upon the grass. “And in her atmosphere, in her presence, the memories still revive in detail from day to day — just as at school they revived in you — those pictures you sought to stifle and deny. From the first she never doubted me. She was aware of a great tie and bond between us. ‘You’re the only man,’ she said to me afterwards, ‘that could have done it like that. I belonged to you — oh! I can’t make it out — but just as if there wasn’t any getting out of it possible. I felt stunned wh
en I saw you. I had always felt something like this coming, but thought it was a dream.’ Only she often said there was something else to come as well, and that we were not quite complete. She knew, you see; she knew.” He broke off suddenly and turned to look at me. He added in a lower tone, as he watched my face: “And you see how pleased and happy she is to have you here!”
I made no reply. I reached out for a stone and flung it headlong down the steep slope towards the stream five hundred feet below.
“And so it was settled then and there?” I asked, after a pause that Julius seemed inclined to prolong.
“Then and there,” he said, watching the rolling stone with dreamy eyes. “In the hall-way of that Norwood villa, under the very eyes of Maennlich who paid her wages and probably often scolded her, she came up into my arms at the end of our final talk, and kissed me like a happy child. She cried a good deal at the time, but I have never once seen her cry since!”
“And it’s all gone well — these months?” I murmured.
“There was a temporary reaction at first — at the very first, that is,” he said, “and I had to call in Maennlich to convince her that I was in earnest. At her bidding I did that. Some instinct told her that Maennlich ought to see it — perhaps, because it would save her awkward and difficult explanations afterwards. There’s the woman in her, you see, the normal, wholesome woman, sweet and timid.”
“A fascinating personality,” I murmured quickly, lest I might say other things — before their time.
“No looks, no worldly beauty,” he nodded, “but the unconscious charm of the old soul. It’s unmistakable.”
Worlds and worlds I would have given to have been present at that interview; Julius LeVallon, so unusual and distinguished; the shy and puzzled serving-maid, happy and incredulous; the grey-bearded archaeologist and scholar; the strange embarrassment of this amazing proposal of marriage!
“And Maennlich?” I asked, anxious for more detail.
Julius burst out laughing. “Maennlich lives in his own world with his specimens and theories and memories of travel — more recent memories of travel than our own! It hardly interested him for more than a passing moment. He regarded it, I think, as an unnecessary interruption — and a bothering one — some joke he couldn’t quite appreciate or understand. He pulled his dirty beard, patted me on the back as though I were a boy running after some theatre girl, and remarked with a bored facetiousness that he could give her a year’s character with a clear conscience and great pleasure. Something like that it was; I forget exactly. Then he went back to his library, shouting through the door some appointment about a Geographical Society meeting for the following week. For how could he know” — his voice grew softer as he said it and his laughter ceased — “how could he divine, that old literal-minded savant, that he stood before a sign-post along the route to the eternal things we seek, or that my marrying his servant was a step towards something we three owe together to the universe itself?”
It was some time before either of us spoke, and when at length I broke the silence it was to express surprise that a woman, so long ripened by the pursuit of spiritual, or at least exalted aims, should have returned to earth among the lowly. By rights, it seemed, she should have reincarnated among the great ones of the world. I knew I could say this now without offence.
“The humble,” Julius answered simply, “are the great ones.”
His fingers played with the fronds of a piece of stag-horn moss as he said it, and to this day I cannot see this kind of moss without remembering his strange words.
“It’s among what men call the lower ranks that the old souls return,” he went on; “among peasants and simple folk, unambitious and heedless of material power, you always find the highest ones. They are there to learn the final lessons of service or denial, neglected in their busier and earlier — kindergarten sections. The last stages are invariably in humble service — they are by far the most difficult; no young, ‘ambitious’ soul could manage it. But the old souls, having already mastered all the more obvious lessons, are content.”
“Then the oldest souls are not the great minds and great characters of history?” I exclaimed.
“Not necessarily,” he answered; “probably never. The most advanced are unadvertised, in the least assuming positions. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them, hard of attainment by those the world applauds. The successful, so called, are the younger, cruder souls, passionately acquiring still the external prizes men hold so dear. Maturer souls have long since discarded these as worthless. The qualities the world crowns are great, perhaps, at that particular stage, but they never are the highest. Intellect, remember, is not of the soul, and all that reason teaches must be unlearned again. Theories change, knowledge shifts, facts are forgotten or proved false; only what the soul itself acquires remains eternally the same. The old are the intuitional; and the oldest of all — ah! how wonderful! — He who came back from loftier heights than most of us can yet even conceive of, was the — son of a carpenter.”
I left my seat upon the boulder and lay beside him, listening for a long time while he talked, and if there was much that seemed visionary, there was also much that thrilled me with emotions beyond ordinary. Nothing, certainly, was foolish — because of the man who said it. And, while he took it for granted that all Nature was alive and a manifestation of spiritual powers, the elements themselves but forces to be mastered and acquired, it grew upon me that I had indeed entered an enchanted valley where, with my strange companions, I might witness new, incredible things. Finding little to reply, I was content to listen, wondering what was coming next. And in due course the talk came round again to ourselves, and so to the woman who was now his wife.
“Then she has no idea,” I said at length, “that we three — you and I and she — have been together before, or that there is any particular purpose in my being here at this moment?”
“In her normal condition — none,” he answered. “For she has no memory.”
“There is a state, however, when she does remember?” I asked. “You have helped her to remember? Is that it, Julius?”
“Yes,” he replied; “I have reached down and touched her soul, so that she remembers for herself.”
“The deep trance state?”
“Where all the memories of the past lie accumulated,” he answered, “the subconscious state. Her Self of Today — with new body and recent brain — she has forgotten; in trance — the subconscious Self where the soul dwells with all its past — she remembers.”
CHAPTER XIX
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“PROOF OF THE REALITY OF a personal sovereign of the universe will not be obtained. But proof of the reality of a power or powers, not unworthy of the title of gods, in respect of our corner of the cosmos, may be feasible.” — “The Individual and Reality” (E. D. Fawcett).
I SHRANK. Certain memories of our Edinburgh days revived unpleasantly. They seemed to have happened yesterday instead of years ago. A shadowy hand from those — distant skies he spoke of, from those dim avenues of thickly written Time, reached down and touched my heart, leaving the chill of an indescribable uneasiness. The change in me since my arrival only a few hours before was too rapid not to bring reaction. Yet on the whole the older, deeper consciousness gained power.
Possibilities my imagination had unwisely played with now seemed stealing slowly toward probabilities. I felt as?, man might feel who, having never known fire, and disbelieved in its existence, becomes aware of the warmth of its approach — a strange and revolutionary discomfort. For Julius was winning me back into his world again, and not with mere imaginative, half-playful acceptance, but with practical action and belief. Yet the change in me was somehow welcome. No feeling of resentment kept it in check, and certainly neither scorn nor ridicule. Incredulity glanced invitingly at faith. They would presently shake hands.
I made, perhaps, an effort to hold back, to define the position, my position, at any rate.
“Julius,
” I said gravely, yet with a sympathy I could not quite conceal, “as boys together, and even later at the
University, we talked of various curious things, remarkable, even amazing things. You even showed me certain extraordinary things which, at the time, convinced me possibly. I ought to tell you now — and before we go any further, since you take it for granted that my feelings and — er — beliefs are still the same as yours — that I can no longer subscribe to all the articles of your wild conviction. I have been living in the world, you see, these many years, and — well, my imagination has collapsed or dried up or whatever you like to call it. I don’t really see, or remember — anything — quite in the way you mean ”
“The ‘world’ has smothered it — temporarily,” he put in gently.
“And what is more,” I continued, ignoring his interruption, “I must confess that I have no stomach now for any ‘great experiment’ such as you think our coming together in this valley must involve. Your idea of reincarnation may be true — why not? It’s a most logical conception. And we three may have been together before — granted! I admit I rather like the notion. It may even be conceivable that the elemental powers of Nature are intelligent, that men and women could use them to their advantage, and that worship and feeling-with is the means to acquire them — it’s just as likely as that some day we shall send telegrams without wires, thoughts and pictures too!”
I drew breath a moment, while he waited patiently, linking his arm in mine and listening silently.
“It may even be possible, too,” I went on, finding some boyish relief in all these words, “that we three together in earlier days did — in some kind of primitive Nature Worship — make wrong use of an unconscious human body to evoke those particular Powers you say exist behind Wind and Fire, and that, having thus upset the balance of material forces, we must readjust that balance or suffer accordingly — you in particular, since you were the prime mover ”
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