“And,” he said further, “we must do so both at the same moment. Now, don’t be a sneak and try to get in your body whilst I am putting in my leg, or you will upset the boat.”
“I never was a sneak,” I retorted angrily, “and I certainly will not be one in what may be the throes of death.”
“All right,” said the major. “One—two—three!”
Instantly both of us drew our left legs out of the mud, and projected them over the sides into the boat.
“How are you?” asked he. “Got your leg in all right?”
“All but my boot,” I replied, “and that has been sucked off my foot.”
“Oh, bother the boot,” said the major, “so long as your leg is safe within, and has not been sucked off. That would have disturbed the equipoise. Now then—next we must have our trunks and right legs within. Take a long breath, and wait till I call ‘three. ’”
We paused, panting with the strain; then Donelly, in a stentorian voice, shouted: “One—two—three!” Instantly we writhed and strained, and finally, after a convulsive effort, both were landed in the bottom of the boat. We picked ourselves up and seated ourselves, each on one bulwark, looking at one another.
We were covered with the foul slime from head to foot, our clothes were caked, so were our hands and faces. But we were secure.
“Here,” said Donelly, “we shall have to remain for six hours till the tide flows, and the boat is lifted. It is of no earthly use for us to shout for help. Even if our calls were heard, no one could come out to us. Here, then, we stick and must make the best of it. Happily the sun is hot, and will cake the mud about us, and then we can pick off some of it.”
The prospect was not inviting. But I saw no means of escape.
Presently Donelly said: “It is good that we brought our luncheon with us, and above all some whisky, which is the staff of life. Look here, my dear fellow. I wish it were possible to get this stinking stuff off our hands and faces; it smells like the scouring poured down the sink in Satan’s own back kitchen. Is there not a bottle of claret in the basket?”
“Yes, I put one in.”
“Then,” said he, “the best use we can put it to is to wash our faces and hands in it. Claret is poor drink, and there is the whisky to fall back on.”
“The water has all ebbed away,” I remarked “We cannot clean ourselves in that.”
“Then uncork the Saint Julien.”
There was really no help for it. The smell of the mud was disgusting, and it turned one’s stomach. So I pulled out the cork, and we performed our ablutions in the claret.
That done, we returned to our seats on the gunwale, one on each side, and looked sadly at one another. Six hours! That was an interminable time to spend on a mudflat in the Blackwater. Neither of us was much inclined to speak. After the lapse of a quarter of an hour, the major proposed refreshments. Accordingly we crept together into the bottom of the boat and there discussed the contents of the hamper, and we certainly did full justice to the whisky bottle. For we were wet to the skin, and beplastered from head to foot in the ill-savoured mud.
When we had done the chicken and ham, and drained the whisky jar, we returned to our several positions vis-à-vis. It was essential that the balance of the boat should be maintained.
Major Donelly was now in a communicative mood.
“I will say this,” observed he; “that you are the best-informed and most agreeable man I have met with in Colchester and Chelmsford.”
I would not record this remark but for what it led up to.
I replied—I dare say I blushed—but the claret in my face made it red, anyhow. I replied: “You flatter me.”
“Not at all. I always say what I think. You have plenty of information, and you’ll grow your wings, and put on rainbow colours.”
“What on earth do you mean?” I inquired.
“Do you not know,” said he, “that we shall all of us, some day, develop wings? Grow into angels! What do you suppose that ethereal pinions spring out of? They do not develop out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit. You cannot think that they are the ultimate produce of ham and chicken.”
“Nor of whisky.”
“Nor of whisky,” he repeated. “You know it is so with the grub.”
“Grub is ambiguous,” I observed.
“I do not mean victuals, but the caterpillar. That creature spends its short life in eating, eating, eating. Look at a cabbage-leaf, it is riddled with holes; the grub has consumed all that vegetable matter, and I will inform you for what purpose. It retires into its chrysalis, and during the winter a transformation takes place, and in spring it breaks forth as a glorious butterfly. The painted wings of the insect in its second stage of existence are the sublimated cabbage it has devoured in its condition of larva.”
“Quite so. What has that to do with me?”
“We are also in our larva condition. But do not for a moment suppose that the wings we shall put on with rainbow painting are the produce of what we eat here—of ham and chicken, kidneys, beef, and the like. No, sir, certainly not. They are fashioned out of the information we have absorbed, the knowledge we have acquired during the first stage of life.”
“How do you know that?”
“I will tell you,” he answered. “I had a remarkable experience once. It is a rather long story, but as we have some five hours and a half to sit here looking at one another till the tide rises and floats us, I may as well tell you, and it will help to the laying on of the colours on your pinions when you acquire them. You would like to hear the tale?”
“Above all things.”
“There is a sort of prologue to it,” he went on. “I cannot well dispense with it as it leads up to what I particularly want to say.”
“By all means let me have the prologue, if it be instructive.”
“It is eminently instructive,” he said. “But before I begin, just pass me the bottle, if there is any whisky left.”
“It is drained,” I said.
“Well, well, it can’t be helped. When I was in India, I moved from one place to another, and I had pitched my tent in a certain spot. I had a native servant. I forget what his real name was, and it does not matter. I always called him Alec. He was a curious fellow, and the other servants stood in awe of him. They thought that he saw ghosts and had familiar dealings with the spiritual world. He was honest as natives go. He would not allow anyone else to rob me; but, of course, he filched things of mine himself. We are accustomed to that, and think nothing of it. But it was a satisfaction that he kept the fingers of the others off my property. Well, one night, when, as I have informed you, my tent was pitched on a spot I considered eminently convenient, I slept very uncomfortably.
“It was as though a centipede were crawling over me. Next morning I spoke to Alec, and told him my experiences, and bade him search well my mattress and the floor of my tent. A Hindu’s face is impassive, but I thought I detected in his eyes a twinkle of understanding. Nevertheless I did not give it much thought. Next night it was as bad, and in the morning I found my panjams slit from head to foot. I called Alec to me and held up the garment, and said how uncomfortable I had been. ‘Ah! sahib,’ said he, ‘that is the doings of Abdulhamid, the blood-thirsty scoundrel!’”
“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “Did he mean the present Sultan of Turkey?”
“No, quite another, of the same name.”
“I beg your pardon,” I said. “But when you mentioned him as a blood-thirsty scoundrel, I supposed it must be he.”
“It was not he. It was another. Call him, if you like, the other Abdul. But to proceed with my story.”
“One inquiry more,” said I. “Surely Abdulhamid cannot be a Hindu name?”
“I did not say that it was,” retorted the major with a touch of asperity in his tone. “He was doubtless a Mohammedan.”
“But the name is rather Turkish or Arabic.”
“I am not responsible for that; I was not his godfathers and godmothers at his baptism. I am
merely repeating what Alec told me. If you are so captious, I shall shut up and relate no more.”
“Do not take umbrage,” said I. “I surely have a right to test the quality of the material I take in, out of which my wings are to be evolved. Go ahead; I will interrupt no further.”
“Very well, then, let that be understood between us. Are you caking?”
“Slowly,” I replied. “The sun is hot; I am drying up on one side of my body.”
“I think that we had best shift sides of the boat,” said the major. “It is the same with me.”
Accordingly, with caution, we crossed over, and each took the seat on the gunwale lately occupied by the other.
“There,” said Donelly. “How goes the enemy? My watch got smothered in the mud, and has stopped.”
“Mine,” I explained, “is plastered into my waistcoat pocket, and I cannot get at it without messing my fingers, and there is no more claret left for a wash; the whisky is all inside us.”
“Well,” said the major, “it does not matter; there is plenty of time before us for the rest of my story. Let me see—where was I? Oh! where Alec mentioned Abdulhamid, the inferior scoundrel, not the Sultan. Alec went on to say that he was himself possessed of a remarkably keen scent for blood, even though it had been shed a century before his time, and that my tent had been pitched and my bed spread over a spot marked by a most atrocious crime. That Abdul of whom he had made mention had been a man steeped in crimes of the most atrocious character.
“Of course, he did not come up in wickedness to his illustrious namesake, but that was because he lacked the opportunities with which the other is so favoured. On the very identical spot where I then was, this same bloodstained villain had perpetrated his worst iniquity—he had murdered his father and mother, and aunt, and his children. After that he was taken and hanged. When his soul parted from his body, in the ordinary course it would have entered into the shell of a scorpion or some other noxious creature, and so have mounted through the scale of beings, by one incarnation after another, till he attained once more to the high estate of man.”
“Excuse the interruption,” said I, “but I think you intimated that this Abdulhamid was a Mohammedan, and the sons of the Prophet do not believe in the transmigration of souls.”
“That,” said Donelly, “is precisely the objection I raised to Alec. But he told me that souls after death are not accommodated with a future according to the creeds they hold, but according to Destiny: that whatever a man might suppose during life as to the condition of his future state, there was but one truth to which they would all have their eyes opened—the truth held by the Hindus, viz. the transmigration of souls from stage to stage, ever progressing upward to man, and then to recommence the interminable circle of reincarnation. ‘So,’ said I, ‘it was Abdul in the form of a scorpion who was tickling my ribs all night.’ “‘No, sahib,’ replied my native servant very gravely. ‘He was too wicked to be suffered to set his foot, so to speak, on the lowest rung of the ladder of existences. The doom went forth against him that he must haunt the scenes of his former crimes, till he found a man sleeping over one of them, and on that man must be a mole, and out of that mole must grow three hairs. These hairs he must pluck out and plant on the grave of his final victims, and water them with his tears. And the flowing of these first drops of penitence would enable him to pass at once into the first stage of the circle of incarnations.’ ‘Why,’ said I, ‘that unredeemed ruffian was mole-hunting over me the last two nights! But what do you say to these slit panjams?’
“‘Sahib,’ replied Alec, ‘he did that with his nails. I presume he turned you over, and ripped them so as to get at your back and feel for the so-much-desired mole.’ ‘I’ll have the tent shifted,’ said I. ‘Nothing will induce me to sleep another night on this accursed spot.’”
Donelly paused, and proceeded to take off some flakes of mud that had formed on his sleeve. We really were beginning to get drier, but in drying we stiffened, as the mud became hard about us like pie-crust.
“So far,” said I, “we have had no wings.”
“I am coming to them,” replied the major; “I have now concluded the prologue.”
“Oh! that was the prologue, was it?”
“Yes. Have you anything against it? It was the prologue. Now I will go on with the main substance of my story. About a year after that incident I retired on half-pay, and returned to England. What became of Alec I did not know, nor care a hang. I had been in England for a little over two years, when one day I was walking along Great Russell Street, and passing the gates of the British Museum, I noticed a Hindu standing there, looking wretchedly cold and shabby. He had a tray containing bangles and necklaces and gewgaws, made in Germany, which he was selling as oriental works of art. As I passed, he saluted me, and, looking steadily at him, I recognised Alec. ‘Why, what brings you here? ’ I inquired, vastly astonished.
“‘Sahib may well ask,’ he replied. ‘I came over because I thought I might better my condition. I had heard speak of a Psychical Research Society established in London; and with my really extraordinary gifts, I thought that I might be of value to it, and be taken in and paid an annuity if I supplied it continuously with well-authenticated, first-hand ghost stories.’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘and have you succeeded?’ ‘No, sahib. I cannot find it. I have inquired after it from several of the crossing-sweepers, and they could not inform me of its whereabouts; and if I applied to the police, they bade me take myself off, there was no such a thing. I should have starved, sahib, if it had not been that I had taken to this line’; he pointed to his tray.
“‘Does that pay well?’ I asked. He shook his head sadly. ‘Very poorly. I can live—that is all. There goes in a Merewig.’ ‘How many of these rubbishy bangles can you dispose of in a day?’ I inquired. ‘That depends, sahib. It varies so greatly, and the profits are very small. So small that I can barely get along. There goes in another Merewig.’ ‘Where are all these things made?’ I asked. ‘In Germany or in Birmingham?’ ‘Oh, sahib, how can I tell? I get them from a Jew dealer. He supplies various street-hawkers. But I shall give it up—it does not pay—and shall set up a stall and dispose of Turkish Delight. There is always a run on that. You English have a sweet tooth. That’s a Merewig,’ and he pointed to a dowdy female, with a reticule on her arm, who, at that moment, went through the painted iron gates.
“‘What do you mean by Merewigs?’ said I. ‘Does not sahib know?’ Alec’s face expressed genuine surprise. ‘If sahib will go into the great reading-room, he will see scores of them there. It is their great London haunt; they pass in all day, mainly in the morning—some are in very early, so soon as the museum is open at nine o’clock. And they usually remain there all day picking up information, acquiring knowledge.’ ‘You mean the students.’ ‘Not all the students, but a large percentage of them. I know them in a moment. Sahib is aware that I have great gifts for the discernment of spirits.’
“By the way,” broke off Donelly, “do you understand Hindustani?”
“Not a word of it,” I replied.
“I am sorry for that,” said he, “because I could tell you what passed between us so much easier in Hindustani. I am able to speak and understand it as readily as English, and the matter I am going to relate would come off my tongue so much easier in that language.”
“You might as well speak it in Chinese. I should be none the wiser. Wait a moment. I am cracking.”
It was so. The heat of the sun was sensibly affecting my crust of mud. I think I must have resembled a fine old painting, the varnish of which is stained and traversed by an infinity of minute fissures, a perfect network of cracks. I stood up and stretched myself, and split in several places. Moreover, portions of my muddy envelope began to curl at the edges.
“Don’t be in too great a hurry to peel,” advised Donelly. “We have abundance of time still before us, and I want to proceed with my narrative.”
“Go on, then. When are we coming to the wings?�
�
“Directly,” replied he. “Well, then—if you cannot receive what I have to say in Hindustani, I must do my best to give you the substance of Alec’s communication in the vulgar tongue. I will epitomise it. The Hindu went on to explain in this fashion. He informed me that with us, Christians and white people, it is not the same as with the dusky and the yellow races. After death we do not pass into the bodies of the lower animals, which is a great privilege and ought to afford us immense satisfaction. We at once progress into a higher condition of life. We develop wings, as does the butterfly when it emerges from its condition of grub.
“But the matter out of which the wings are produced is nothing gross. They are formed, or form themselves, out of the information with which we have filled our brains during life. We lay up, during our mortal career here, a large amount of knowledge, of scientific, historical, philosophic, and like acquisitions, and these form the so-to-speak psychic pulp out of which, by an internal and mysterious and altogether inexplicable process, the transmutation takes place into our future wings. The more we have stored, the larger are our wings; the more varied the nature, the more radiant and coloured is their painting. When, at death, the brain is empty, there can be no wing-development. Out of nothing, nothing can arise. That is a law of nature absolutely inexorable in its application. And this is why you will never have to regret sticking in the mud today, my friend. I have supplied you with such an amount of fresh and valuable knowledge, that I believe you will have pinions painted hereafter with peacock’s eyes.”
“I am most obliged to you,” said I, splitting into a thousand cakes with the emotion that agitated me.
Donelly proceeded. “I was so interested in what Alec told me, that I said to him, ‘Come along with me into the Nineveh room, and we shall be able to thrash this matter out.’ ‘Ah, sahib,’ he replied, ‘they will not allow me to take in my tray.’ ‘Very well,’ said I, ‘then we will find a step before the portico, one not too much frequented by the pigeons, and will sit there.’ He agreed. But the porter at the gate demurred to letting the Hindu through. He protested that no trafficking was allowed on the premises. I explained that none was purposed; that the man and I proposed a discussion on psychological topics. This seemed to content the porter, and he suffered Alec to pass through with me. We picked out as clean a portion of the steps as we could, and seated ourselves on it side by side, and then the Hindu went on with what he was saying.”
The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Sabine Baring-Gould Page 35
