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38 pages

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. The author supposes that the first of the above extracts must have impressed him. At any rate, on the night after the reading of it, just as he went to sleep, or on the following morning just as he awoke, he cannot tell which, there came to him the title and the outlines of this fantasy, including the command with which it ends. With a particular clearness 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.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819943099
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0050€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE MAHATMA AND THE HARE
A DREAM STORY
by H. Rider Haggard
THE MAHATMA
"Ultimately a good hare was found which took thefield at . . .
There the hounds pressed her, and on the huntarriving at the edge
of the cliff the hare could be seen crossing thebeach and going
right out to sea. A boat was procured, and themaster and some
others rowed out to her just as she drowned, and,bringing the
body in, gave it to the hounds. A hare swimming outto sea is a
sight not often witnessed. "— Local paper,January 1911.
". . . A long check occurred in the latter part ofthis hunt, the
hare having laid up in a hedgerow, from which shewas at last
evicted by a crack of the whip. Her next place ofrefuge was a
horse-pond, which she tried to swim, but got stuckin the ice
midway, and was sinking, when the huntsman went inafter her. It
was a novel sight to see huntsman and hare beinglifted over a
wall out of the pond, the eager pack waiting fortheir prey behind
the wall. "— Local paper, February 1911.
The author supposes that the first of the aboveextracts must have impressed him. At any rate, on the night afterthe reading of it, just as he went to sleep, or on the followingmorning just as he awoke, he cannot tell which, there came to himthe title and the outlines of this fantasy, including the commandwith which it ends. With a particular clearness did he seem to seethe picture of the Great White Road, “straight as the way of theSpirit, and broad as the breast of Death, ” and of the little Haretravelling towards the awful Gates.
Like the Mahatma of this fable, he expresses noopinion as to the merits of the controversy between the Red-facedMan and the Hare that, without search on his own part, presenteditself to his mind in so odd a fashion. It is one on which anybodyinterested in such matters can form an individual judgment.
THE MAHATMA*
[*] Mahatma, “great-souled. ” "One ofa class of persons with
preter-natural powers, imagined to exist in Indiaand
Thibet. "— New English Dictionary .
Everyone has seen a hare, either crouched or runningin the fields, or hanging dead in a poulterer's shop, or lastlypathetic, even dreadful-looking and in this form almostindistinguishable from a skinned cat, on the domestic table. Butnot many people have met a Mahatma, at least to their knowledge.Not many people know even who or what a Mahatma is. The majority ofthose who chance to have heard the title are apt to confuse it withanother, 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, by persons who are well acquainted with the realmeaning of the word and even with its Sanscrit origin. The truth isthat an incredulous Western world puts no faith in Mahatmas. To ita Mahatma is a kind of spiritual Mrs. Harris, giving an address inThibet at which no letters are delivered. Either, it says, there isno such person, or he is a fraudulent scamp with no greater occultpowers— well, than a hare.
I confess that this view of Mahatmas is one thatdoes not surprise me in the least. I never met, and I scarcelyexpect to meet, an individual entitled to set “Mahatma” after hisname. Certainly I have no right to do so, who only took thattitle on the spur of the moment when the Hare asked me how I wascalled, and now make use of it as a nom-de-plume . It is truethere is Jorsen, by whose order, for it amounts to that, I publishthis history. For aught I know Jorsen may be a Mahatma, but he doesnot in the least look the part.
Imagine a bluff person with a strong, hard face,piercing grey eyes, and very prominent, bushy eyebrows, of aboutfifty or sixty years of age. Add a Scotch accent and a meerschaumpipe, which he smokes even when he is wearing a frock coat and atall hat, and you have Jorsen. I believe that he lives somewhere inthe country, is well off, and practises gardening. If so he hasnever asked me to his place, and I only meet him when he comes toTown, as I understand, to visit flower-shows.
Then I always meet him because he orders me to doso, not by letter or by word of mouth but in quite a different way.Suddenly I receive an impression in my mind that I am to go to acertain place at a certain hour, and that there I shall findJorsen. I do go, sometimes to an hotel, sometimes to a lodging,sometimes to a railway station or to the corner of a particularstreet and there I do find Jorsen smoking his big meerschaum pipe.We shake hands and he explains why he has sent for me, after whichwe talk of various things. Never mind what they are, for that wouldbe telling Jorsen's secrets as well as my own, which I must notdo.
It may be asked how I came to know Jorsen. Well, ina strange way. Nearly thirty years ago a dreadful thing happened tome. I was married and, although still young, a person of some markin literature. Indeed even now one or two of the books which Iwrote are read and remembered, although it is supposed that theirauthor has long left the world.
The thing which happened was that my wife and ourdaughter were coming over from the Channel Islands, where they hadbeen on a visit (she was a Jersey woman), and, and— well, the shipwas lost, that's all. The shock broke my heart, in such a way thatit has never been mended again, but unfortunately did not killme.
Afterwards I took to drink and sank, as drunkardsdo. Then the river began to draw me. I had a lodging in a poorstreet at Chelsea, and I could hear the river calling me at night,and— I wished to die as the others had died. At last I yielded, forthe drink had rotted out all my moral sense. About one o'clock of awild, winter morning I went to a bridge I knew where in those dayspolicemen rarely came, and listened to that call of the water.
“Come! ” it seemed to say. “This world is the realhell, ending in the eternal naught. The dreams of a life beyond andof re-union there are but a demon's mocking breathed into themortal heart, lest by its universal suicide mankind should rob himof his torture-pit. There is no truth in all your father taughtyou” (he was a clergyman and rather eminent in his profession),“there is no hope for man, there is nothing he can win except thedeep happiness of sleep. Come and sleep. ”
Such were the arguments of that Voice of the river,the old, familiar arguments of desolation and despair. I leant overthe parapet; in another moment I should have been gone, when Ibecame aware that some one was standing near to me. I did not seethe person because it was too dark. I did not hear him because ofthe raving of the wind. But I knew that he was there. So I waiteduntil the moon shone out for a while between the edges of tworagged clouds, the shapes of which I can see to this hour. Itshowed me Jorsen, looking just as he does to-day, for he neverseems to change— Jorsen, on whom, to my knowledge, I had not seteyes before.
“Even a year ago, ” he said, in his strong, roughvoice, “you would not have allowed your mind to be convinced bysuch arguments as those which you have just heard in the Voice ofthe river. That is one of the worst sides of drink; it decays thereason as it does the body. You must have noticed it yourself.”
I replied that I had, for I was surprised intoacquiescence. Then I grew defiant and asked him what he knew of thearguments which were or were not influencing me. To my surprise—no, that is not the word— to my bewilderment, he repeated them tome one by one just as they had arisen a few minutes before in myheart. Moreover, he told me what I had been about to do, and why Iwas about to do it.
“You know me and my story, ” I muttered at last.
“No, ” he answered, “at least not more than I knowthat of many men with whom I chance to be in touch. That is, I havenot met you for nearly eleven hundred years. A thousand andeighty-six, to be correct. I was a blind priest then and you werethe captain of Irene's guard. ”
At this news I burst out laughing and the laugh didme good.
“I did not know I was so old, ” I said.
“Do you call that old? ” answered Jorsen. “Why, thefirst time that we had anything to do with each other, so far as Ican learn, that is, was over eight thousand years ago, in Egyptbefore the beginning of recorded history. ”
“I thought that I was mad, but you are madder, ” Isaid.
“Doubtless. Well, I am so mad that I managed to behere in time to save you from suicide, as once in the past yousaved me, for thus things come round. But your rooms are near, arethey not? Let us go there and talk. This place is cold and theriver is always calling. ”
That was how I came to know Jorsen, whom I believeto be one of the greatest men alive. On this particular night thatI have described he told me many things, and since then he hastaught me much, me and a few others. But whether he is what iscalled a Mahatma I am sure I do not know. He has never claimed sucha rank in my hearing, or indeed to be anything more than a man whohas succeeded in winning a knowledge of his own powers out of thedepths of the dark that lies behind us. Of course I mean out of hispast in other incarnations long before he was Jorsen. Moreover, bydegrees, as I grew fit to bear the light, he showed me something ofmy own, and of how the two were intertwined.
But all these things are secrets of which I haveperhaps no right to speak at present. It is enough to say thatJorsen changed the current of my life on that night when he savedme from death.
For instance, from that day onwards to the presenttime I have never touched the drink which so nearly ruined me. Alsothe darkness has rolled away, and with it every doubt and fear; Iknow the truth, and for that truth I live. Considered from certainaspects such knowledge, I admit, is not altogether desirable. Thusit has deprived me of my interest in earthly things. Ambition hasleft me altogether; for years I have had no wish to succeed in theprofession which I adopted in my youth, or in any other. Indeed Idoubt whether the elements of worldly