The Mahatma and the Hare

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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.

*****

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.

Like the Mahatma of this fable, he expresses no opinion as to the merits
of the controversy between the Red-faced Man and the Hare that, without
search on his own part, presented itself to his mind in so odd a
fashion. It is one on which anybody interested in such matters can form
an 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, even
dreadful-looking and in this form almost indistinguishable from a
skinned cat, on the domestic table. But not many people have met a
Mahatma, at least to their knowledge. Not many people know even who or
what a Mahatma is. The majority of those who chance to have heard the
title 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, by
persons who are well acquainted with the real meaning of the word and
even with its Sanscrit origin. The truth is that an incredulous Western
world puts no faith in Mahatmas. To it a Mahatma is a kind of spiritual
Mrs. Harris, giving an address in Thibet at which no letters are
delivered. Either, it says, there is no such person, or he is a
fraudulent scamp with no greater occult powers--well, than a hare.

I confess that this view of Mahatmas is one that does not surprise me
in the least. I never met, and I scarcely expect to meet, an individual
entitled to set "Mahatma" after his name. Certainly _I_ have no right to
do so, who only took that title on the spur of the moment when the Hare
asked 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, I
publish this history. For aught I know Jorsen may be a Mahatma, but he
does not in the least look the part.

Imagine a bluff person with a strong, hard face, piercing grey eyes, and
very prominent, bushy eyebrows, of about fifty or sixty years of age.
Add a Scotch accent and a meerschaum pipe, which he smokes even when he
is wearing a frock coat and a tall hat, and you have Jorsen. I believe
that he lives somewhere in the country, is well off, and practises
gardening. If so he has never asked me to his place, and I only meet him
when 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 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 a certain place at a certain
hour, and that there I shall find Jorsen. I do go, sometimes to an
hotel, sometimes to a lodging, sometimes to a railway station or to the
corner of a particular street and there I do find Jorsen smoking his big
meerschaum 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, for
that would be telling Jorsen's secrets as well as my own, which I must
not 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 married
and, although still young, a person of some mark in literature. Indeed
even 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 coming
over from the Channel Islands, where they had been on a visit (she was a
Jersey woman), and, and--well, the ship was lost, that's all. The shock
broke my heart, in such a way that it has never been mended again, but
unfortunately did not kill me.

Afterwards I took to drink and sank, as drunkards do. Then the river
began to draw me. I had a lodging in a poor street 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, for the drink had rotted out all
my moral sense. About one o'clock of a wild, winter morning I went to a
bridge I knew where in those days policemen rarely came, and listened to
that call of the water.

"Come!" it seemed to say. "This world is the real hell, ending in the
eternal naught. The dreams of a life beyond and of re-union there
are but a demon's mocking breathed into the mortal heart, lest by its
universal suicide mankind should rob him of his torture-pit. There is
no truth in all your father taught you" (he was a clergyman and rather
eminent in his profession), "there is no hope for man, there is nothing
he can win except the deep 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 over the parapet; in
another moment I should have been gone, when I became aware that some
one was standing near to me. I did not see the person because it was too
dark. I did not hear him because of the raving of the wind. But I knew
that he was there. So I waited until the moon shone out for a while
between the edges of two ragged clouds, the shapes of which I can see to
this hour. It showed me Jorsen, looking just as he does to-day, for he
never seems to change--Jorsen, on whom, to my knowledge, I had not set
eyes before.

"Even a year ago," he said, in his strong, rough voice, "you would not
have allowed your mind to be convinced by such arguments as those which
you have just heard in the Voice of the river. That is one of the worst
sides of drink; it decays the reason as it does the body. You must have
noticed it yourself."

I replied that I had, for I was surprised into acquiescence. Then I grew
defiant and asked him what he knew of the arguments which were or were
not influencing me. To my surprise--no, that is not the word--to my
bewilderment, he repeated them to me one by one just as they had arisen
a few minutes before in my heart. Moreover, he told me what I had been
about 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 with
whom I chance to be in touch. That is, I have not met you for nearly
eleven hundred years. A thousand and eighty-six, to be correct. I was a
blind 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 call that old?" answered Jorsen. "Why, the first time that we
had anything to do with each other, so far as I can learn, that is, was
over eight thousand years ago, in Egypt before the beginning of recorded
history."

"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 save
you from suicide, as once in the past you saved me, for thus things come
round. 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 the
greatest men alive. On this particular night that I have described he
told me many things, and since then he has taught me much, me and a few
others. But whether he is what is called a Mahatma I am sure I do not
know. He has never claimed such a rank in my hearing, or indeed to be
anything more than a man who has succeeded in winning a knowledge of his
own powers out of the depths of the dark that lies behind us. Of course
I 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 me
something of my own, and of how the two were intertwined.

But all these things are secrets of which I have perhaps no right to
speak at present. It is enough to say that Jorsen changed the current of
my life on that night when he saved me from death.

For instance, from that day onwards to the present time I have never
touched the drink which so nearly ruined me. Also the darkness has
rolled away, and with it every doubt and fear; I know the truth, and
for that truth I live. Considered from certain aspects such knowledge,
I admit, is not altogether desirable. Thus it has deprived me of my
interest in earthly things. Ambition has left me altogether; for years
I have had no wish to succeed in the profession which I adopted in my
youth, or in any other. Indeed I doubt whether the elements of worldly
success still remain in me; whether they are not entirely burnt away by
that fire of wisdom in which I have bathed. How can we strive to win a
crown we have no longer any desire to wear? Now I desire other crowns
and at times I wear them, if only for a little while. My spirit grows
and grows. It is dragging at its strings.

What am I to look at? A small, white-haired man with a thin and rather
plaintive face in which are set two large, dark eyes that continually
seem to soften and develop. That is my picture. And what am I in the
world? I will tell you. On certain days of the week I employ myself in
editing a trade journal that has to do with haberdashery. On another
day I act as auctioneer to a firm which imports and sells cheap Italian
statuary; modern, very modern copies of the antique, florid marble
vases, and so forth. Some of you who read may have passed such marts
in different parts of the city, or even have dropped in and purchased a
bust or a tazza for a surprisingly small sum. Perhaps I knocked it
down to you, only too pleased to find a _bona fide_ bidder amongst my
company.

As for the rest of my time--well, I employ it in doing what good I
can among the poor and those who need comfort or who are bereaved,
especially among those who are bereaved, for to such I am sometimes able
to bring the breath of hope that blows from another shore.

Occasionally also I amuse myself in my own fashion. Thus sure knowledge
has come to me about certain epochs in the past in which I lived in
other shapes, and I study those epochs, hoping that one day I may find
time to write of them and of the parts I played in them. Some of these
parts are extremely interesting, especially as I am of course able to
contrast them with our modern modes of thought and action.

They do not all come back to me with equal clearness, the earlier
lives being, as one might expect, the more difficult to recover and the
comparatively recent ones the easiest. Also they seem to range over a
vast stretch of time, back indeed to the days of primeval, prehistoric
man. In short, I think the subconscious in some ways resembles the
conscious and natural memory; that which is very far off to it grows dim
and blurred, that which is comparatively close remains clear and sharp,
although of course this rule is not invariable. Moreover there is
foresight as well as memory. At least from time to time I seem to come
in touch with future events and states of society in which I shall have
my share.

I believe some thinkers hold a theory that such conditions as those of
past, present, and future do not in fact exist; that everything already
is, standing like a completed column between earth and heaven; that
the sum is added up, the equation worked out. At times I am tempted to
believe in the truth of this proposition. But if it be true, of course
it remains difficult to obtain a clear view of other parts of the column
than that in which we happen to find ourselves objectively conscious at
any given period, and needless to say impossible to see it from base to
capital.

However this may be, no individual entity pervades all the column.
There are great sections of it with which that entity has nothing to
do, although it always seems to appear again above. I suppose that those
sections which are empty of an individual and his atmosphere represent
the intervals between his lives which he spends in sleep, or in states
of existence with which this world is not concerned, but of such gulfs
of 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 body
of a fourth-rate auctioneer, and of the editor of a trade journal, dwelt
in that of a Pharaoh of Egypt--never mind which Pharoah. Yes, although
you may laugh and think me mad to say it, for me the legions fought
and thundered; to me the peoples bowed and the secret sanctuaries were
opened that I and I alone might commune with the gods; I who in the
flesh and after it myself was worshipped as a god.

Well, of this forgotten Royalty of whom little is known save what a
few inscriptions have to tell, there remains a portrait statue in the
British Museum. Sometimes I go to look at that statue and try to recall
exactly under what circumstances I caused it to be shaped, puzzling out
the story bit by bit.

Not long ago I stood thus absorbed and did not notice that the hour of
the closing of the great gallery had come. Still I stood and gazed and
dreamt till the policeman on duty, seeing and suspecting me, came up and
roughly ordered me to begone.

The man's tone angered me. I laid my hand on the foot of the statue, for
it 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 a
chamber of my tomb. Then the Ka that clings to it eternally awoke at my
touch and knew me, or so I suppose. At least I felt myself change. A new
strength came into me; my shape, battered in this world's storms, put on
something of its ancient dignity; my eyes grew royal. I looked at that
man as Pharaoh may have looked at one who had done him insult. He saw
the change and trembled--yes, trembled. I believe he thought I was some
imperial ghost that the shadows of evening had caused him to mistake for
man; at any rate he gasped out--

"I beg your pardon, I was obeying orders. I hope your Majesty won't hurt
me. Now I think of it I have been told that things come out of these old
statues 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 I
followed, and, lifting the bar at the end of the hall, departed without
further question asked. Afterwards I was very glad to think that I had
done the man no injury. At the moment I knew that I could hurt him if
I would, and what is more I had the desire to do so. It came to me, I
suppose, 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 those
days, and this is why now I must be so humble. Fate is turning my pride
to its hammer and beating it out of me.

For thus in the long history of the soul it serves all our vices.



THE GREAT WHITE ROAD

Now, as I have hinted, under the teaching of Jorsen, who saved me from
degradation and self-murder, yes, and helped me with money until once
again I could earn a livelihood, I have acquired certain knowledge and
wisdom of a sort that are not common. That is, Jorsen taught me
the elements of these things; he set my feet upon the path which
thenceforward, having the sight, I have been able to follow for myself.
How I followed it does not matter, nor could I teach others if I would.

I am no member of any mystic brotherhood, and, as I have explained, no
Mahatma, although I have called myself thus for present purposes because
the name is a convenient cloak. I repeat that I am ignorant if there
are such people as Mahatmas, though if so I think Jorsen must be one
of them. Still he never told me this. What he has told is that every
individual spirit must work out its own destiny quite independently
of others. Indeed, being rather fond of fine phrases, he has sometimes
spoken to me of, or rather, insisted upon what he called "the lonesome
splendour of the human soul," which it is our business to perfect
through various lives till I can scarcely appreciate and am certainly
unable to describe.

To tell the truth, the thought of this "lonesome splendour" to which
it seems some of us may attain, alarms me. I have had enough of being
lonesome, and I do not ask for any particular splendour. My only
ambitions are to find those whom I have lost, and in whatever life
I live to be of use to others. However, as I gather that the exalted
condition to which Jorsen alludes is thousands of ages off for any of
us, and may after all mean something quite different to what it seems to
mean, the thought of it does not trouble me over much. Meanwhile what I
seek is the vision of those I love.

Now I have this power. Occasionally when I am in deep sleep some part of
me seems to leave my body and to be transported quite outside the world.
It travels, as though I were already dead, to the Gates that all who
live must pass, and there takes its stand, on the Great White Road,
watching those who have been called speed by continually. Those upon the
earth know nothing of that Road. Blinded by their pomps and vanities,
they cannot see, they will not see it always growing towards the feet of
every one of them. But I see and know. Of course you who read will say
that this is but a dream of mine, and it may be. Still, if so, it is a
very wonderful dream, and except for the change of the passing people,
or rather of those who have been people, always very much the same.

There, straight as the way of the Spirit and broad as the breast of
Death, is the Great White Road running I know not whence, up to those
Gates that gleam like moonlight and are higher than the Alps. There
beyond the Gates the radiant Presences move mysteriously. Thence at the
appointed time the Voice cries and they are opened with a sound like to
that of deepest thunder, or sometimes are burned away, while from the
Glory that lies beyond flow the sweet-faced welcomers to greet those for
whom they wait, bearing the cups from which they give to drink. I do
not know what is in the cups, whether it be a draught of Lethe or
some baptismal water of new birth, or both; but always the thirsting,
world-worn soul appears to change, and then as it were to be lost in the
Presence that gave the cup. At least they are lost to my sight. I see
them no more.

Why do I watch those Gates, in truth or in dream, before my time? Oh!
You can guess. That perchance I may behold those for whom my heart burns
with a quenchless, eating fire. And once I beheld--not the mother but
the child, my child, changed indeed, mysterious, wonderful, gleaming
like a star, with eyes so deep that in their depths my humanity seemed
to swoon.

She came forward; she knew me; she smiled and laid her finger on her
lips. She shook her hair about her and in it vanished as in a cloud. Yet
as she vanished a voice spoke in my heart, her voice, and the words it
said were--

"Wait, our Beloved! Wait!"

Mark well. "Our Beloved," not "My Beloved." So there are others by whom
I am beloved, or at least one other, and I know well who that one must
be.

*****

After this dream, perhaps I had better call it a dream, I was ill for a
long while, for the joy and the glory of it overpowered me and brought
me near to the death I had always sought. But I recovered, for my hour
is not yet. Moreover, for a long while as we reckon time, some years
indeed, I obeyed the injunction and sought the Great White Road no more.
At length the longing grew too strong for me and I returned thither, but
never again did the vision come. Its word was spoken, its mission was
fulfilled. Yet from time to time I, a mortal, seem to stand upon the
borders of that immortal Road and watch the newly dead who travel it
towards the glorious Gates.

Once or twice there have been among them people whom I have known. As
these pass me I appear to have the power of looking into their hearts,
and there I read strange things. Sometimes they are beautiful things and
sometimes ugly things. Thus I have learned that those I thought bad were
really good in the main, for who can claim to be quite good? And on the
other hand that those I believed to be as honest as the day--well, had
their faults.

To take an example which I quote because it is so absurd. The rooms I
live in were owned by a prim old woman who for more than twenty years
was my landlady. She and I were great friends, indeed she tended me like
a mother, and when I was so ill nursed me as perhaps few mothers would
have done. Yet while I was watching on the Road suddenly she came by,
and with horror I saw that during all those years she had been robbing
me, taking, I am sorry to say, many things, in money, trinkets, and
food. Often I had discussed with her where these articles could possibly
have gone, till finally suspicion settled upon the man who cleaned the
windows. Yes, and worst of all, he was prosecuted, and I gave evidence
against him, or rather strengthened her evidence, on faith of which the
magistrate sent him to prison for a month.

"Oh! Mrs Smithers," I said to her, "how _could_ you do it, Mrs.
Smithers?"

She stopped and looked about her terrified, so that my heart smote me
and I added in haste, "Don't be frightened, Mrs. Smithers; I forgive
you."

"I can't see you, sir," she exclaimed, or so I dreamed, "but there! I
always knew you would."

"Yes, Mrs. Smithers," I replied; "but how about the window-cleaner who
went to jail and lost his situation?"

Then she passed on or was drawn away without making any answer.

Now comes the odd part of the story. When I woke up on the following
morning in my rooms, it was to be informed by the frightened
maid-of-all-work that Mrs. Smithers had been found dead in her bed.
Moreover, a few days later I learned from a lawyer that she had made
a will leaving me everything she possessed, including the lease of her
house and nearly L1000, for she had been a saving old person during all
her long life.

Well, I sought out that window-cleaner and compensated him handsomely,
saying that I had found I was mistaken in the evidence I gave against
him. The rest of the property I kept, and I hope that it was not wrong
of me to do so. It will be remembered that some of it was already my
own, temporarily diverted into another channel, and for the rest I have
so many to help. To be frank I do not spend much upon myself.



THE HARE

Now I have done with myself, or rather with my own insignificant present
history, and come to that of the Hare. It impressed me a good deal at
the time, which is not long ago, so much indeed that I communicated the
facts to Jorsen. He ordered me to publish them, and what Jorsen orders
must be done. I don't know why this should be, but it is so. He has
authority of a sort that I am unable to define.

One night after the usual aspirations and concentration of mind, which
by the way are not always successful, I passed into what occultists call
spirit, and others a state of dream. At any rate I found myself upon
the borders of the Great White Road, as near to the mighty Gates as I am
ever allowed to come. How far that may be away I cannot tell. Perhaps it
is but a few yards and perhaps it is the width of this great world, for
in that place which my spirit visits time and distance do not exist.
There all things are new and strange, not to be reckoned by our
measures. There the sight is not our sight nor the hearing our hearing.
I repeat that all things are different, but that difference I cannot
describe, and if I could it would prove past comprehension.