Indian Tales | Page 9

walked round the situation.
Obviously if I used my knowledge I should stand alone and
unapproachable until all men were as wise as myself. That would be
something, but manlike I was ungrateful. It seemed bitterly unfair that
Charlie's memory should fail me when I needed it most. Great Powers

above--I looked up at them through the fog smoke--did the Lords of
Life and Death know what this meant to me? Nothing less than eternal
fame of the best kind, that comes from One, and is shared by one alone.
I would be content--remembering Clive, I stood astounded at my own
moderation,--with the mere right to tell one story, to work out one little
contribution to the light literature of the day. If Charlie were permitted
full recollection for one hour--for sixty short minutes--of existences
that had extended over a thousand years--I would forego all profit and
honor from all that I should make of his speech. I would take no share
in the commotion that would follow throughout the particular corner of
the earth that calls itself "the world." The thing should be put forth
anonymously. Nay, I would make other men believe that they had
written it. They would hire bull-hided self-advertising Englishmen to
bellow it abroad. Preachers would found a fresh conduct of life upon it,
swearing that it was new and that they had lifted the fear of death from
all mankind. Every Orientalist in Europe would patronize it
discursively with Sanskrit and Pali texts. Terrible women would invent
unclean variants of the men's belief for the elevation of their sisters.
Churches and religions would war over it. Between the hailing and
re-starting of an omnibus I foresaw the scuffles that would arise among
half a dozen denominations all professing "the doctrine of the True
Metempsychosis as applied to the world and the New Era"; and saw,
too, the respectable English newspapers shying, like frightened kine,
over the beautiful simplicity of the tale. The mind leaped forward a
hundred--two hundred--a thousand years. I saw with sorrow that men
would mutilate and garble the story; that rival creeds would turn it
upside down till, at last, the western world which clings to the dread of
death more closely than the hope of life, would set it aside as an
interesting superstition and stampede after some faith so long forgotten
that it seemed altogether new. Upon this I changed the terms of the
bargain that I would make with the Lords of Life and Death. Only let
me know, let me write, the story with sure knowledge that I wrote the
truth, and I would burn the manuscript as a solemn sacrifice. Five
minutes after the last line was written I would destroy it all. But I must
be allowed to write it with absolute certainty.
There was no answer. The flaming colors of an Aquarium poster caught
my eye and I wondered whether it would be wise or prudent to lure

Charlie into the hands of the professional mesmerist, and whether, if he
were under his power, he would speak of his past lives. If he did, and if
people believed him ... but Charlie would be frightened and flustered,
or made conceited by the interviews. In either case he would begin to
lie, through fear or vanity. He was safest in my own hands,
"They are very funny fools, your English," said a voice at my elbow,
and turning round I recognized a casual acquaintance, a young Bengali
law student, called Grish Chunder, whose father had sent him to
England to become civilized. The old man was a retired native official,
and on an income of five pounds a month contrived to allow his son
two hundred pounds a year, and the run of his teeth in a city where he
could pretend to be the cadet of a royal house, and tell stories of the
brutal Indian bureaucrats who ground the faces of the poor.
Grish Chunder was a young, fat, full-bodied Bengali dressed with
scrupulous care in frock coat, tall hat, light trousers and tan gloves. But
I had known him in the days when the brutal Indian Government paid
for his university education, and he contributed cheap sedition to Sachi
Durpan, and intrigued with the wives of his schoolmates.
"That is very funny and very foolish," he said, nodding at the poster. "I
am going down to the Northbrook Club. Will you come too?"
I walked with him for some time. "You are not well," he said. "What is
there in your mind? You do not talk."
"Grish Chunder, you've been too well educated to believe in a God,
haven't you?"
"Oah, yes, _here!_ But when I go home I must conciliate popular
superstition, and make ceremonies of purification, and my women will
anoint idols."