She and Allan | Page 4

should know, and no
more!
Allan Quatermain.
The Grange, Yorkshire.

SHE AND ALLAN
CHAPTER I
THE TALISMAN
I believe it was the old Egyptians, a very wise people, probably indeed
much wiser than we know, for in the leisure of their ample centuries
they had time to think out things, who declared that each individual
personality is made up of six or seven different elements, although the
Bible only allows us three, namely, body, soul, and spirit. The body
that the man or woman wore, if I understand their theory aright which
perhaps I, an ignorant person, do not, was but a kind of sack or fleshly
covering containing these different principles. Or mayhap it did not
contain them all, but was simply a house as it were, in which they lived
from time to time and seldom all together, although one or more of
them was present continually, as though to keep the place warmed and
aired.
This is but a casual illustrative suggestion, for what right have I, Allan
Quatermain, out of my little reading and probably erroneous deductions,
to form any judgment as to the theories of the old Egyptians? Still these,
as I understand them, suffice to furnish me with the text that man is not
one, but many, in which connection it may be remembered that often in
Scripture he is spoken of as being the home of many demons, seven, I
think. Also, to come to another far-off example, the Zulus talk of their
witch-doctors as being inhabited by "a multitude of spirits."
Anyhow of one thing I am quite sure, we are not always the same.

Different personalities actuate us at different times. In one hour passion
of this sort or the other is our lord; in another we are reason itself. In
one hour we follow the basest appetites; in another we hate them and
the spirit arising through our mortal murk shines within or above us
like a star. In one hour our desire is to kill and spare not; in another we
are filled with the holiest compassion even towards an insect or a snake,
and are ready to forgive like a god. Everything rules us in turn, to such
an extent indeed, that sometimes one begins to wonder whether we
really rule anything.
Now the reason of all this homily is that I, Allan, the most practical and
unimaginative of persons, just a homely, half-educated hunter and
trader who chances to have seen a good deal of the particular little
world in which his lot was cast, at one period of my life became the
victim of spiritual longings.
I am a man who has suffered great bereavements in my time such as
have seared my soul, since, perhaps because of my rather primitive and
simple nature, my affections are very strong. By day or night I can
never forget those whom I have loved and whom I believe to have
loved me.
For you know, in our vanity some of us are apt to hold that certain
people with whom we have been intimate upon the earth, really did
care for us and, in our still greater vanity--or should it be called
madness?--to imagine that they still care for us after they have left the
earth and entered on some new state of society and surroundings which,
if they exist, inferentially are much more congenial than any they can
have experienced here. At times, however, cold doubts strike us as to
this matter, of which we long to know the truth. Also behind looms a
still blacker doubt, namely whether they live at all.
For some years of my lonely existence these problems haunted me day
by day, till at length I desired above everything on earth to lay them at
rest in one way or another. Once, at Durban, I met a man who was a
spiritualist to whom I confided a little of my perplexities. He laughed at
me and said that they could be settled with the greatest ease. All I had
to do was to visit a certain local medium who for a fee of one guinea

would tell me everything I wanted to know. Although I rather grudged
the guinea, being more than usually hard up at the time, I called upon
this person, but over the results of that visit, or rather the lack of them, I
draw a veil.
My queer and perhaps unwholesome longing, however, remained with
me and would not be abated. I consulted a clergyman of my
acquaintance, a good and spiritually-minded man, but he could only
shrug his shoulders and refer me to the Bible, saying, quite rightly I
doubt not, that with what it reveals I ought to be contented. Then I read
certain mystical books which