The Mahatma and the Hare | Page 4

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