The Phantom 'Rickshaw, and Other Ghost Stories
“Not unless he’s been entered for the Liverpool Handicap.” He nodded and
disappeared in the crowd.
Now it is written in the Saga of Eric the Red or that of Thorfin
Karlsefne, that nine hundred years ago when Karlsefne’s galleys came
to Leif’s booths, which Leif had erected in the unknown land
called Markland, which may or may not have been Rhode Island, the
Skroelings--and the Lord He knows who these may or may not have
been--came to trade with the Vikings, and ran away because they were
frightened at the bellowing of the cattle which Thorfin had brought with
him in the ships. But what in the world could a Greek slave know of that
affair? I wandered up and down among the streets trying to unravel the
mystery, and the more I considered it, the more baffling it grew. One
thing only seemed certain and that certainty took away my breath for the
moment. If I came to full knowledge of anything at all, it would not be
one life of the soul in Charlie Mears’s body, but half a dozen--half a
dozen several and separate existences spent on blue water in the morning
of the world!
Then I 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.”
“And bang up _tulsi_ and feast the _purohit_, and take you back into
caste again and make a good _khuttrj_ of you again, you advanced social
Free-thinker. And you’ll eat _desi_ food, and like it all, from the
smell in the courtyard to the mustard oil over you.”
“I shall very much like it,” said Grish Chunder, unguardedly. “Once a
Hindu--always a Hindu. But I like to know what the English think they
know.”
“I’ll tell you something that one Englishman knows. It’s an old tale to
you.”
I began to tell the story of Charlie in English, but Grish Chunder put
a question in the vernacular, and the history went forward naturally in
the tongue best suited for its telling. After all it could never have
been told in English. Grish Chunder heard me, nodding from time to time,
and then came up to my rooms where I finished the tale.
“_Beshak_,” he said, philosophically. “_Lekin darwaza band hai._
(Without doubt, but the door is shut.) I have heard of this remembering
of previous existences among my people. It is of course an old tale with
us, but, to happen to an Englishman--a cow-fed _Malechk_--an outcast. By
Jove, that is _most_ peculiar!”
“Outcast yourself, Grish Chunder! You eat cow-beef every day. Let’s
think the thing over. The boy remembers his incarnations.”
“Does he know that?” said Grish Chunder, quietly, swinging his legs as
he sat on my table. He was speaking in English now.
“He does not know anything. Would I speak to you if he did? Go on!”
“There is no going on at all. If you tell that to your friends they will
say you are mad and put it in the papers. Suppose, now, you prosecute
for libel.”
“Let’s leave that out of the question entirely. Is there any chance of
his being made to speak?”
“There is a chance. Oah, yes! But if he spoke it would mean that all
this world would end now--_instanto_--fall down on your head. These
things are not allowed, you know. As I said, the door is shut.”
“Not a ghost of a chance?”
“How can there be? You are a Christi-án, and it is forbidden to eat, in
your books, of the Tree of Life, or else you would never die. How shall
you all fear death if you all know what your friend does not know that
he knows? I am afraid to be kicked, but I am not afraid to die, because
I know what I know. You are not afraid to be kicked, but you are afraid
to die. If you were not, by God! you English would be all over the shop
in an hour, upsetting the balances of power, and making commotions. It
would not be good. But no fear. He will remember a little and a little
less, and he will call it dreams. Then he will forget altogether. When
I passed my First Arts Examination in Calcutta that was all in the
cram-book on Wordsworth. ‘Trailing clouds of glory,’ you know.”
“This seems to be an exception to the rule.”
“There are no exceptions to rules. Some are not so hard-looking as
others, but they are all the same when you touch. If this friend of
yours said so-and-so and so-and-so, indicating that he remembered all
his lost lives, or one piece of a lost life, he would not be in the bank
another hour. He would be what you called sack because he was mad, and
they would send him to an asylum for lunatics. You can see that, my
friend.”
“Of course I can, but I wasn’t thinking of him. His name need never
appear in the story.”
“Ah! I see. That story will never be written. You can try.”
“I am going to.”
“For your own credit and for the sake of money, of course?”
“No. For the sake of writing the story. On my honor that will be all.”
“Even then there is no chance. You cannot play with the Gods. It is a
very pretty story now. As they say, Let it go on that--I mean at that.
Be quick; he will not last long.”
“How do you mean?”
“What I say. He has never, so far, thought about a woman.”
“Hasn’t he, though!” I remembered some of Charlie’s confidences.
“I mean no woman has thought about him. When that comes;
_bus_--_hogya_--all up! I know. There are millions of women here.
Housemaids, for instance.”
I winced at the thought of my story being ruined by a housemaid. And yet
nothing was more probable.
Grish Chunder grinned.
“Yes--also pretty girls--cousins of his house, and perhaps not of his
house. One kiss that he gives back again and remembers will cure all
this nonsense, or else----”
“Or else what? Remember he does not know that he knows.”
“I know that. Or else, if nothing happens he will become immersed in the
trade and the financial speculations like the rest. It must be so. You
can see that it must be so. But the woman will come first, _I_ think.”
There was a rap at the door, and Charlie charged in impetuously. He had
been released from office, and by the look in his eyes I could see
that he had come over for a long talk; most probably with poems in his
pockets. Charlie’s poems were very wearying, but sometimes they led him
to talk about the galley.
Grish Chunder looked at him keenly for a minute.
“I beg your pardon,” Charlie said, uneasily; “I didn’t know you had any
one with you.”
“I am going,” said Grish Chunder.
He drew me into the lobby as he departed.
“That is your man,” he said, quickly. “I tell you he will never speak
all you wish. That is rot-bosh. But he would be most good to make to see
things. Suppose now we pretend that it was only play”--I had never seen
Grish Chunder so excited--“and pour the ink-pool into his hand. Eh, what
do you think? I tell you that he could see _anything_ that a man could
see. Let me get the ink and the camphor. He is a seer and he will tell
us very many things.”
“He may be all you say, but I’m not going to trust him to your Gods and
devils.”
“It will not hurt him. He will only feel a little stupid and dull when
he wakes up. You have seen boys look into the ink-pool before.”
“That is the reason why I am not going to see it any more. You’d better
go, Grish Chunder.”
He went, declaring far down the staircase that it was throwing away my
only chance of looking into the future.
This left me unmoved, for I was concerned for the past, and no peering
of hypnotized boys into mirrors and ink-pools would help me do that. But