The Finest Story in the World - Part III

"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 hang up _tulsi_ and feast the _purohit_, and take you back into caste
again and make a good _khuttri_ 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 _Malechh_--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, yess! 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 Christian, 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 to that. But I
recognized Grish Chunder's point of view and sympathized with it.

"What a big black brute that was!" said Charlie, when I returned to him.
"Well, look here, I've just done a poem; did it instead of playing
dominoes after lunch. May I read it?"

"Let me read it to myself."

"Then you miss the proper expression. Besides, you always make my things
sound as if the rhymes were all wrong."

"Read it aloud, then. You're like the rest of 'em."

Charlie mouthed me his poem, and it was not much worse than the average of
his verses. He had been reading his books faithfully, but he was not
pleased when I told him that I preferred my Longfellow undiluted with
Charlie.

Then we began to go through the MS. line by line; Charlie parrying every
objection and correction with:

"Yes, that may be better, but you don't catch what I'm driving at."

Charles was, in one way at least, very like one kind of poet.

There was a pencil scrawl at the back of the paper and "What's that?" I
said.

"Oh that's not poetry at all. It's some rot I wrote last night before I
went to bed and it was too much bother to hunt for rhymes; so I made it a
sort of blank verse instead."

Here is Charlie's "blank verse":

"We pulled for you when the wind was against us and the sails were low.
_Will you never let us go?_

We ate bread and onions when you took towns or ran aboard quickly when
you were beaten back by the foe,
The captains walked up and down the deck in fair weather singing songs,
but we were below,
We fainted with our chins on the oars and you did not see that we were
idle for we still swung to and fro.
_Will you never let us go?_

The salt made the oar bandies like sharkskin; our knees were cut to the
bone with salt cracks; our hair was stuck to our foreheads; and our lips
were cut to our gums and you whipped us because we could not row,
_Will you never let us go?_

But in a little time we shall run out of the portholes as the water runs
along the oarblade, and though you tell the others to row after us you
will never catch us till you catch the oar-thresh and tie up the winds in
the belly of the sail. Aho!
_Will you never let us go?_"

"H'm. What's oar-thresh, Charlie?"

"The water washed up by the oars. That's the sort of song they might sing
in the galley, y'know. Aren't you ever going to finish that story and give
me some of the profits?"

"It depends on yourself. If you had only told me more about your hero in
the first instance it might have been finished by now. You're so hazy in
your notions."

"I only want to give you the general notion of it--the knocking about from
place to place and the fighting and all that. Can't you fill in the rest
yourself? Make the hero save a girl on a pirate-galley and marry her or do
something."

"You're a really helpful collaborator. I suppose the hero went through
some few adventures before he married."

"Well then, make him a very artful card--a low sort of man--a sort of
political man who went about making treaties and breaking them--a
black-haired chap who hid behind the mast when the fighting began."

"But you said the other day that he was red-haired."

"I couldn't have. Make him black-haired of course. You've no imagination."

Seeing that I had just discovered the entire principles upon which the
half-memory falsely called imagination is based, I felt entitled to laugh,
but forbore, for the sake of the tale.

"You're right _You're_ the man with imagination. A black-haired chap in a
decked ship," I said.

"No, an open ship--like a big boat."

This was maddening.

"Your ship has been built and designed, closed and decked in; you said so
yourself," I protested.

"No, no, not that ship. That was open, or half decked because--By Jove
you're right You made me think of the hero as a red-haired chap. Of course
if he were red, the ship would be an open one with painted sails,"

Surely, I thought, he would remember now that he had served in two galleys
at least--in a three-decked Greek one under the black-haired "political
man," and again in a Viking's open sea-serpent under the man "red as a red
bear" who went to Markland. The devil prompted me to speak.

"Why, 'of course,' Charlie?" said I.

"I don't know. Are you making fun of me?"

The current was broken for the time being. I took up a notebook and
pretended to make many entries in it.

"It's a pleasure to work with an imaginative chap like yourself," I said,
after a pause. "The way that you've brought out the character of the hero
is simply wonderful."

"Do you think so?" he answered, with a pleased flush. "I often tell myself
that there's more in me than my mo--than people think."

"There's an enormous amount in you."

"Then, won't you let me send an essay on The Ways of Bank Clerks to
_Tit-Bits_, and get the guinea prize?"

"That wasn't exactly what I meant, old fellow; perhaps it would be better
to wait a little and go ahead with the galley-story."

"Ah, but I sha'n't get the credit of that. _Tit-Bits_ would publish my
name and address if I win. What are you grinning at? They _would_."

"I know it. Suppose you go for a walk. I want to look through my notes
about our story."

Now this reprehensible youth who left me, a little hurt and put back,
might for aught he or I knew have been one of the crew of the _Argo_--had
been certainly slave or comrade to Thorfin Karlsefne. Therefore he was
deeply interested in guinea competitions. Remembering what Grish Chunder
had said I laughed aloud. The Lords of Life and Death would never allow
Charlie Mears to speak with full knowledge of his pasts, and I must even
piece out what he had told me with my own poor inventions while Charlie
wrote of the ways of bank clerks.

I got together and placed on one file all my notes; and the net result was
not cheering. I read them a second time. There was nothing that might not
have been compiled at secondhand from other people's books--except,
perhaps, the story of the fight in the harbor. The adventures of a Viking
had been written many times before; the history of a Greek galley-slave
was no new thing, and though I wrote both, who could challenge or confirm
the accuracy of my details? I might as well tell a tale of two thousand
years hence. The Lords of Life and Death were as cunning as Grish Chunder
had hinted. They would allow nothing to escape that might trouble or make
easy the minds of men. Though I was convinced of this, yet I could not
leave the tale alone. Exaltation followed reaction, not once, but twenty
times in the next few weeks. My moods varied with the March sunlight and
flying clouds. By night or in the beauty of a spring morning I perceived
that I could write that tale and shift continents thereby. In the wet,
windy afternoons, I saw that the tale might indeed be written, but would
be nothing more than a faked, false-varnished, sham-rusted piece of
Wardour Street work at the end. Then I blessed Charlie in many
ways--though it was no fault of his. He seemed to be busy with prize
competitions, and I saw less and less of him as the weeks went by and the
earth cracked and grew ripe to spring, and the buds swelled in their
sheaths. He did not care to read or talk of what he had read, and there
was a new ring of self-assertion in his voice. I hardly cared to remind
him of the galley when we met; but Charlie alluded to it on every
occasion, always as a story from which money was to be made.

"I think I deserve twenty-five per cent., don't I, at least," he said,
with beautiful frankness. "I supplied all the ideas, didn't I?"

This greediness for silver was a new side in his nature. I assumed that it
had been developed in the City, where Charlie was picking up the curious
nasal drawl of the underbred City man.

"When the thing's done we'll talk about it. I can't make anything of it at
present. Red-haired or black-haired hero are equally difficult."

He was sitting by the fire staring at the red coals. "I can't understand
what you find so difficult. It's all as clear as mud to me," he replied. A
jet of gas puffed out between the bars, took light and whistled softly.
"Suppose we take the red-haired hero's adventures first, from the time
that he came south to my galley and captured it and sailed to the
Beaches."

I knew better now than to interrupt Charlie. I was out of reach of pen and
paper, and dared not move to get them lest I should break the current. The
gas-jet puffed and whinnied, Charlie's voice dropped almost to a whisper,
and he told a tale of the sailing of an open galley to Furdurstrandi, of
sunsets on the open sea, seen under the curve of the one sail evening
after evening when the galley's beak was notched into the centre of the
sinking disc, and "we sailed by that for we had no other guide," quoth
Charlie. He spoke of a landing on an island and explorations in its woods,
where the crew killed three men whom they found asleep under the pines.
Their ghosts, Charlie said, followed the galley, swimming and choking in
the water, and the crew cast lots and threw one of their number overboard
as a sacrifice to the strange gods whom they had offended. Then they ate
sea-weed when their provisions failed, and their legs swelled, and their
leader, the red-haired man, killed two rowers who mutinied, and after a
year spent among the woods they set sail for their own country, and a wind
that never failed carried them back so safely that they all slept at
night. This, and much more Charlie told. Sometimes the voice fell so low
that I could not catch the words, though every nerve was on the strain, He
spoke of their leader, the red-haired man, as a pagan speaks of his God;
for it was he who cheered them and slew them impartially as he thought
best for their needs; and it was he who steered them for three days among
floating ice, each floe crowded with strange beasts that "tried to sail
with us," said Charlie, "and we beat them back with the handles of the
oars."

The gas-jet went out, a burned coal gave way, and the fire settled down
with a tiny crash to the bottom of the grate. Charlie ceased speaking, and
I said no word,

"By Jove!" he said, at last, shaking his head. "I've been staring at the
fire till I'm dizzy. What was I going to say?"

"Something about the galley."

"I remember now. It's 25 per cent. of the profits, isn't it?"

"It's anything you like when I've done the tale."

"I wanted to be sure of that. I must go now. I've--I've an appointment."
And he left me.

Had my eyes not been held I might have known that that broken muttering
over the fire was the swan-song of Charlie Mears. But I thought it the
prelude to fuller revelation. At last and at last I should cheat the Lords
of Life and Death!

When next Charlie came to me I received him with rapture. He was nervous
and embarrassed, but his eyes were very full of light, and his lips a
little parted.

"I've done a poem," he said; and then, quickly: "it's the best I've ever
done. Read it." He thrust it into my hand and retreated to the window.

I groaned inwardly. It would be the work of half an hour to
criticise--that is to say praise--the poem sufficiently to please Charlie.
Then I had good reason to groan, for Charlie, discarding his favorite
centipede metres, had launched into shorter and choppier verse, and verse
with a motive at the back of it. This is what I read:

"The day Is most fair, the cheery wind
Halloos behind the hill,
Where he bends the wood as seemeth good,
And the sapling to his will!
Riot O wind; there is that in my blood
That would not have thee still!

"She gave me herself, O Earth, O Sky;
Grey sea, she is mine alone!
Let the sullen boulders hear my cry,
And rejoice tho' they be but stone!

"Mine! I have won her O good brown earth,
Make merry! 'Tis hard on Spring;
Make merry; my love is doubly worth
All worship your fields can bring!
Let the hind that tills you feel my mirth
At the early harrowing,"

"Yes, it's the early harrowing, past a doubt," I said, with a dread at my
heart, Charlie smiled, but did not answer.

"Red cloud of the sunset, tell it abroad;
I am victor. Greet me O Sun,
Dominant master and absolute lord
Over the soul of one!"

"Well?" said Charlie, looking over my shoulder.

I thought it far from well, and very evil indeed, when he silently laid a
photograph on the paper--the photograph of a girl with a curly head, and a
foolish slack mouth.

"Isn't it--isn't it wonderful?" he whispered, pink to the tips of his
ears, wrapped in the rosy mystery of first love. "I didn't know; I didn't
think--it came like a thunderclap."

"Yes. It comes like a thunderclap. Are you very happy, Charlie?"

"My God--she--she loves me!" He sat down repeating the last words to
himself. I looked at the hairless face, the narrow shoulders already bowed
by desk-work, and wondered when, where, and how he had loved in his past
lives.

"What will your mother say?" I asked, cheerfully.

"I don't care a damn what she says."

At twenty the things for which one does not care a damn should, properly,
be many, but one must not include mothers in the list. I told him this
gently; and he described Her, even as Adam must have described to the
newly named beasts the glory and tenderness and beauty of Eve.
Incidentally I learned that She was a tobacconist's assistant with a
weakness for pretty dress, and had told him four or five times already
that She had never been kissed by a man before.

Charlie spoke on and on, and on; while I, separated from him by thousands
of years, was considering the beginnings of things. Now I understood why
the Lords of Life and Death shut the doors so carefully behind us. It is
that we may not remember our first wooings. Were it not so, our world
would be without inhabitants in a hundred years.

"Now, about that galley-story," I said, still more cheerfully, in a pause
in the rush of the speech.

Charlie looked up as though he had been hit. "The galley--what galley?
Good heavens, don't joke, man! This is serious! You don't know how serious
it is!"

Grish Chunder was right, Charlie had tasted the love of woman that kills
remembrance, and the finest story in the world would never be written.