A Book of Ghosts Part 35

'No, sahib,' replied my native servant very gravely. He was too wicked to be suffered to set his foot, so to speak, on the lowest rung of the ladder of existences. The doom went forth against him that he must haunt the scenes of his former crimes, till he found a man sleeping over one of them, and on that man must be a mole, and out of that mole must grow three hairs. These hairs he must pluck out and plant on the grave of his final victims, and water them with his tears. And the flowing of these first drops of penitence would enable him to pa.s.s at once into the first stage of the circle of incarnations.' 'Why,' said I, 'that unredeemed ruffian was mole-hunting over me the last two nights! But what do you say to these slit panjams?' 'Sahib,' replied Alec, 'he did that with his nails. I presume he turned you over, and ripped them so as to get at your back and feel for the so-much-desired mole.' 'I'll have the tent s.h.i.+fted,' said I. 'Nothing will induce me to sleep another night on this accursed spot.'"

Donelly paused, and proceeded to take off some flakes of mud that had formed on his sleeve. We really were beginning to get drier, but in drying we stiffened, as the mud became hard about us like pie-crust.

"So far," said I, "we have had no wings."

"I am coming to them," replied the major; "I have now concluded the prologue."

"Oh! that was the prologue, was it?"

"Yes. Have you anything against it? It was the prologue. Now I will go on with the main substance of my story. About a year after that incident I retired on half-pay, and returned to England. What became of Alec I did not know, nor care a hang. I had been in England for a little over two years, when one day I was walking along Great Russell Street, and pa.s.sing the gates of the British Museum, I noticed a Hindu standing there, looking wretchedly cold and shabby. He had a tray containing bangles and necklaces and gewgaws, made in Germany, which he was selling as oriental works of art. As I pa.s.sed, he saluted me, and, looking steadily at him, I recognised Alec. 'Why, what brings you here?' I inquired, vastly astonished. 'Sahib may well ask,' he replied. 'I came over because I thought I might better my condition. I had heard speak of a Psychical Research Society established in London; and with my really extraordinary gifts, I thought that I might be of value to it, and be taken in and paid an annuity if I supplied it continuously with well-authenticated, first-hand ghost stories.' 'Well,' said I, 'and have you succeeded?' 'No, sahib. I cannot find it. I have inquired after it from several of the crossing-sweepers, and they could not inform me of its whereabouts; and if I applied to the police, they bade me take myself off, there was no such a thing. I should have starved, sahib, if it had not been that I had taken to this line'; he pointed to his tray.

'Does that pay well?' I asked. He shook his head sadly. 'Very poorly. I can live--that is all. There goes in a Merewig.' 'How many of these rubbishy bangles can you dispose of in a day?' I inquired. 'That depends, sahib. It varies so greatly, and the profits are very small. So small that I can barely get along. There goes in another Merewig.'

'Where are all these things made?' I asked. 'In Germany or in Birmingham?' 'Oh, sahib, how can I tell? I get them from a Jew dealer.

He supplies various street-hawkers. But I shall give it up--it does not pay--and shall set up a stall and dispose of Turkish Delight. There is always a run on that. You English have a sweet tooth. That's a Merewig,'

and he pointed to a dowdy female, with a reticule on her arm, who, at that moment, went through the painted iron gates. 'What do you mean by Merewigs?' said I. 'Does not sahib know?' Alec's face expressed genuine surprise. 'If sahib will go into the great reading-room, he will see scores of them there. It is their great London haunt; they pa.s.s in all day, mainly in the morning--some are in very early, so soon as the museum is open at nine o'clock. And they usually remain there all day picking up information, acquiring knowledge.' 'You mean the students.'

'Not all the students, but a large percentage of them. I know them in a moment. Sahib is aware that I have great gifts for the discernment of spirits.'

"By the way," broke off Donelly, "do you understand Hindustani?"

"Not a word of it," I replied.

"I am sorry for that," said he, "because I could tell you what pa.s.sed between us so much easier in Hindustani. I am able to speak and understand it as readily as English, and the matter I am going to relate would come off my tongue so much easier in that language."

"You might as well speak it in Chinese. I should be none the wiser. Wait a moment. I am cracking."

It was so. The heat of the sun was sensibly affecting my crust of mud. I think I must have resembled a fine old painting, the varnish of which is stained and traversed by an infinity of minute fissures, a perfect network of cracks. I stood up and stretched myself, and split in several places. Moreover, portions of my muddy envelope began to curl at the edges.

"Don't be in too great a hurry to peel," advised Donelly.

"We have abundance of time still before us, and I want to proceed with my narrative."

"Go on, then. When are we coming to the wings?"

"Directly," replied he. "Well, then--if you cannot receive what I have to say in Hindustani, I must do my best to give you the substance of Alec's communication in the vulgar tongue. I will epitomise it. The Hindu went on to explain in this fas.h.i.+on. He informed me that with us, Christians and white people, it is not the same as with the dusky and the yellow races. After death we do not pa.s.s into the bodies of the lower animals, which is a great privilege and ought to afford us immense satisfaction. We at once progress into a higher condition of life. We develop wings, as does the b.u.t.terfly when it emerges from its condition of grub. But the matter out of which the wings are produced is nothing gross. They are formed, or form themselves, out of the information with which we have filled our brains during life. We lay up, during our mortal career here, a large amount of knowledge, of scientific, historical, philosophic, and like acquisitions, and these form the so-to-speak psychic pulp out of which, by an internal and mysterious and altogether inexplicable process, the trans.m.u.tation takes place into our future wings. The more we have stored, the larger are our wings; the more varied the nature, the more radiant and coloured is their painting.

When, at death, the brain is empty, there can be no wing-development.

Out of nothing, nothing can arise. That is a law of nature absolutely inexorable in its application. And this is why you will never have to regret sticking in the mud to-day, my friend. I have supplied you with such an amount of fresh and valuable knowledge, that I believe you will have pinions painted hereafter with peac.o.c.k's eyes."

"I am most obliged to you," said I, splitting into a thousand cakes with the emotion that agitated me.

Donelly proceeded. "I was so interested in what Alec told me, that I said to him, 'Come along with me into the Nineveh room, and we shall be able to thrash this matter out.' 'Ah, sahib,' he replied, 'they will not allow me to take in my tray.' 'Very well,' said I, 'then we will find a step before the portico, one not too much frequented by the pigeons, and will sit there.' He agreed. But the porter at the gate demurred to letting the Hindu through. He protested that no trafficking was allowed on the premises. I explained that none was purposed; that the man and I proposed a discussion on psychological topics. This seemed to content the porter, and he suffered Alec to pa.s.s through with me. We picked out as clean a portion of the steps as we could, and seated ourselves on it side by side, and then the Hindu went on with what he was saying."

Donelly and I were now drying rapidly. As we sat facing each other we must have looked very much like the chocolate men one sees in confectioners' shops--of course, I mean on a much larger scale, and not of the same warm tint, and, of course, also, we did not exhale the same aromatic odour.

"When we were seated," proceeded Donelly, "I felt the cold of the stone steps strike up into my system, and as I have had a touch or two of lumbago since I came home, I stood up again, took a copy of the _Standard_ out of my pocket, folded it, and placed it between myself and the step. I did, however, pull out the inner leaf, that containing the leaders, and presented it to Alec for the same purpose. Orientals are insensible to kindness, and are deficient in the virtue of grat.i.tude.

But this delicate trait of attention did touch the benighted heathen.

His lip quivered, and he became, if possible, more than ever communicative. He nudged me with his tray and said, 'There goes out a Merewig. I wonder why she leaves so soon?' I saw a middle-aged woman in a gown of grey, with greasy splotches on it, and the braid unsewn at the skirt trailing in a loop behind. 'What are the Merewigs?' I asked. I will give you what I learned in my own words. All men and women--I allude only to Europeans and Americans--in the first stage of their life are bound morally, and in their own interest, to acquire and store up in their brains as much information as these will hold, for it is out of this that their wings will be evolved in their second stage of existence. Of course, the more varied this information is, the better.

Men inevitably acc.u.mulate knowledge. Even if they a.s.similate very little at school, yet, as young men, they necessarily take in a good deal--of course, I exempt the mashers, who never learn anything. Even in sport they obtain something; but in business, by reading, by a.s.sociation, by travel, they go on piling up a store. You see that in common conversation they cannot escape doing this; politics, social questions, points of natural history, scientific discoveries form the staple of their talk, so that the mind of a man is necessarily kept replenished.

But with women this is not the case. Young girls read nothing whatever but novels--they might as well feed on soap-bubbles. In their conversation with one another they twaddle, they do not talk."

"But," protested I, "in our civilised society young women a.s.sociate freely with men."

"That is true," replied he. "But to what is their dialogue limited?--to ragging, to frivolous jokes. Men do not talk to them on rational topics, for they know well enough that such topics do not interest girls, and that they are wholly incapable of applying their minds to them. It is wondered why so many Englishmen look out for American wives. That is because the American girl takes pains to cultivate her mind, becomes a rational and well-educated woman. She can enter into her husband's interests, she can converse with him on almost every topic. She becomes his companion. That the modern English girl cannot be. Her head is as hollow as a drum. Now, if she grows up and marries, or even remains an old maid, the case is altered; she takes to keeping poultry, she becomes pa.s.sionately fond of gardening, and she acquires a fund of information on the habits and customs of the domestic servant. The consequence of this is, that the vast majority of English young women who die early, die with nothing stored up in their brains out of which the wings may be evolved. In the larva condition they have consumed nothing that can serve them to bring them into the higher state."

"So," said I, "we are all, you and I, in the larva condition as well as girls."

"Quite so, we are larvae like them, only they are more so. To proceed.

When girls die, without having acquired any profitable knowledge, as you well see, they cannot rise. They become Merewigs."

"Oh, that is Merewigs," said I, greatly astonished.

"Yes, but the Merewigs I had seen pa.s.s in and out of the British Museum, whether to study the collections or to work in the reading-room, were middle-aged for the most part."

"How do you explain that?" I asked.

"I give you only what I received from Alec. There are male Merewigs, but they are few and far between, for the reasons I have given to you. I suppose there are ninety-nine female Merewigs to one male."

"You astonish me."

"I was astonished when I learned this from Alec. Now I will tell you something further. All the souls of the girls who have died empty-headed in the preceding twenty-four hours in England a.s.semble at four o'clock every morning, or rather a few minutes before the stroke of the clock, about the statue of Queen Anne in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, with a possible sprinkling of male masher souls among them. At the stroke of the clock, off the whole swarm rushes up Holborn Hill, along Oxford Street, whither I cannot certainly say. Alec told me that it is for all the world like the rush of an army of rats in the sewers."

"But what can that Hindu know of underground London?"

"He knows because he lodges in the house of a sewer-man, with whom he has become on friendly terms."

"Then you do not know whither this galloping legion runs?"

"Not exactly, for Alec was not sure. But he tells me they tear away to the great _garde-robe_ of discarded female bodies. They must get into these, so as to make up for the past, and acquire knowledge, out of which wings may be developed. Of course there is a scramble for these bodies, for there are at least half a dozen applicants. At first only the abandoned husks of old maids were given them, but the supply having proved to be altogether inadequate, they are obliged to put up with those of married women and widows. There was some demur as to this, but beggars must not be choosers. And so they become Merewigs. There are more than a sufficiency of old bachelors' outer cases hanging up in the _garde-robe_, but the girls will not get into them at any price. Now you understand what Merewigs are, and why they swarm in the reading-room of the British Museum. They are there picking up information as hard as they can pick."

"This is extremely interesting," said I, "and novel."

"I thought you would say so. How goes on the drying?"

"I have been picking off clots of clay while you have been talking."

"I hope you are interested," said Donelly.

"Interested," I replied, "is not the word for it."

"I am glad you think so," said the major; "I was intensely interested in what Alec told me, so much so that I proposed he should come with me into the reading-room, and point out to me such as he perceived by his remarkable gift of discernment of spirits were actual Merewigs. But again the difficulty of his tray was objected, and Alec further intimated that he was missing opportunities of disposing of his trinkets by spending so much time conversing with me. 'As to that,' said I, 'I will buy half a dozen of your bangles and present them to my lady friends; as coming from me, an oriental traveller, they will believe them to be genuine----'"

"As your experiences," interpolated I.

"What do you mean by that?" he inquired sharply.

"Nothing more than this," rejoined I, "that faith is grown weak among females nowadays."

"That is certainly true. It is becoming a sadly incredulous s.e.x. I further got over Alec's difficulty about the tray by saying that it could be left in the custody of one of the officials at the entrance.

Then he consented. We pa.s.sed through the swing-door and deposited the tray with the functionary who presides over umbrellas and walking-sticks. Then I went forward along with my Hindu towards the reading-room. But here another hindrance arose. Alec had no ticket, and therefore might not enter beyond the gla.s.s screen interposed between the door and the readers. Some demur was made as to his being allowed to remain there for any considerable time, but I got over that by means of a little persuasion. 'Sahib,' said Alec 'I should suggest your marking the Merewigs, so as to be able to recognise them elsewhere.' 'How can I do that?' I inquired. 'I have here with me a piece of French chalk,' he answered. 'You go within, sahib, and walk up and down by the tables, behind the chairs of the readers, or around the circular cases that contain the catalogues, and where the students are looking out for the books they desire to consult. When you pa.s.s a female, either seated or standing, glance towards the gla.s.s screen, and when you are by a Merewig I will hold up my hand above the screen, and you will know her to be one; then just scrawl a W or M, or any letter or cabalistic symbol that occurs to you, upon her back with the French chalk. Then whenever you meet her in the street, in society, at an A. B. C. place of refreshment, on a railway platform, you will recognise her infallibly.' 'Not likely,'

I objected. 'Of course, so soon as she gets home, she will brush off the mark.' 'You do not know much of the Merewigs,' he said. 'When the spirits of those frivolous girls were in their first stage of existence, they were most particular about their personal appearance, about the neatness and stylishness of their dress, and the puffing and piling up of their hair. Now all that is changed. They are so disgusted at having to get into any unsouled body that they can lay hold of in the _garde-robe_, such a body being usually plain in features, middle-aged, and with no waist to speak of, or rather too ample in the waist to be elegant, that they have abandoned all concern about dress and tidiness.

Besides, they are engrossed in the acquisition of knowledge, and the burning desire that consumes them is to get out of these borrowed cases as speedily as may be. Consequently, so long as they are dressed and their hair done up anyhow, that is all they care about. As to threads, or feathers, or French chalk marks on their clothes, they would not think of looking for them.' Then Alec handed to me a little piece of French chalk, such as tailors and dressmakers employ to indicate alterations when fitting on garments. So provided, I pa.s.sed wholly into the s.p.a.cious reading-room, leaving the Hindu behind the screen.