The Perfume of Egypt by C. W. Leadbeater (smart ebook reader .TXT) 📕

I stood directly over Lionel — I bent my head down till I was looking close into his face; but not a muscle moved, not a shadow of change came into the expression of those wonderful luminous eyes, and for some moments I remained spell-bound, breathless, my face within a few inches of his. Then by a mighty effort I shook off the controlling influence and grasped wildly at the figure before me. In a moment the light vanished, and I found myself in total darkness kneeling beside my own bed, and tightly grasping the counterpane with both hands!

I rose, gathered my scattered wits, and tried to persuade myself that I must have fallen asleep in my chair, dreamed an extraordinarily vivid dream, and in the course of it walked into my bedroom. I cannot say that even then I felt at all satisfied with this explanation, because my common-sense assured me that it was all wrong; but at any rate I decided that I could do no more work that night, so I locked my desk, bathed my head with cold water, and went to bed.

Though I rose late the next morning, I still felt extremely weak and fatigued, which I attributed to the influence of my dream; however, I decided to say nothing about it, lest it should alarm my mother. I remember looking curiously in the broad daylight at the black marks made on my left arm by the pinches I had given myself in my dream.

That evening it chanced that Lionel St. Aubyn had to call at my house again — I forget now for what purpose; but I remember very distinctly that in course of conversation he suddenly said:

“O, sir, I had such a curious dream last night!”

A sort of electric shock ran through me at the words, but I retained sufficient presence of mind to say:

“Had you? Well, I am just coming out, so you can tell me about it as we walk along.”

Even then I had some uneasy prevision of what was coming — enough at least to make me wish to get him out of earshot from my mother before he said any more. As soon as we were outside, I asked for particulars, and the cold thrill of last night ran down my spine when he began by saying:

“I dreamt, sir, that I was lying on a bed — not asleep, somehow, though I couldn’t move hand or foot; but I could see quite well, and I had a strange feeling that I have never had before. I felt so wise, as though I could have answered any question in the world, if only some one had asked me.”

“How did you lie, Lionel?” I asked him; and I could feel my hair rise gently as he answered:

“I lay on my back, with my hands crossed in front of me.”

“I suppose you were dressed just as you are now?”

“O no, sir! I was dressed in a sort of long white gown, such as the priest wears under his chasuble; and across my breast and over one shoulder I had a broad band of red and gold; it looked so pretty, you can’t think.”

I knew only too well how it had looked, but I kept my thoughts to myself. Of course I saw by this time that my last night’s expedition was more than an ordinary dream, and I felt that his experiences would prove to be the same as mine; but I had a wild feeling of struggling against fate which prompted me to make every effort to find some difference, some flaw which would give me a loophole of escape from that conclusion; so I went on:

“You were in your own bedroom, of course?”

But he replied:

“No, sir; at first I was in a room that I thought I knew, and then suddenly it seemed to grow larger, and it was not a room at all, but a great strange temple, like the pictures I have seen in books, with great heavy pillars, and beautiful pictures painted on its walls.”

“This was a very interesting dream, Lionel; tell me in what sort of city this temple stood.”

It was quite useless; I could not mislead him. The inevitable answer came, as I knew it would:

“Not in a city at all, sir; it was in the middle of a great plain of sand, like the Sahara desert in our geography books; and I could see nothing but sand all round, except far away on the right three nice tall trees with no branches, such as we see in the pictures of Palestine.”

“And what was your temple built of?”

“Of shining black stone, sir; but the great flight of steps in front looked all red, like fire, because of the sun shining it.”

“But how could you see all this when you were inside, boy?”

“Well, sir, I don’t know; it was odd, but I seemed somehow to be outside and inside too; and though I could not move all the time, yet I seemed to go and look at all the beautiful pictures on the walls, but I could not understand how it was.”

And now at last I asked the question that had been in my mind from the first — which I longed, yet dreaded, to put:

“Did you see any men in this strange dream, Lionel?”

“Yes, sir” (looking up brightly) “I saw you; only you, no other men.”

I tried to laugh, though I am conscious it must have been but a feeble attempt, and asked what I had appeared to be doing.

“You came in sir, when I was in the room, you put your head round the door first and when you saw me you looked surprised, and stared at me ever so long; and then you came in, and walked slowly up to the foot of my bed. You took hold of your left arm with your right hand, and seemed to be pulling and pinching at it. Then you leaned your arms on the bedstead, and stood like that all the while we were in that strange temple, and while I saw the pictures. When they were gone you took hold of your arm again, and then you came slowly along the side of the bed towards me. You looked so wild and strange that I was quite frightened.” (`I have no doubt I did,’ thought I, `I certainly felt so’). “Then you came and stooped down till your face nearly touched mine, and still I could not move. Then suddenly you seemed to give a spring, and catch at me with your hands; and that woke me, and 1 found I was lying safe in my own bed at home.”

As may readily be imagined, this exact confirmation of my own experience, and the strange way in which the boy had evidently seen me doing, even in the merest details, just what I seemed to myself to do, had a very eerie effect on my mind as it was poured out to me in innocent childish frankness, while we passed through the weird moonlight and the deep shadows of the great trees on that lonely road; but I endeavoured to confine myself to ordinary expressions of astonishment and interest, and to this day Lionel St. Aubyn has no idea how remarkable an experience his `curious dream’ really was.

I have stated these facts with scrupulous exactness just as they occurred. How are they to be explained? Two possibilities occur to me, but there are difficulties about both of them. The experience may be an instance of the phenomenon called double dreaming, wherein two persons have simultaneously exactly the same dream. It is probable that when that happens, only one of the persons really actively dreams, and the pictures which he sees or evokes are somehow reflected into the brain of the other, or even hypnotically impressed thereupon. In such cases the two partners in the experience usually see and do exactly the same things; but this time, though both saw the same objects and both had the singular experience of double consciousness, our actions were quite different, and each saw the other as that other imagined himself to be.

The other hypothesis is that Lionel was really in my room in his astral body, and that either he was materialised, or my sight was somehow temporarily opened so that I could see him; that we did actually somehow journey together in astral bodies through space to that forsaken temple in the far-off desert, and there go through together a very strange experience. This theory also presents difficulties, and to those who have never studied these matters it will appear far more improbable than the other; yet I myself believe it to be at least partially true. I believe that Lionel was brought astrally into my room, and that I really saw him there; though it is possible that the vision of the forsaken temple may then have been impressed upon us both by some will stronger than our own.

I have always had a suspicion that a third will was concerned in the affair, and that the words spoken by the mysterious voice were the raison d’�tre of the whole. For an adult member of the choir, who had heard of our successful s�ances, was keenly anxious to try his alleged mesmeric powers upon Lionel, asserting that so good a medium would probably be clairvoyant in trance. My instinct was strongly against this, though I had no reason to give for it, I should probably have yielded to persuasion; but after this curious occurrence I refused quite definitely to sanction any experiment of that kind, holding that after such a warning it would be the height of folly. Now, the giving of that warning may have been the object of the vision, and all the rest of the display may have been simply intended to impress the order strongly on our minds — as it certainly did.

THE MAJOR’S PROMISE

By C. W. Leadbeater

The story which I am about to relate is one of my earliest recollections, for I heard it many years ago from my great-grandfather. Though at the time of which I write he had passed by eight or nine years that limit of fourscore winters which is scripturally announced as the extreme period of human existence, he was an erect, soldierly old man still, and displayed not only a perfect retention of all his faculties, but a degree of both mental and physical vigour very unusual at so advanced an age — as may be inferred from the fact that he was in the habit of riding out daily until within three weeks of his death, which occurred at the age of ninety-two.

It will not, therefore, be open to the sceptic to dismiss my tale as distorted by the dreamy semi-recollection of dotage; nor, on the other hand, can he ignore it as exaggerated by the childish fancy of the listener. For I depend not on my own memory, but on a carefully-written account of the affair (dated in the year of its occurrence) found among the old man’s papers after his death. It is fair to add that, though it was not until some twenty years later that I had an opportunity of perusing this paper, I found it to agree in every particular with my own vivid recollection of the story.

That written account I reproduce almost literally, supplying from my memory only some few details of the conversations, and of course altering the names of all the actors. I remember that my great-grandfather used to tell