That white thing, seen thus uncertainly, had no semblance to humanity.
It was animal wholly. I could have believed for the moment that a white
cat crouched from me there by the curtain, waiting to spring.
What a strange illusion that was! I tried to laugh at it afterwards, but
at the moment horror stole through me--horror, and almost awe.
All desire of violence left me. Heat was dead; I felt cold as stone. I
could not even speak a word.
Suddenly the white thing moved. The curtain was drawn sharply; the
moonlight was blotted out; the room was plunged in darkness--a darkness
in which that thing could see!
I turned and stole out of the room. I could have fled, driven by the
nameless fear that was upon me.
Only when the morning dawned did the man in me awake, and I cursed
myself for my cowardice.
*****
The following evening we were asked to dine out with some neighbours,
who lived a few miles off in a wonderful old Norman castle near the
sea. During the day neither of us had made the slightest allusion to
the incidents of the previous night. We both felt it a relief to go
into society, I think. The friends to whom we went--Lord and Lady
Melchester--had a large party staying with them, and we were, I believe,
the only outsiders who lived in the neighbourhood. One of their guests
was Professor Black, whose name I have already mentioned--a little,
dry, thin, acrid man, with thick black hair, innocent of the comb, and
pursed, straight lips. I had met him two or three times in London,
and as he had only just arrived at the castle, and scarcely knew his
fellow-visitors there, he brought his wine over to me when the ladies
left the dining-room, and entered into conversation. At the moment I
was glad, but before we followed the women I would have given a year--I
might say years--of my life not to have spoken to him, not to have heard
him speak that night.
How did we drift into that fatal conversation? I hardly remember. We
talked first of the neighbourhood, then swayed away to books, then to
people. Yes, that was how it came about. The Professor was speaking of
a man whom we both knew in town, a curiously effeminate man, whose every
thought and feeling seemed that of a woman. I said I disliked him,
and condemned him for his woman’s demeanour, his woman’s mind; but the
Professor thereupon joined issue with me.
“Pity the fellow, if you like,” he uttered, in his rather strident
voice; “but as to condemning him, I would as soon condemn a tadpole for
not being a full-grown frog. His soul is beyond his power to manage, or
even to coerce, you may depend upon it.”
Having sipped his port, he drew a little nearer to me, and slightly
dropped his voice.
“There would be less censure of individuals in this world,” he said,
“if people were only a little more thoughtful. These souls are like
letters, and sometimes they are sealed up in the wrong envelope. For
instance, a man’s soul may be put into a woman’s body, or _vice versâ_.
It has been so in D------‘s case. A mistake has been made.”
“By Providence?” I interrupted, with, perhaps, just a _soupçon_ of
sarcasm in my voice.
The Professor smiled.
“Suppose we imitate Thomas Hardy, and say by the President of the
Immortals, who makes sport with more humans than Tess,” he answered.
“Mistakes may be deliberate, just as their reverse may be accidental.
Even a mighty power may condescend sometimes to a very practical joke.
To a thinker the world is full of apple-pie beds, and cold wet
sponges fall on us from at least half the doors we push open. The
soul-juggleries of the before-mentioned President are very curious, but
people will not realize that soul transference from body to body is
as much a plain fact as the daily rising of the sun on one half of the
world and its nightly setting on the other.”
“Do you mean that souls pass on into the world again on the death of
the particular body in which they have been for the moment confined?” I
asked.
“Precisely: I have no doubt of it. Sometimes a woman’s soul goes into
a man’s body; then the man acts woman, and people cry against him for
effeminacy. The soul colours the body with actions, the body does not
colour the soul, or not in the same degree.”
“But we are not irresponsible. We can command ourselves.”
The Professor smiled dryly.
“You think so?” he said. “I sometimes doubt it.”
“And I doubt your theory of soul transference.”
“That shows me--pardon the apparent impertinence--that you have never
really examined the soul question with any close attention. Do you
suppose that D------ really likes being so noticeably different from
other men? Depend upon it,’ he has noticed in himself what we have
noticed in him. Depend upon it, he has tried to be ordinary, and found
it impossible. His soul manages him as a strong nature manages a
weak one, and his soul is a female, not a male. For souls have sexes,
otherwise what would be the sense of talking about wedded souls? I have
no doubt whatever of the truth of reincarnation on earth. Souls go on
and on following out their object of development.”
“You believe that every soul is reincarnated?”
“A certain number of times.”
“That even in the animal world the soul of one animal passes into the
body of another?”
“Wait a minute. Now we are coming to something that tends to prove
my theory true. Animals have souls, as you imply. Who can know them
intimately and doubt it for an instant? Souls as immortal--or as
mortal--as ours. And their souls, too, pass on.”
“Into other animals?”
“Possibly. And eventually, in the process of development, into human
beings.”
I laughed, perhaps a little rudely. “My dear Professor, I thought that
old notion was quite exploded in these modern scientific days.”
“I found my beliefs upon my own minute observations,” he said rather
frigidly. “I notice certain animals masquerading--to some extent--as
human beings, and I draw my own conclusions. If they happen to fit in
at all with the conclusions of Pythagoras--or anyone else, for that
matter--well and good. If not, I am not much concerned. Surely
you notice the animal--and not merely the animal, but definite
animals--reproduced in man. There are men whose whole demeanour suggests
the monkey. I have met women who in manner, appearance, and even
character, were intensely like cats.”