And so that day went as days go with sick boys, and early in the
evening I fell fast asleep as a boy in a foreign land, in my dream,
but did no more dream of being a king, and as before I seemed to fall
until I woke again on my mat in my own palace with Gopal sitting near.
Before I could rise the old Brahmin, who had gone away, came in and I
sent Gopal off.
"Rama," said he, "as boy you will not dream of being Rajah but now
you must know that every night as sleeping king you are waking boy in
foreign land. Do well your duty and fail not. It will be some years,
but Time's never-stopping car rolls on. Remember my words," and then he
passed through the open door.
So I knew those dreams about a sick foreign boy were not mere dreams
but that they were recollections, and I condemned each night to animate
that small child just risen from the grave, as his relations thought,
but I knew that his mind for many years would not know itself, but
would ever feel strange in its surroundings, for, indeed, that boy
would be myself inside and him without, his friends not seeing that he
had fled away and another taken his place. Each night I, as sleeping
Rajah who had listened to the words of sages, would be an ignorant
foreign boy, until through lapse of years and effort unremittingly
continued I learned how to live two lives at once. Yet horrible at
first seemed the thought that although my life in that foreign land as
a growing youth would be undisturbed by vague dreams of independent
power as Rajah, I would always, when I woke on my mat, have a clear
remembrance of what at first seemed only dreams of being a king, with
vivid knowledge that while my faithful servant watched my sleeping form
I would be masquerading in a borrowed body, unruly as the wind. Thus as
a boy I might be happy, but as a king miserable maybe. And then after I
should become accustomed to this double life, perhaps my foreign mind
and habits would so dominate the body of the boy that existence there
would grow full of pain from the struggle with an environment wholly at
war with the thinker within.
But a vow once made is to be fulfilled, and Father Time eats up all
things and ever the centuries.