A TRUE THEOSOPHIST.

A very large majority of people have no idea whatever about Theosophy, and regard Theosophists as more or less crazy members of a new sect. They naturally deny any superiority to one new sect among so many, and aver that, as a considerable number of sects have been “tried in the balances and found wanting,” this one is no better than its predecessors. Theosophists—the real ones—can only reply that they are unsectarian and superior to none. They believe that they have found a good road to the discovery of truth, and wish to share their discovery—if it can be so called—with others.

The very assumption of superiority would be a contradiction in terms to the name itself. But, while giving this emphatic denial with reference to the name “Theosophist,” no attempt is made to assert that all members of the Theosophical Society are also Theosophists. True indeed, that when they enter that society, they subscribe to rules and declare their objects to be such that, were they to carry them out thoroughly, no other name than Theosophists would be applicable. Nor does the name imply that, in the studies which Theosophists make their own, it is necessary that the sole and best place should be given to studies of Oriental philosophy. That again would be a contradiction, for it has most emphatically been stated that “there are those who are ignorant of the Eastern wisdom” who are nearer to divine wisdom, than some who have devoted their entire lives to Oriental studies. It is again the old story that, “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”

Still while holding to the assertion that the study of Oriental wisdom is only one road out of many, it is necessary to remember the analogy which philology may here present to “religion.” Just as philology traces all languages to a common root—the Sanskrit or rather pre-Sanskrit—so the religions of the world can also be traced to a common root and birth place, identical with the cradle and birth place of the human race, which ethnology locates on the high plateaux of CentralAsia.Asia.Therefore it is, that the study of Oriental philosophy has something to be urged in its especial favour, because that philosophy has its home nearer to the source of the wisdom religion than any other.

Still more must it be borne in mind, that members of the Theosophical Society are not necessarily Theosophists, for a very considerable number are attracted merely by the name and through curiosity. They either do not understand what they profess, or if they do, they do not practise it. But this is no attempt to run counter to the proverb, that the tree is known by its fruit, although there is some amount of injustice init.it.All that is asserted is that, if this argument is used against a Society with aims and aspirations such as the Theosophical Society has, it can be used with even more terrible effect againstallreligions whether Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhist, etc. The real reason why this has come to pass, lies in a few words—the cultivation of the individual; and, as a later result of this, in anthropomorphism. It is only those individuals who can “grasp their whole individuality firmly,” and by the force of their “awakened spiritual will, reach out to the life beyond individuality”—it is only they, who can shake themselves loose from the curse which has gradually spread over the whole world. It is in consequence of this growth of individualism that the “blessings of civilization” have become the curse of mankind, and every religion, originally altruistic, has become inverted, and the reign of anti-Christ and hypocrisy has superseded that of Christ and truth. No sweeping accusation is made against the whole world in this statement. A dim and misty veil has been thrown over the face of Truth, and it is as though we saw everything outside the principal focus of a lens, and consequently, under full faith that we see the real image, perceive the inverted image. In the time of Elizabeth, for instance, men learnt to cultivate the individual within the circle of the race, and to attempt to unite in patriotism for the benefit of that race or empire. But it is a vain attempt, and the dissociating effects of this culture will soon be evident in the impossibility of the attempt. Originally the attempt was to cultivate the individual, but only with a view to the increase of that race and with that object as paramount. That is to say, that an English soldier would cultivate himself to the uttermost in order that the world should see what English soldiers were. But the time came when the egoistic element appeared in overwhelming force, and the cultivation was devoted to the sole aim of making this or that man stronger than any man of his own race, or any other.

And now another aim has been substituted for the paramount one of patriotism. Mammon has superseded the latter, and the strength of the individual is cultivated and devoted to withstanding the pressure of life, and to getting a start in the great race to worship at the feet of the demon of cupidity. But again, while devoting their own lives and worse—the lives of their neighbours—to this worship, they yet professed to be Christians or members of other religions. They tried to worship two gods—Mammon on six days of the week and the other divinity on Sunday, or any day set apart for his service. But still, in most cases, it was not the divine instinct of search for the divine in their hearts, but a fear of wrath to come. It really was a pharisaical idea of “hedging,” to use a term of racing slang, with reference to the race of life. The end of it was that Mammon received the real worship of their hearts, and the other god only lip-service. Thus in the end hypocrisy became almost as paramount as Mammon. Time still passed on, and man almost lostsight of any idea of an offended and avenging deity, and any germ of spirituality was very nearly dead from want of cultivation. The material needs held him in complete sway, and the spread of physical science helped him mightily. Losing sight of all the subtler side of nature, he immersed himself in gross matter, and utilitarianism was the watchword and rallying cry. In all this change the age of mechanical inventions took no small part. Man can hardly be blamed as an individual nor as a whole. It is part of the great law of evolution, and the working out of the law of the survival of the fittest.

It may be asked what this has to do with the subject of the article; but in justification it is averred that a picture is most clearly seen by its contrast.

Perhaps the best definition of a Theosophist, is that given by the Alchemist, Thomas Vaughan:

“A Theosophist is one who gives you a theory of the works of God, which has not a revelation, but an inspiration of his own for basis.”

“A man once abandoning the old pathway of routine and entering on the solitary pathway of independent thought—Godward—he is a Theosophist, an original thinker, a seeker after the Eternal Truth, with an inspiration of his own to solve the Eternal problems.”

Such a one as this is the subject of the article. Count Tolstoi, the Russian novelist, is a true Theosophist, and his words and actions in contradiction and illustration of the foregoing, are taken from an interview with him by Mr. George Kennan (Century, June 1887). The interview first describes the surroundings amidst which Count Tolstoi lives, and gives also a description of the Count’s appearance.

Apparently the first thing which impressed Mr. Kennan was the sight of “a wealthy Russian noble, and the greatest of living novelists, shaking hands upon terms of perfect equality with a poor, ragged, and not over clean droshky driver,” who had been engaged in the streets.

Then follows a description of the rooms, the furniture &c., which was observed during the time that Mr. Kennan’s host had retired—not, indeed, to change his coat, but to put one on after a morning’s labour in the fields. Mr. Kennan, it seems, had journeyed through Siberia, and had there promised several of the exiles to visit Count Tolstoi on his return, and to tell him of their condition. In the course of conversation on these matters, Mr. Kennan asked Count Tolstoi whether he did not think that resistance to such oppression as the exiles had experienced was justifiable?

“That depends,” he replied, “upon what you mean by resistance; if you mean persuasion, argument, protest, I answer yes; if you mean violence—no. I do not believe that violent resistance to evil is ever justifiable under any circumstances.”He then set forth clearly, eloquently, and with more feeling than he had yet shown, the views with regard to man’s duty as a member of society which are contained in hisbook entitled “My Religion,” and which are further explained and illustrated in a number of his recently published tracts for the people. He laid particular stress upon the doctrine of non-resistance to evil, which, he said, is in accordance with both the teachings of Christ and the results of human experience. He declared that violence, as a means of redressing wrongs, is not only futile, but an aggravation of the original evil, since it is the nature of violence to multiply and reproduce itself in all directions. “The Revolutionists,” he said, “whom you have seen in Siberia, undertook to resist evil by violence, and what has been the result? Bitterness, and misery, and hatred, and bloodshed! The evils against which they took up arms still exist, and to them has been added a mass of previously non-existent human suffering. It is not in that way that the kingdom of God is to be realised on earth.”For a long time I did not suggest any difficulties or raise any objections.... It is one thing to ask a man in a general way whether he would use violence to resist evil, and quite another thing to ask him specifically whether he would knock down a burglar who was about to cut the throat of his mother. Many men would sayyesto the first question who would hesitate at the second. Count Tolstoi, however, was consistent. I related to him many cases of cruelty, brutality, and oppression which had come to my knowledge in Siberia, and at the end of every recital I said to him, “Count Tolstoi, if you had been there and had witnessed that transaction, would you not have interfered with violence?” He invariably answered “No.” I asked him the direct question whether he would kill a highwayman who was about to murder an innocent traveller, provided there were no other way to save the traveller’s life. He replied, “If I should see a bear about to kill a peasant in the forest, I would sink an axe in the bear’s head; but I would not kill a man who was about to do the same thing.” There finally came into my mind a case which, although really not worse than many that I had already presented to him, would, I thought, appeal with peculiar force to a brave, sensitive, chivalrous man.

He then set forth clearly, eloquently, and with more feeling than he had yet shown, the views with regard to man’s duty as a member of society which are contained in hisbook entitled “My Religion,” and which are further explained and illustrated in a number of his recently published tracts for the people. He laid particular stress upon the doctrine of non-resistance to evil, which, he said, is in accordance with both the teachings of Christ and the results of human experience. He declared that violence, as a means of redressing wrongs, is not only futile, but an aggravation of the original evil, since it is the nature of violence to multiply and reproduce itself in all directions. “The Revolutionists,” he said, “whom you have seen in Siberia, undertook to resist evil by violence, and what has been the result? Bitterness, and misery, and hatred, and bloodshed! The evils against which they took up arms still exist, and to them has been added a mass of previously non-existent human suffering. It is not in that way that the kingdom of God is to be realised on earth.”

For a long time I did not suggest any difficulties or raise any objections.... It is one thing to ask a man in a general way whether he would use violence to resist evil, and quite another thing to ask him specifically whether he would knock down a burglar who was about to cut the throat of his mother. Many men would sayyesto the first question who would hesitate at the second. Count Tolstoi, however, was consistent. I related to him many cases of cruelty, brutality, and oppression which had come to my knowledge in Siberia, and at the end of every recital I said to him, “Count Tolstoi, if you had been there and had witnessed that transaction, would you not have interfered with violence?” He invariably answered “No.” I asked him the direct question whether he would kill a highwayman who was about to murder an innocent traveller, provided there were no other way to save the traveller’s life. He replied, “If I should see a bear about to kill a peasant in the forest, I would sink an axe in the bear’s head; but I would not kill a man who was about to do the same thing.” There finally came into my mind a case which, although really not worse than many that I had already presented to him, would, I thought, appeal with peculiar force to a brave, sensitive, chivalrous man.

This was a case of most brutal treatment of a young girl who was exiled to Siberia. At a certain town on her journey the governor ordered that she was to put on the clothing of an ordinary convict. This she declined to do on the ground that administrative exiles had the right to wear their own clothing. Furthermore the clothing supplied to convicts is not always new, and it is quite possible that it is of the filthiest description and full of vermin. She argued that she would have been compelled to change at Moscow had it been necessary, and again declined. The local governor persisted and ordered that force should be used to effect the change. Accordingly, in the presence of nine or ten men, the change of clothing was effected—she was stripped naked, forcibly reclothed, and left bleeding and exhausted after ineffectual resistance.

“Now,” I said, “suppose all this had occurred in your presence; suppose that this bleeding, defenceless, half-naked girl had appealed to you for protection, and had thrown herself into your arms; suppose that it had been your daughter, would you still have refused to interfere by an act of violence?”He was silent. Finally, ignoring my direct question as to what he personally would have done in such a case, Count Tolstoi said, “Even under such circumstances violence would not be justifiable. Let us analyse that situation carefully. I will grant, for the sake of argument, that the local governor who ordered the act of violence was an ignorant man, a cruel man, a brutal man—what you will; but he probably had an ideathat he was doing his duty; he probably believed that he was enforcing a law of the Government to which he owed obedience and service. You suddenly appear and set yourself up as a judge in the case; you assume that he is not doing his duty—that he is committing an act of unjustifiable violence—and then, with strange inconsistency, you proceed to aggravate and complicate the evil by yourself committing another act of unjustifiable violence. One wrong added to another wrong does not make a right; it merely extends the area of wrong. Furthermore, your resistance, in order to be effective—in order to accomplish anything—must be directed against the soldiers who are committing the assault. But those soldiers are not free agents; they are subject to military discipline and are acting under orders which they dare not disobey. To prevent the execution of the orders you must kill or maim two or three of the soldiers—that is, kill or wound the only parties to the transaction who are certainly innocent, who are manifestly acting without malice and without evil intention. Is that just? Is it rational? But go a step further: suppose that you do kill or wound two or three of the soldiers; you may or may not thus succeed in preventing the completion of the act against which your violence is a protest; but one thing you certainly will do, and that is, extend the area of enmity, injustice, and misery. Every one of the soldiers whom you kill or maim has a family, and upon every such family you bring grief and suffering which would not have come to it but for your act. In the hearts of perhaps a score of people you rouse the anti-Christian and anti-social emotions of hatred and revenge, and thus sow broadcast the seeds of further violence and strife. At the time when you interposed there was only one centre of evil and suffering. By your violent interference you have created half-a-dozen such centres. It does not seem to me, Mr. Kennan, that that is the way to bring about the reign of peace and good-will on earth.”

He was silent. Finally, ignoring my direct question as to what he personally would have done in such a case, Count Tolstoi said, “Even under such circumstances violence would not be justifiable. Let us analyse that situation carefully. I will grant, for the sake of argument, that the local governor who ordered the act of violence was an ignorant man, a cruel man, a brutal man—what you will; but he probably had an ideathat he was doing his duty; he probably believed that he was enforcing a law of the Government to which he owed obedience and service. You suddenly appear and set yourself up as a judge in the case; you assume that he is not doing his duty—that he is committing an act of unjustifiable violence—and then, with strange inconsistency, you proceed to aggravate and complicate the evil by yourself committing another act of unjustifiable violence. One wrong added to another wrong does not make a right; it merely extends the area of wrong. Furthermore, your resistance, in order to be effective—in order to accomplish anything—must be directed against the soldiers who are committing the assault. But those soldiers are not free agents; they are subject to military discipline and are acting under orders which they dare not disobey. To prevent the execution of the orders you must kill or maim two or three of the soldiers—that is, kill or wound the only parties to the transaction who are certainly innocent, who are manifestly acting without malice and without evil intention. Is that just? Is it rational? But go a step further: suppose that you do kill or wound two or three of the soldiers; you may or may not thus succeed in preventing the completion of the act against which your violence is a protest; but one thing you certainly will do, and that is, extend the area of enmity, injustice, and misery. Every one of the soldiers whom you kill or maim has a family, and upon every such family you bring grief and suffering which would not have come to it but for your act. In the hearts of perhaps a score of people you rouse the anti-Christian and anti-social emotions of hatred and revenge, and thus sow broadcast the seeds of further violence and strife. At the time when you interposed there was only one centre of evil and suffering. By your violent interference you have created half-a-dozen such centres. It does not seem to me, Mr. Kennan, that that is the way to bring about the reign of peace and good-will on earth.”

Mr. Kennan had a manuscript written by one of those prisoners who took part in the desperate “hunger-strike” of 1884, with which he had been entrusted to hand on to Count Tolstoi. He read two or three pages of it, and then, alluding to the Nihilists, condemned their methods most heartily. Mr. Kennan appeared rather to sympathise with their motives. Count Tolstoi appears only to do so partially, and, while he earnestly desires a revolution, declines to have anything to do with one brought about by violence. Mr. Kennan objected that violence might close the mouth of the peaceable revolutionist and prevent his teaching and thoughts from ever becoming public.

“But do you not see,” replied the Count, “that if you claim and exercise the right to resist by an act of violence what you regard as evil, every other man will insist upon his right to resist in the same way what he regards as evil, and the world will continue to be filled with violence? It is your duty to show that there is a better way.”“But,” I objected, “you cannot show anything if somebody smites you on the mouth every time you open it to speak the truth.”“You can at least refrain from striking back,” replied the Count; “you can show by your peaceable behaviour that you are not governed by the barbarous law of retaliation, and your adversary will not continue to strike a man who neither resists nor tries to defend himself. It is by those who have suffered, not by those who have inflicted suffering, that the world has been advanced.”I said it seemed to me that the advancement of the world had been promoted not a little by the protests—and often the violent and bloody protests—of its inhabitants against wrong and outrage, and that all history goes to show that a people which tamely submits to oppression never acquires either liberty or happiness.“The whole history of the world,” replied the Count, “is a history of violence, andyou can of course cite violence in support of violence; but do you not see that there is in human society an endless variety of opinions as to what constitutes wrong and oppression, and that if you once concede the right of any man to resort to violence to resist what he regards as wrong, he being the judge, you authorise every other man to enforce his opinions in the same way, and you have a universal reign of violence?”

“But,” I objected, “you cannot show anything if somebody smites you on the mouth every time you open it to speak the truth.”

“You can at least refrain from striking back,” replied the Count; “you can show by your peaceable behaviour that you are not governed by the barbarous law of retaliation, and your adversary will not continue to strike a man who neither resists nor tries to defend himself. It is by those who have suffered, not by those who have inflicted suffering, that the world has been advanced.”

I said it seemed to me that the advancement of the world had been promoted not a little by the protests—and often the violent and bloody protests—of its inhabitants against wrong and outrage, and that all history goes to show that a people which tamely submits to oppression never acquires either liberty or happiness.

“The whole history of the world,” replied the Count, “is a history of violence, andyou can of course cite violence in support of violence; but do you not see that there is in human society an endless variety of opinions as to what constitutes wrong and oppression, and that if you once concede the right of any man to resort to violence to resist what he regards as wrong, he being the judge, you authorise every other man to enforce his opinions in the same way, and you have a universal reign of violence?”

Count Tolstoi considers itnecessarynecessaryto labour for and help the poor by whom he is surrounded; but he is keenly alive to the danger of pauperising them. In doing this he runs counter to the ideas of organised society and the existing traits of human character. He declines to regard these as sacred and immutable, and is doing what he can to change them.

“Count Tolstoi then related with great fulness of detail the history of his change of attitude toward the teaching of Christ, and the steps by which he was brought to see that that teaching, rightly understood, furnishes a reasonable solution of some of the darkest problems of human life. He based upon it not only his opposition to resistance as a means of overcoming evil, but his hostility to courts of justice, established churches, class distinctions, private property, and all civil and ecclesiastical organisation in existing forms. His frequent references to the New Testament, and his insistence on the precepts of Christ as furnishing the only rule for the right government of human conduct, might lead one to regard Count Tolstoi as a devout and orthodox Christian, but, judged by a doctrinal standard, he is very far from being so. He rejects the whole doctrinal framework of the Christian scheme of redemption, including original sin, atonement, the triune personality of God, and the divinity of Christ, and has very little faith in the immortality of the soul. His religion is a religion of this world, and it is based almost wholly upon terrestrial considerations. If he refers frequently to the teachings of Christ, and accepts Christ’s precepts as the rules which should govern human conduct, it is not because he believes that Christ was God, but because he regards those precepts as a formal embodiment of the highest and noblest philosophy of life, and as a revelation, in a certain sense, of the Divine will and character. He insists, however, that Christ’s precepts shall be understood—and that they were intended to be understood—literally and in their most obvious sense. He will not recognise nor tolerate any softening or modification of a hard commandment by subtle and plausible interpretation. If Christ said, ‘Resist not evil,’ he meant resist not evil. He did not mean resist not evil if you can help it, nor resist not evil unless it is unbearable; he meant resist not at all. How unflinchingly Count Tolstoi faces the logical results of his system of belief I have tried to show.”

Count Tolstoi’s views as to his own action and practice have been recently published in an authorised interview which appeared in a Russian journal. He said:

“People say to me, ‘Well, Lef Nikolaivitch, as far as preaching goes, you preach; but how about your practice?’ The question is a perfectly natural one; it is always put to me, and it always shuts my mouth. ‘You preach,’ it is said, ‘but how do you live?’ I can only reply that I do not preach—passionately as I desire to do so. I might preach through my actions, but my actions are bad. That which I say is not preaching; it is only an attempt to find out the meaning and the significance of life. People often say to me, ‘If you think that there is no reasonable life outside the teachings of Christ, and if you love a reasonable life, why do you not fulfill the Christian precepts?’ I am guilty and blameworthy and contemptible because I do not fulfill them; but at the same time I say—not in justification, but in explanation, of my inconsistency—Compare my previous life with the life I am now living, and you will see that I am trying to fulfill. I have not, it is true, fulfilled one eighty-thousandthpart, and I am to blame for it; but it is not because I do not wish to fulfill all, but because I am unable. Teach me how to extricate myself from the meshes of temptation in which I am entangled—help me—and I will fulfill all. I wish and hope to do it even without help. Condemn me if you choose—I do that myself—but condemn me, and not the path which I am following, and which I point out to those who ask me where, in my opinion, the path is. If I know the road home, and if I go along it drunk, and staggering from side to side, does that prove that the road is not the right one? If it is not the right one, show me another. If I stagger and wander, come to my help, and support and guide me in the right path. Do not yourselves confuse and mislead me, and then rejoice over it and cry, ‘Look at him! He says he is going home, and he is floundering into the swamp!’ You are not evil spirits from the swamp; you are also human beings, and you also are going home. You know that I am alone—you know that I cannot wish or intend to go into the swamp—then help me! My heart is breaking with despair because we have all lost the road; and while I struggle with all my strength to find it and keep in it, you, instead of pitying me when I go astray, cry triumphantly, ‘See! He is in the swamp with us!’”

In this report of Count Tolstoi, it is impossible not to recognise the generous, just, and sympathetic man—the true Theosophist. He may be mistaken, but he is endeavouring to carry out the precepts of Christ. Not indeed, doctrinal Christianity, but to put in practice the actual precepts of the Master he follows. He does this as far as he can; and even with this little (as he says) he is accused of quixotism, and is obliged to stay his hand in order to keep up the example he affords. Why is this. For fear of interested relatives and the lunatic asylum. Here we have a man endeavouring to carry out “under an inspiration of his own,” the precepts laid down by the last of the world’s great teachers. What is the result of his endeavours? That he is in danger of the same fate that the author of “Modern Christianity a civilized Heathenism,” threatened Christ with, were he to return in the XIXth century—the lunatic asylum. Nothing is so intolerable to modern minds as an example of what they (unconsciously to themselves) recognise as that which they ought to follow, but do not. Therefore it has to be put out of sight. Since madness has been defined as a mental state which is in contradiction to the average mental state, it is evident that all religious reformers ought to be put away in a lunatic asylum.

It is quite possible to recognise what an extraordinary effect Count Tolstoi’s principle of non-resistance to evil would have. Still it is a strictly Christian one. Christ went further, and ordained that the other cheek should be offered to the man who smites. It might be argued that this would result in a tacit acquiescence in evil. But if it be so, the whole of the Count’s life is a contradiction to this, and a standing protest against the existence of those who create, or rather perpetuate, this evil. Every reform, this included, is a protest against doing at Rome what Romans do, or thelaisser aller, which is the indolent curse of human progress. Count Tolstoi desires to see the reign of Christ on Earth, and in this accords well with the Theosophists who desire “Universal Brotherhood.” But neither of these can be effected save by the cultivation of the innerand spiritual man, so that it shall shine through and form the guide to the outer and physical man. But unfortunately the welfare of the latter is taken as the standard at present and humanity, without the spiritual man as a guide, is left to flounder in the ditch into which it has fallen.

Those who desire to follow Count Tolstoi, or to become real working Theosophists, may find something to think about in comparing his words with his actions. He endeavours to “go about doing good,” and to help his fellow men on the hard path of life. When it is followed it will be found that to run counter to the spirit of the age, and instead of the indolentlaisser aller, to work not for self, but for humanity at large, is the hardest task ever set to men. Mankind as a rule does not want an example or to be worked for; both are rude awakenings from the lotus-eating state they desire to be left in. “Let us alone,” is their cry, and they resist with violence any attempt to rouse them.

But those who desire a greater unity than that which any race or nation can afford—the unity of the human race—the Universal Brotherhood—cannot leave them alone. There is a power which impels Count Tolstoi to protest against the reign of violence, and he truly replies, that the readiest means of continuing this reign is to meet violence by violence. Therefore he, by his writings, and his words and life, endeavours to place before men the noblest philosophy of life that he recognises, in answer to the appeal which is silently uttered from the hearts of many men and women in the world.

It is a cry of despair at the ignorance which surrounds them and to which the Theosophical Society,according to its avowed aims, is an answer. It is best described in the words of Tennyson—

An infant crying in the night,And with no language but a cry.

An infant crying in the night,

And with no language but a cry.

A. I. R.

A GHOST’S REVENGE

Early in the year 187—, the singular and distressing attacks of mental depression from which Sir Selwyn Fox had long been a sufferer, increased in frequency.

His son Gaston (twenty-four years of age, of medicine by calling and letters by choice), whose devotion to his father was intense, urged him to go to London and procure that skilled medical advice which was not to be had in the neighbourhood of the baronet’s country seat, in Northumberland. But Sir Selwyn was inflexible in his determination to see no doctor. Affectionate as his manner always was with Gaston, he even showed impatience when pressed on this point; and Gaston, forced to abandon it, fell back on his own skill in an endeavour to assign some tangible cause for his father’s malady. But in this he was hopelessly baffled.

Nothing in Sir Selwyn’s present state, no circumstance of his past history which was known to Gaston (who had rarely been apart from him since boyhood), excused or explained in any degree the melancholy which clouded his existence. His great fortune placed him beyond suspicion or suggestion of pecuniary embarrassment. All the surroundings of his home were well calculated to administer to the refined pleasures of a man widely known as an amateur of books and art. No entanglement of the affections could be supposed seriously to trouble the peace of one who had passed his meridian, and who, moreover, cherished still the memory of the wife he had long lost. He had friendships which, while they attested his worth, would have been sufficient in themselves to endear most men to life. Yet for months he had worn the air of a man to whom life was fast becoming an unendurable burden.

His own skill and experience failing to open to Gaston any method of coping with a disease whose hidden source and origin he could not divine, he was on the point of writing to a leading London physician of his acquaintance, when a circumstance occurred which saved him from the necessity of this step.

Sir Selwyn was alone in his room one evening when Gaston, who was reading in a room immediately beneath, heard sounds overhead which at once sent him upstairs to learn the cause. He had fancied that his father was speaking in a tone of troubled remonstrance to some unwelcome visitor, though he felt persuaded that no one, unless a servant of the house, could be with him at that hour. Hastening to his father’s room, his footsteps were arrested on the threshold by thespectacle which the half-opened door revealed to him. Sir Selwyn sat motionless and rigid in his chair; his face was colourless, and all the features stiff, while the eyes, dilated and staring, seemed, though they were fixed on space, to hold within their vision some object not perceptible to Gaston. This was the more remarkable that Gaston stood directly in his father’s line of sight, though it was certain that Sir Selwyn neither looked at him nor saw him. In a word, it was the gaze of a man who sees, or believes that he sees, an apparition.

Gaston took a step forward; the sound fell on the baronet’s ear and broke the spell which held him.

His first look was one of inexpressible shame, succeeded immediately by one of indescribable relief. If detection were painful, as it clearly was, it appeared as though the pain were almost lost in the necessity now forced upon him of disclosing the secret of his misery. Gaston was at his father’s side in a moment.

“What is it, father?” he cried. “What is it? You have seen something. Tell me what it is.”

Sir Selwyn, in whose expression exhaustion and pain were mingled, fixed his eyes for a while on his son’s face before he replied:

“If I should tell you, Gaston, you would not believe it. I do not believe it myself. And yet I see it, and know that it is there.”

“I shall believe whatever you tell me, father,” answered Gaston.

“Gaston,” began the baronet, “you are a doctor, and have read, read widely in all branches of science. Tell me, do you believe that we who are in the body may see and know a spirit from the dead?”

“You believe, father, that you have seen such a spirit?”

“The whole force of my reason cannot persuade me otherwise,” answered his father. “All the powers of my mind compel me to deny it, and yet the thing is there before my eyes.”

The baronet had by this time regained his usual calm of manner, and his voice was resolute and quiet.

“Is it here now, father?” asked Gaston.

“Yes,” answered Sir Selwyn.

“Where, father? Point to me the place where it stands.”

“It stands now at my elbow, side by side with you.”

Gaston started involuntarily, the baronet’s tone bespoke such absolute conviction. He moved a step, and placed himself immediately at his father’s elbow.

“Do you see it now, father?” he asked.

“No, for you have taken its place. Yes! I see it again. It is on this side now, exactly opposite to you.”

There was in all this so little of the tone and manner of the mere spectre-ridden visionary, that Gaston could not but be impressed, and his alarm for his father’s state increased proportionately.

He began to question him in the direct matter-of-fact style of a doctorwith his patient, inquiring into the particular nature of the vision, how often and in what circumstances it presented itself, whether his father were able to connect it with any event of his life, or whether it seemed to be causeless, a mere fabric of the imagination.

His object in this was to bring his father to exert his reason upon the matter, that so, if possible, he might end by convincing himself that he was haunted merely by some spectre of the brain. He was, however, only partially successful, and for this reason, that his father, while denying—and with perfect honesty of convincement—the reality of his vision, remained nevertheless persuaded that his bodily eye beheld it.

“I cannot well remember,” went on Sir Selwyn, “how many years it is since this spectre first began to haunt me. In the beginning I thought little of it; my health was more robust then than it has been in late years, and leading a more active life at that time than I am able to do at present, I had greater strength, both of mind and body, to assist me in banishing it from my thoughts and presence. Indeed, I could then at any time rid myself of the vision by a mere exertion of will; but I can do so no longer. It torments me now as it pleases. I am powerless against it.”

“Does the form resemble that of anyone whom you have ever known?” asked Gaston.

“Yes,” replied Sir Selwyn, after a moment’s pause.

“And the person whose spirit you believe this to be is now dead, father?”

“Dead many years,” answered Sir Selwyn.

“And what is there in the vision that troubles you so greatly, father?” asked his son.

“Its presence is tormenting,” replied Sir Selwyn, “because I feel that there is evil in it; it is malignant, and seems continually to threaten me.”

“Is it here still, father?”

“No, since we have been speaking it has vanished. I shall see it no more to-night; but it will return to-morrow, and in the end it will kill me.”

“No, father, no,” said Gaston affectionately, but gravely. “Let me entreat you not to give way. You see how this vision, whatever it may be, vanishes when you begin to reason upon it. The mere fact of our having discussed it together will enable you to combat it more resolutely. Do this, and the same power will revive by which you dispelled the vision when first it troubled you.”

Indeed, the closing words of Sir Selwyn’s confession, notwithstanding the quiet assurance with which they were spoken, had practically convinced his son that the case was one of hallucination. They continued talking on the subject until, at the baronet’s usual hour of retiring, they separated for the night, when Gaston was so far satisfied that his arguments appeared at last to have given his father a somewhat increased measure of self-confidence.

At breakfast the next day, Sir Selwyn assured his son that he had slept well, and both in speech and look he was more cheerful than Gaston had seen him during a considerable period. It seemed, in short, as though the effect of their conversation the previous night had already begun to bear out the son’s prediction; nor, at the end of a week, did this good effect appear to have been in any degree dissipated. “I have not seen it once,” said Sir Selwyn, in answer to a question from Gaston. Another week passed, and a third, and the baronet declared that there had been no recurrence of the visions. He became very reticent upon the subject, and it was evident that he now shrank from any allusion to it. Gaston, on his side, was only too willing to avoid its mention.

It was at this time that Sir Selwyn received a letter from an old friend of his college days, now holding a high place in the Indian Government, reminding him of a long-promised visit, and begging him to fulfil his word without further delay.

A better invitation, thought Gaston, could not have arrived at a more opportune moment. Their pleasant English home had become charged for the baronet with associations which were wholly painful; a new scene and fresher interests would assist to push to completion the recovery which could not but be long delayed in his present situation. Sir Selwyn himself was of the same mind, and decided at once to accept his friend’s invitation.

Then arose in Gaston’s mind the question whether, in the circumstances, it were well or advisable that his father should make the journey alone. He thought it not advisable at all, and without plainly telling this to his father, begged that he might accompany him. But Sir Selwyn showed a strong reluctance to accede to this request, which was the more marked that father and son had never yet been separated on any tour of pleasure. Gaston continued to press his point, until he perceived, or thought that he perceived, what was his father’s reason for wishing to take this journey alone.

The thing which Sir Selwyn had striven for years to hide from his son he had just been forced to reveal to him. It was the sorrowful secret of his life, a secret which, to the baronet, had something of shame in it, and the revelation had been beyond measure painful to him. If, in one sense, the confession which had been wrung from him had brought father and son more closely together, it had, in another sense, placed a certain something between them of which the presence of Gaston was a constant reminder. With Gaston at his father’s side, the secret too was there. When Gaston’s delicate intuition had realised this for him, his entreaties to accompany his father were at an end. It was decided that Sir Selwyn should go to India alone, and in a fortnight from the receipt of his friend’s invitation he was on his way.

Gaston was desolate at home, and at the end of ten days or so he went to Paris, intending to stay a week there and return to England;but the weather was pleasant, and from Paris he began to wander, inleasurelyleasurelyfashion, southwards; and before he had quite made up his mind as to where he wanted to go, he found himself in Rome. Rome was chilly, and he had lighted on a bad hotel, so he remained but a few days, and went on to Naples. He would wait to see Rome, he said, until his father was with him.

After a fortnight in Naples, he was on the point of returning home, when he received a cable message from his father, forwarded with letters from England. Sir Selwyn had reached India safely and in good health, and thought it probable that his stay would be of somewhat longer duration than his arrangements on leaving England had contemplated.

The prospect of five or six solitary months in the castle in Northumberland had no relish for Gaston, so he resolved to extend his tour by an excursion to Sicily. Accordingly, he took steamer one evening from Naples to Palermo: the beautiful old city where the traces yet linger of Saracen and Norman; with the tideless sea in front, and the purple hills behind, and between the hills and the sea the little lovely plain of the Shell of Gold. Naples is beautiful, but brutal; a paradise peopled by savages: an Oriental languor softens the life of Palermo, as it tinges with melancholy the national songs; and the rural element which enters so largely into the character of the whole Sicilian people makes them something of Arcadians in a modern Arcady.

Gaston felt the charm of the place in an hour; the sense of want of companionship which had gone with him in his listless wanderings in Italy, here deserted him; he plucked ripe oranges in the garden of the hotel, and they became his lotos fruit, for he resolved that his wanderings should end in Palermo. He would remain here until his father returned from India.

But it chanced that there were few foreign visitors in Palermo that season, and within a week of Gaston’s arrival the hotel at which he stayed was emptied of all its guests, except himself and an old German baron, and the baron waited only for a steamer to take him to Malta, on his way to Egypt. An empty hotel in a foreign land is as cheerful an abode as a catacomb, and Gaston cast about for a change of quarters.

Strolling one day in a slumbrous corner of the town, where cypress trees stood sentinels at rusty iron gates, and the air smelled of lemon groves and roses, he was struck by the aspect of a tenantless and apparently deserted villa, walled within a garden, which, untended as it was, retained a certain monastic trimness. A weather-stained board over the iron gate, which was of fine workmanship, announced that the villa was to let. Gaston tried the gate, but it was locked. A broad-hatted priest who was passing at the moment, observing Gaston’s interest in the villa, stopped, took a pinch of snuff, and said that if the signor desired to have particulars of the place, he might obtain them from sucha person in a street close at hand, which he indicated. Gaston thanked the father for his courtesy, and went to inquire if he could see the villa, with a view to hiring it for a short time.

At dinner that evening, the baron said that he expected to sail for Malta on the following day, and expressed his regret at leaving Gaston alone in the hotel. Gaston replied that he should be sorry to lose the companionship of the baron, but that he also was about to leave the hotel, and had taken a villa for the remainder of his stay in Palermo. He described the villa, and the baron, who spoke English well, exclaimed with a laugh:

“So! Is that the place? The Villa Torcello then has found a tenant at last!”

“Has it been long without one?”

“Nearly thirty years.”

“And what is the reason?”

“How! Did they not tell you? The Villa Torcello is the famous haunted house. Yes, I assure you, a real ghost! Are you not delighted? You may be able to make a story about it, you know, you who write novels.”

“And whose is the ghost?” inquired Gaston, whose associations with this subject were by no means pleasant.

“They ought to have told you about it,” answered the baron. “Some people do not like ghosts. I do not like them myself, though to be sure I have never seen a ghost. The house, as you know, is called the Villa Torcello, but that was not its original name. Years ago it was called the Villa Verga, after its first owner, Signor Udalrico Verga, a young Sicilian of good family, who was well known and very popular in Palermo. He lived there all alone, and was much visited by a priest, a very handsome young man, a little older than himself, with whom he was on terms of great affection. One morning, thirty years ago—I believe it was in this very month—the gardener of the Signor Verga found his master lying dead in the garden, with a bullet-hole in the temple. There seemed no reason in the world why he should have killed himself, and as no weapon was found near the body, or in any part of the garden, it was concluded that he had been murdered. Suspicion fell on the priest, though for no cause except that he had been more intimate with the Signor Verga than anybody else. They were never known to have had a quarrel, and as for evidence, not a scrap could be produced against the priest, who, they say, showed the deepest grief for his friend. Indeed he died, in great distress of mind, six months afterwards. Some people, who would always regard him as the murderer, said that remorse for his crime killed him; but though I have heard this story many times since I first visited Palermo, I could never see that there was any reason whatever to suspect the priest.”

“And the murder was never brought home to anyone?”

“It has remained a mystery from that day to this,” replied the baron. “A year or two after the death of Verga, his brother went to live in the Villa, changing its name to that of a property of his own in Calabria, the name which it still bears. But he could not stay in it, for he said that he saw the spirit of his brother walking in the garden in the evenings, on the path where the body was found. Since he left it, the house has never been occupied. As to the ghost, many stories are told, but the favourite one is that it haunts the place seeking someone to avenge the murder. That is a strange notion, don’t you think, Herr Fox?”

The baron added no more to the story, and as he was busy with his letters during the rest of the evening, Gaston only saw him again to bid him good-bye on the following morning.

A day or two afterwards, Gaston settled himself in the VillaTorcello.Torcello.His coming there created a momentary flutter of excitement in the quarter where the villa was situated; but this was not known to Gaston, who had neither friends nor acquaintances in the town.

He wrote to tell his father of his new residence, and to ask him whether he had visited Palermo in the tour he had made in Italy a few years before Gaston’s birth. One morning, the post from England brought him some flattering notices of a book he had published shortly before leaving, which made him think that it was time to set to work upon a new story. But the idea he was seeking did not come to him, and the indolent charm of his surroundings favoured no severe exertion of the intellect.

He walked in the town until it grew familiar to him; its avenues, and terraces by the sea, its deep shadowy gardens, its groves of orange trees and lemon; its narrow streets and the multiplied variety of the houses, with their odd and glaring contrasts of colour; its churches, where the religion of the west seems out of harmony with the architectural and decorative fashions of the east.

Sometimes he hired a carriage and drove out into the country, and these excursions were usually prolonged throughout the day. On one such occasion, he was returning late in the afternoon, and the vetturino was guiding his horses in lazy fashion in and out amongst a straggling file of mule-carts laden with wine, in a narrow lane on the outskirts of the town.

“What place is this?” called out Gaston presently, pointing to an old, discoloured building of considerable extent, which lay on the left of the road.

“Il Convento de’ Cappuccini, signor,” replied the driver, and (never rejecting a chance to rest) pulled up his horses, adding: “The signor no see Il Convento?Ma, è molto curioso, signor(but it’s a queer place).”

Gaston got down from the carriage, and at that moment a sandalled and brown-robed monk appeared at the entrance to the monastery.

“Ecco il padre, signor!” (There’s the father), said the driver, pointing to the Capucin, who bowed to Gaston with a courteous indication of readiness to receive him.

Gaston went across, and was presently following the monk through an outer chamber of the monastery, empty and cold, with bare walls and a dark stone floor.

The monk stopped at a heavy wooden door, and taking a key from his girdle, turned to Gaston and said, in a mixture of Italian and broken English, which is here translated:

“The signor probably wishes to see our subterranean chambers. Many foreigners come here to see them. It is a very curious sight; we keep here the bodies of the wealthy Palermitans, whose relatives and friends assemble every year, on the Feast of All Souls, to visit them.”

While he was speaking he unlocked the door, which led into a vaulted passage with a flight of stairs beyond. A faint, sickly smell pervaded the corridor, which became stronger and more offensive as they began to descend the steps.

They went down to a dusky place, around which Gaston’s eyes wandered for a few moments with no certain gaze, until they grew accustomed to the dimness. The daylight, such feeble daylight as filtered into that dismal magazine of mummies, was fading fast.

The monk took a bit of candle from a ledge and lighted it; at once a strange and weird effect was produced.

Thousands of corpses, and skeletons, and horrible hooded figures which were of neither state, seemed in some manner to be awakened, seemed to rouse themselves, and take cognisance of Gaston and his guide.

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