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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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ONE of Taverner's cases will always stand out in my mind—the case of Black, the airman. The ordinary doctor would have bromided Black into an asylum, but Taverner staked the sanity of two people upon a theory, and saved them both.
Early in May I was sitting with him in his Harley Street consulting-room, taking down case notes while he examined his patients. We had dispatched various hysterics and neurotics to other specialists for treatment, when a man of an entirely different type was ushered in by the butler. He looked absolutely healthy, his face was tanned with the open air and had no sign of nervous tension; but when I met his eyes I noticed something unusual about them. The expression was peculiar. They did not hold the haunting fear one so often sees in the eyes of the mentally sick; he reminded me of nothing in the world but a running hound that has sighted its prey.
'I think I am going off my head,' announced our visitor.
'What form does your trouble take?' inquired Taverner.
'Can't do my work. Can't sit still. Can't do a thing except tear all over the country in my car as hard as ever I can lick. Look at my endorsements.' He held out a driving license filled with writing. 'Next time they'll quod me, and that will finish me off altogether. If they shut me up inside four walls I'll buzz around like a cockchafer in a bottle till I knock myself to pieces. I'd go clean mad if I couldn't move about. The only relief I get is speed, to feel that I am going somewhere. I drive and drive and drive till I'm clean tuckered out, and then I roll into the nearest wayside pub and sleep; but it doesn't do me any good, because I only dream, and that seems to make things more real, and I wake up madder than ever and go on driving again.'
'What is your work?' said Taverner.
'Motor-racing and flying.'
'Are you Arnold Black, by any chance?' asked Taverner.
'That's me,' said our patient. 'Praise the Lord I haven't lost my nerve yet.'
'You had a crash a little while ago, did you not?' inquired my colleague.
'That was what started the trouble,' said Black. 'I was all right till then. Banged my head, I suppose. I was unconscious three days, and when I came round I was seedy, and have been so ever since.'
I THOUGHT Taverner would refuse the case, for an ordinary head
injury could have little interest for him, but instead he asked:
'What made you come to me?'
'I was on my beam ends,' said Black. 'I'd been to two or three old ducks, but could get no sense out of them; in fact I've just come on from the blankest geyser of the lot.' He named a name of eminence. 'Told me to stop in bed a month and feed up. I wandered down the road and liked the look of your brass plate, so I came in. Why? Aren't I in your line? What do you go in for? Babies or senile decay?'
'If a chance like that brought you to me, you probably are in my line,' said Taverner. 'Now tell me the physical side of your case. What do you feel like in yourself?'
Our patient wriggled uneasily in his chair.
'I dunno,' he said. 'I feel more of a fool than anything else.'
'That,' said Taverner, 'is often the beginning of wisdom.'
Black half turned away from us. His painfully assumed jauntiness fell from him. There was a long pause, and then he blurted out: 'I feel as if I were in love.'
'And you've been hard hit?' suggested Taverner.
'No, I've not,' said the patient. 'I'm not in love, I only feel as if I were. There isn't a girl in the case—not that I know of, anyway—and yet I'm in love—horribly in love—with a woman who doesn't exist. And it's not the tomcat side of me, but the biggest and best that there is in me. If I can't get someone to love me back in the same way that I am loving, then I'll go off my head. All the time I feel that there must be someone somewhere, and that she'll suddenly turn up. She must turn up.' His jaw set in a savage line. 'That's why I drive so much, because I feel that round the next bend I'll find her.'
The man's face was quivering, and I saw that his hands were wet with sweat.
'Have you any mental picture of the woman you are seeking?' asked Taverner.
'Nothing definite,' said Black. 'I only get the feel of her. But I shall know her when I see her; I am certain of that. Do you think such a woman exists? Do you think it is possible I shall ever meet her?' He appealed to us with a child's pathetic eagerness.
'Whether she is in the flesh or not I cannot say at the present moment,' said Taverner, 'but of her existence I have no doubt. Now tell me, when did you first notice this sensation?'
'The very first twinge I had of it,' explained Black, 'was as we got into the nose dive that put me to bed. We went down, down, down, faster and faster, and just as we were going to crash I felt something. I can't say I saw anything, but I got the feel of a pair of eyes. Can you realize what I mean? And when I came round from my three days' down-and-out I was in love.'
'What do you dream about?' asked Taverner.
'All sorts of things; nothing especially nightmary.'
'Do you notice any kind of family likeness in your dreams?'
'Now you come to mention it, I do. They all take place in brilliant sunshine. They aren't exactly Oriental, but that way inclined.'
Taverner laid before him a book of Egyptian travel illustrated in water-colours.
'Anything like that?' he inquired.
'My hat!' exclaimed the man. 'That's the very thing.' He gazed eagerly at the pictures, and then suddenly thrust the book away from him. 'I can't look at them,' he said; 'It makes me feel—' he laid his hand on his solar plexus, hunting for a simile—'as if my tummy had dropped out.'
Taverner asked our patient a few more questions, and then dismissed him with instructions to report himself if any further developments took place, saying that it was impossible to treat his trouble in its present phase. From my knowledge of Taverner's ways I knew that this meant that he required time to carry out a psychic examination of the case, which was his peculiar art, for he used his trained intuition to explore the minds of his patients as another man might use a microscope to examine the tissues of their bodies.
AS it was a Friday afternoon, and Black was our last patient,
I found myself free after his departure, and was walking down
Harley Street wondering how I should dispose of my weekend, for
an invitation I had counted upon had unexpectedly failed me. As I
took a short cut through a mews lying behind the house I saw
Black manoeuvring a car out of a garage. He saw me, too, and
hailed me as a friend.
'You wouldn't care for a joy ride, I suppose? I am off on the trail again. Like to join me in running down the fair unknown?'
He spoke lightly, but I had had a glimpse of his soul, and knew what lay beneath. I accepted his offer, to his evident pleasure; he filled the gap left by the defection of my friends, and, moreover, I should learn more by accompanying him on one of his journeys than a dozen consulting-room examinations would tell me.
Never shall I forget that drive. He behaved normally till we got clear of the outlying suburbs, and then as dusk began to fall a change came over the man. At a secluded spot in the road he halted the car and stopped the engine. In the perfect stillness of that spring evening we listened to the silence. Then Black rose up in the driving-seat and uttered a peculiar cry; it was upon three minor notes, like a birdcall.
'What did you do that for?' I asked him.
'I dunno,' he said; 'it might attract her attention. You never know. It's not worth missing a chance, anyway.'
He restarted the car, and I realized that the quest had begun in good earnest. I watched the needle of the speedometer creeping round the dial as we hurtled into the gathering dusk. The hedges fell away on either side of us in a grey blur. Towns and villages passed us with a roar, their inhabitants luckily keeping out of our path. Gradients we took in our stride, and dropped into valleys like a stone from a sling. Presently from the top of a crest, we felt the Channel wind in our faces. Black hurled the car down a hill like the side of a house and pulled up dead, the bonnet nosing against promenade railings. Ahead lay the sea. Nothing else, I am convinced, could have stopped our career. Black stared at the surf for a few moments; then he shook his head.
'I have missed her again,' he said, and backed the car off the pavement. 'I got nearer to her tonight than I have ever done, though.'
WE put up for the night at an hotel, and next day Black drove
me back again. I stipulated that we should get in before dusk. I
had no wish to accompany him in pursuit of his dream again.
On my return I reported my experience to Taverner.
'It is an interesting case,' he said, 'and I think it will furnish a remarkably good instance of my reincarnation theory.'
I knew Taverner's belief that the soul has lived many lives before the present one, and that the experiences of those lives go to make up the character of today. When confronted by a mental state for which he could find no adequate cause in the present, it was his custom to investigate the past, getting the record of the previous lives of his patient by those secret means of which he was master. During the early days of my association with Taverner I considered these records imaginary, but when I saw how Taverner, working upon this idea, was able to foretell not only what a person would do, but in what circumstances he would find himself, I began to see that in this curious old theory of the East we might find the key to much of the baffling mystery of human life.
'You think that Black is feeling the effect of some experience in a past life?' I asked.
'Something like that,' said Taverner. 'I think that the spinning nose-dive had the effect of hypnotizing him, and he got into that particular part of his memory where the pictures of previous lives are stored.'
'I suppose he is living over again some vivid past experience,' I remarked.
'I don't think it is quite that,' said Taverner. 'If two people feel a strong emotion, either of love or hate, for each other, it tends to link them together. If this link is renewed life after life, it becomes very strong. Black has evidently formed some such link, and is feeling the drag of it. Usually these memories lie quiet, and are only roused by the appearance of the second person. Then we see those extraordinary loves and hates which disturb the ordered state of things. Black has recovered his memories owing to being hypnotized by the nose-dive. It now remains to see how he will work out his problem.'
'Supposing the woman is not upon the earth?'
'Then we shall have a singularly nasty mess,' said Taverner.
'And supposing she is upon the earth?'
'We may have an equally nasty mess. These attractions that come through from the past know no barriers. Black would drive that car of his through the Ten Commandments and the British Constitution to get at her. He will go till he drops.'
'Our night drive only ended at the sea wall,' I said.
'Precisely. And one night it won't end there. The trouble is that Black, while he was able to feel the presence of this woman in his abnormal state, was not able to locate her. To him she seemed to come from all points of the compass at once. We shall have to move with great caution, Rhodes. First we must find out whether this woman is on earth or not; then we must find out what her status is. She may be a scullery-maid or a princess; old enough to be his grandmother or not yet short-coated; it won't make any difference to Black. Moreover, she may not be free, and we can hardly launch him into the bosom of a respectable family.'
NEXT morning Taverner informed me that his occult methods had
enabled him to locate the woman, that she was on earth, and about
twenty-three years of age.
'Now we must wait,' he said. 'Sooner or later that tremendous desire of Black's will bring them together. I wonder whether she is conscious yet of the attraction.'
A FEW weeks later a Mrs. Tyndall brought her daughter Elaine
to consult my colleague. It seemed that the girl was developing
delusions. Several times she had roused the household with the
announcement that there was a man in her room. She imagined that
she heard someone calling her, and used to wander about at night,
taking long walks after dark, and often finding herself tired out
and miles from home, reduced to finding what conveyance she could
for her return.
'You do not have lapses of memory?' asked Taverner.
'Never,' said the girl. 'I know exactly where I am and what I am doing. I feel as if I had lost something, and couldn't rest till I had found it. I go out to look for—I don't know what. I know it is ridiculous to behave in the way I do, but the impulse is so strong I yield to it in spite of myself.'
'Do you feel any fear of the presence you are conscious of in your room?'
'I did at first, it seemed so strange and uncanny, but now I feel more tantalized than anything else. It is like trying to remember a name that has slipped your memory. Do you know that feeling?'
'I should like to have your daughter under observation in my nursing home,' said Taverner to the mother, and I saw by this that he did not regard the case as the commonplace type of insanity it appeared to be.
MISS TYNDALL was shortly installed at the Hindhead nursing
home, which was Taverner's headquarters, although he used his
Harley Street room for consulting purposes. I liked the girl. She
had no pretensions to striking beauty, but she had character.
For some time our patient led the life of a normal girl; then one evening she came to me.
'Dr. Rhodes,' she said, 'I want to take one of my night walks. Will you mind very much if I do? I shall come to no harm; I know what I am doing, but I am so restless I feel that I must move about and get out into open spaces.'
I spoke to Taverner. I knew of his policy of allowing his patients to follow their whims as far as possible.
'Let her go by all means,' he said. 'Go with her and see what she does. We cannot let the girl wander about these moors by herself, though I don't suppose she would come to the slightest harm.'
Miss Tyndall and I went out into the warm darkness of the spring night. She set the pace at a swinging, effortless stride that carried us rapidly over the heather paths. We were climbing towards the heights of Hindhead, and the ascent was trying at the pace we were making. Under the lee of a little pine wood we paused.
'Listen,' said the girl, 'how still it is. Do you know anything about birds? We have an owl near us at home that hoots on three notes. I have never been able to find out where he is. I often hear him shortly after dusk.'
We had passed the point where the old coach road crossed the modern metalled highway. Below us was the monument to the memory of the murdered sailor and above stood the great Celtic cross that gives rest to the souls of hanged men. Far away in the still night a car with open throttle was coming up from Thursley. We watched it as it tore past us, a shadow behind the glare of its headlights. I thought of that wild night ride to the coast, and wondered whether there was another soul in torment who sought to escape by speed from the hell within.
The girl at my side suddenly clutched my arm.
'I feel as if my soul would be torn out of my body,' she gasped. 'I am being drawn into a whirlpool. What is happening? What does it mean?'
I soothed her as best I could, and we set out upon the walk home. Miss Tyndall was now thoroughly overwrought, starting at every bush.
Suddenly she paused listening.
'Here it comes,' she said.
Neither she nor I saw anything, but I was as certain as she was that we were not alone.
'Gipsies are numerous in these parts,' I said.
'It is not gipsies,' she answered, 'it is the Presence. I know it quite well. There is no need to be alarmed; it never does any harm, but isn't it a curious feeling?'
She paused and looked at me, her face tense in the uncertain light that precedes moonrise. 'There is something I want Dr. Rhodes; I don't know what it is, but I shall go on wanting it till I die, and never want anything else. If I do not find it, then I shall know that I have lived my life in vain.'
WHEN we returned we found that Taverner was out. An accident
had occurred at the Hindhead cross-roads; the local doctors were
not available, and Taverner, although he took no part in the
general practice of the neighbourhood, had been telephoned for to
give first aid. Miss Tyndall wished me goodnight and went to her
room, and I was debating whether I would go to bed when the
telephone bell rang.
'That you, Rhodes?' said Taverner's voice. 'I am bringing a man back here. Will you have a bed made up for a surgical case?'
It was not long before I heard the car outside, and helped to unload the improvised stretcher.
'Another curious coincidence,' said Taverner, with the onesided smile he reserved for scepticism, and I saw that the man we were lifting was Arnold Black.
'Then it was his car we heard on the Portsmouth road,' I cried.
'Very likely,' said Taverner. 'He was driving at his usual gait, failed to negotiate the cross-roads, and rolled down the bank into the bushes.'
'The steering gear must have gone wrong,' I said.
'Or the man's mind,' said Taverner.
We got our patient into bed and were settling him down for the night, when a nurse came along to say that Miss Tyndall was in a very excited state. We left the woman in charge of Black and went along to the girl's bedroom.
We found her sitting up in bed—excited, as the nurse had said, but still mistress of herself.
'It is the Presence,' she said; 'it is so strong that I feel as if at any moment I might see something.'
Taverner lowered the light. 'Let us see if we can get a look at it,' he observed.
It is a peculiarity of a mystic that his presence stimulates the psychic faculties of those he is with, and Taverner was a mystic of no ordinary type. I have nothing of the mystic in my make up, but when astral entities are about I am conscious of a sensation such as we considered in childhood to be due to a goose walking over one's grave. Taverner would often describe to me the appearance of the thing that gave rise to these sensations as it presented itself to his trained sight, and after a little practice I found that, although I was seldom able to see anything, I could locate the direction whence the vibrations came.
As we waited in the darkened room I became conscious of this sensation, and then Taverner exclaimed:
'Look, Rhodes, even you must see this, for it is the etheric double coming out of the physical body.'
Beside the girl on the bed a coffin-shaped drift of grey mist was spreading itself. As we watched it I saw it take form, and I could trace the distinct outline of a human figure. Slowly the features grew clear, and I recognized the lean Red Indian countenance of Arnold Black. The girl rose on her elbow and stared in astonishment at the form beside her. Then with a cry she sought to gather the grey drift into her arms.
'It has come—it has come,' she cried. 'Look. I can see it. It is real.' But the impalpable stuff eluded her, her hands passed through it as through a fog-wreath, and with a cry of distress she hung over the form she could not hold.
'What does it all mean?' I asked Taverner.
'It means death if we can't get it back,' he said. 'That is Black's etheric double, what you would call his ghost, the subtle body that carries the life forces. It is inspired by emotions, and, being freed for the time, has come to the object of its desires—the reborn soul of the woman he loved in the past. The astral body has often been here before; it was that of which she was conscious when she felt what she calls "the Presence," but it has never previously been able to come in such a definite form as this. It means that Black is on the point of death. We must see if we can induce this grey shape to re-enter its house of flesh.'
Taverner laid his hand on the girl's shoulder, compelling her attention.
'Come with me,' he said.
'I cannot leave It,' she replied, again seeking to gather up the shadowy form on the bed.
'It will follow you,' said Taverner.
Meekly the girl rose. I put her dressing gown over her shoulders and Taverner held open the door for her. She preceded us into the passage, the grey mist-wreath drifting after her, its outlines merged in a shapeless fog. It was no longer horizontal but upright, looking like a sheet held up by the corner. The girl moved ahead of us down the passage; with her hand on the door of the room where Black lay she paused, then she entered, and started back in confusion as the light of a nightlight revealed the form of a man in the bed.
'I—I beg your pardon,' she faltered, and sought to retreat, but Taverner pushed her ahead of him and closed the door.
He led her gently to the bed. 'Have you ever seen this man before?' he asked.
'Never,' she replied, staring with a curious fascination at the set face on the pillow.
'Look straight into yourself, face your naked soul, and tell me what he is to you.'
Taverner's will compelled her, and the veneer of today fell away from her; the greater self that had come down through the ages stirred, woke, and for the moment took control of the lesser personality.
A man's life and the fate of two souls hung in the balance, and Taverner forced the girl to face the issue.
'Look down into your deeper self and tell me what this man is to you.'
'Everything.'
The girl faced him, breathing as if she had run a race.
'What will you do for him?'
'Everything.'
'Think well before you pledge yourself, for if you bring that soul back into the body and then fail it, you will have committed a very grievous sin.'
'I could not fail it if I tried,' replied the girl. 'Something stronger than myself compels me.'
'Then bid the soul re-enter the body and live again.'
'Is he dead?'
'Not yet, but his life hangs by a thread. Look, you can see it.'
We looked, and saw that the silvery strand of mist connected the grey wraith with the body on the bed.
'How can I make him re-enter his body?'
'Focus your mind on the body and he will be attracted back into it.'
Slowly, hesitatingly, she bent over the unconscious man and gathered the bruised and broken body into her arms. Then, as we watched, the grey drifting mist drew nearer and was gradually absorbed into the physical form.
BLACK and Elaine Tyndall were married from the nursing home
six weeks later, and left for their honeymoon in the racing car
that had been salved from the bushes. There was nothing wrong
with the steering gear.
As we returned to the house after watching their departure I said to Taverner: 'Most men would say you had mated a couple of lunatics whose delusions happened to match.'
'And most men would have certified the pair of them for an asylum,' replied Taverner. 'All I have done has been to recognize the working of two great natural laws, and you see the result.'
'How did you piece this story together?' I inquired.
'It was fairly simple,' said Taverner, 'as simple as human nature ever is. You know my method. I believe that we have many lives and can influence others by our thoughts, and I find that my belief will often throw light where ordinary ideas fail.
'Now take the case of Black. The ordinary doctor would have said it was his subconscious mind that was playing him tricks; well, it might have been, so I took the trouble to read the history of his past lives in what we call the Akashic Records, where all thoughts are recorded. I found that in several previous lives he had been associated with an individual of the opposite sex, and that in his last life he had had the presumption to bid for her favour when she was a princess of the Royal house and he was a soldier of fortune.
'As a reward for his daring he was flung from the roof of the palace and dashed to death on the stones of the courtyard. Now you can understand why it was that the spinning nose dive wakened old memories—he had plunged to his death before; you can also see why he felt "as if his tummy had dropped out" when he saw the pictures of Egypt, for it was in an Egyptian existence that all this took place. There are a great many people alive at the present time who have had an Egyptian past; we seem to be running into a cycle of them.
'You can also see the reason of Black's love of speed; it waked dim memories of his last contact with the soul he was seeking. If he could retrace his steps to the point where he swooped into space he would be able to pick up the trail of the woman of his desire. He was prompted to reproduce as nearly as possible the conditions in which he had last known her.
'As I have already told you, the memories woke, and Black set forth on his quest for the woman he had been mated with life after life, and having seen in the occult records their repeated union, I knew it was only a matter of time till they came together, and I sincerely hoped that she, too, would remember the past and be free to marry him. If she had not, we should have had, as I warned you, a very nasty mess. These spiritual ties are the devil.
'Now, I expect you wonder what chance it was that brought Elaine Tyndall to me. I knew, as I told you, that sooner or later their paths would meet. Well, I placed myself mentally at the point of their meeting; consequently as time drew near, they converged upon me, and it was my privilege to steer them to harbour.'
'But what about Miss Tyndall and her delusions?' I inquired.
'It looked to you like a commonplace case of old maid's insanity, didn't it?' said Taverner. 'But the girl's self-possession and absence of fear led me to suspect something more; she was so very definite and impersonal in her attitude towards her delusions. So I arranged for her to come down to Hindhead and let me try whether or not I could see what she saw.
'What we saw you yourself know; it was Black shaken out of his body by the shock of the accident and drawn to her by the intensity of his longing, not at all an uncommon phenomenon; I have often seen it.'
'How did you manage to get Black to re-enter his body, provided he had ever been out of it?'
'When Elaine touched his body, the soul of Black realized that it could meet her in the flesh, and so sought to re-enter its own body, but the vitality was so low it could not manage it. If the girl had not held him in her arms as she did, he would have died, but he lived on her vitality till he was able to build up his own.'
'I can see the psychological end of it,' I said, 'but how do you account for the chances that brought them together? Why should Miss Tyndall have become restless and made for the Portsmouth road, timing her arrival to fit in with Black's passing?'
Taverner looked up at the stars that were just beginning to show in the darkening sky.
'Ask Them,' he said. 'The ancients knew what they were about when they cast horoscopes.'
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.